I had an INFJ girl lead me on once. We first met in a class in college. She started a conversation with me after class on the first day and after that would always make heavy eye contact with me in class and even made some general comment at one point about her "ex-boyfriend", giving the hint that she was single.
I invited her to a few things like when a certain Dj played at a club and she would always accept. She never had any pictures posted with other guys on her fb and only had pictures with her girlfriends. By all measures she seemed single and interested in me.
I pursued her through the following yr, even though I had moved back home from college and was about a 6 hr drive from the university we attended. I made trips back and tried to make plans with her when I was down or would visit her at the club she worked at.
One weekend when I was back visiting with friends I sent her a message directly asking if she would like to go to a movie and grab something to eat. She said she was out of town that weekend in a small town out of state (and this was confirmed by a fb status update of hers I later read that tagged her in that out of state town). I responded by telling her that I really liked her and would like to get to know her better and maybe we could do something together next time we're both in town. She responded "that sounds great
".
Fast forward about four months and I see a fb post on her wall that she's moving to that out of state town and moving in with her "boyfriend".
Some drama ensues in the aftermath of this post and when I press her about it she claims she never had romantic feelings for me and had been seeing the guy for almost two years. That encompasses the entire time I've known her including when she mentioned an "ex-boyfriend" up to when I asked her out and she said she was in a small town out of state (with no mention of the fact that she was there WITH HER BOYFRIEND). She knows she lead me on. She then said that it was never her intention to give me the wrong impression but that is complete bullshit. It was a conscious effort on her part to keep that information from me and avoid posting anything about her boyfriend on fb or having her relationship status available. We haven't spoken in almost a year since then.
Leading someone on = knowing a guy likes you and letting him pursue you while actively hiding from him the fact that you're seeing someone else or that you don't have romantic feelings for him.
Sometimes it can be very hard to tell what a girls interest level is and as a guy you really just have to keep pursuing the girl you like unless she let's you know directly that she does not feel the same way. This is why it is important that girls be clear with guys who have displayed interest in them as to not give him the impression that he has a shot and make him put in the effort when he does not. This constitutes playing with someone else's feelings just for extra attention or for some benefit you gain by that person being attracted to you. That is manipulative and wrong.
I have been clear with people that I am not attracted to them, but I enjoy talking with them- I think sometimes people are just confused by that alone. Plus, I love deep, personal conversations and I think that confuses people too.
For instance, there is an INFJ girl right now at my work that I really like. I had found her attractive but had not talked to her while I was pursuing that other girl because I don't like the idea of pursuing multiple girls at the same time. After things fell through with that girl I decided to finally talk to this girl from work. She turns out to be a very sweat and nice person and she's very attractive. After first talking to her in the break room we then started saying hi to each other at work when we'd see each other and this went on for about three months until I approached her one time to ask if she wanted to get lunch after work. She said she had to pick up her brother after work and I said "Ok, well maybe some other time". The following week I approached her while she was working in the floral dept of our grocery store at the end of my shift and asked her if she'd like to hangout sometime. She hesitantly said sure and I asked her if she was available at all that week. She said she was Thursday which I mentioned was also my day off but then I asked what her number was and she goes "seven digits..." and doesn't actually give it to me.
Being very inexperienced and awkward at asking girls out due to my INTJness (this is our biggest weakness) I took this as a rejection and said Ok and walked away and then as I was walking away she said that she had just gotten out of a weird relationship and didn't want to rush into anything. I presumed that was the line single girls give when they are not interested in a guy but don't want to hurt his feelings. Still feeling like it was a complete rejection I said "Don't worry, I won't bother you anymore" and as I turned around to continue walking out and she goes "you're not bothering me". Here I am super confused and turn back around to face her and then kind of roll my eyes (like "what's that supposed to mean?") and leave.
It sounds as though she wanted to be casual friends but might not have wanted to hang out one on one. I don't know, sometimes I get disenchanted, and think guys just want one thing... It doesn't sound like you are like that, but did you guys banter frequently before you asked for her number? INTJs come off very cool from my experience, I've been dating an INTJ for the last 8 years, and I had the darnedest time trying to figure out if he was interested in me or not in the beginning.
After this the next time I saw her at work, as I was leaving she seemed to be standing in my way near the exit of the store, feeling like my ego had been completely crushed by the apparent rejection a few days earlier I was not in a mood to engage her and did not make contact with her. As I got closer to where she was standing and had not made eye contact she seemed to get flustered and spun around and headed back towards the front desk where she was working. Then the next day she was blocking my path in the morning when I was heading to clock in. I said "Hi" in sort of an aggressive manner as in "Hi, you're kind of in my way" and then she sort of responded and quickly walked away. After that we both kind of avoided each other for about three months. A few weeks after, I felt kind of bad and I tried to start saying hi to her again but every time I would come near her she would start a conversation with one of her coworkers. Finally we past each other once when there was no one else near and I said hi and asked her how she'd been. She said good and asked me the same. Then the next week I ran into her while she was alone in the break room and I said "Look, I don't want things to be weird between us. I was just trying to get to know you." And before I could finish the second sentence she responded "nothing is weird" with a friendly smile on her face and then I gave her a confused look and she added "I say hi to you every day" and I'm thinking "ya, for the past week! Not the three months before that...". And I go "Ok, I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable".
So then, feeling a bit more confident since she seemed to be fine with everything, I went through her checkout stand when I got off my shift and engaged in some small talk which seemed to go well. Then the following week I saw her working in the produce department on my way to the back of the store to clock in and decided to try to invite her to lunch again. I asked her when she got off and she said at 3pm and I said "I'm working a double but maybe we could meet up for lunch?" and she responds "I don't know.... sorry" (Really!? What does "I don't know" mean? It was a yes or no question.) and I go "Ok, whatever...". Then even right after that she was hanging out in the back of the store where I was and talking with like random employees right in my vicinity. The last couple weeks I've just started taking my lunches in the break room at the store (I'm a delivery driver so most of the time I'm out of the store and just take lunches on the road) and she seems to take her breaks and lunches as soon as she sees me go into the break room. Two time in the past week we have been in there at the same time and engaged in conversations with each other and other employees. The last time it was just the two of us in there for about 15 minutes and we were talking and she mentioned that a good friend of hers is getting back from deployment and she hasn't seen him in like 11 months and then she added that he had tried to date her once and she had told him that she just saw him as a friend. At any rate, she has not yet said that to me and so at this point I have to assume she also has romantic interest in me until she says otherwise. She could be leading me on or just like receiving attention from a fairly attractive male co-worker but that is impossible for me to know until she says so. At this point I will continue to approach the situation from an assumption that things are moving towards a romantic relationship, though rather slowly.
Yes, I do think INFJ's are guilty of leading people on quite often whether intentionally or unintentionally due to their desire to engage people in polite conversation and also not wanting to hurt people's feelings as well as their tendency to be indecisive.
I think this is very accurate
In your situation, you told the guy you were not romantically interested in him multiple times and so that is more about his stubbornness and not you leading him on.
Being a flirt is quite different and not something I think INFJ's are as guilty of. Being a flirt involves overt expressions of things that are generally seen as romantic. I think ESFP's are much more guilty of this. An ESFP girl is more likely to be hanging out with male friends and put her arm around them or go dancing with them at a club which are things that are generally seen as romantic gestures but to her she is just having a good time and these actions do not have any romantic motive attached to them. That is one way a woman can unconsciously be a flirt. Then there is another way of being a flirt that I have seen from some girls in college. There are some girls who go out to parties and try to hook up (make out) with as many guys at the party as they can for some ego boost or sense of self-validation or something. This is different from being promiscuous because she does not actually intend to sleep with them, she just wants to make out with them for whatever reason, because she's insecure or whatever. This is a way that some girls are consciously being a flirt. I don't see INFJ's as generally engaging in either of these kinds of flirtatious behavior.
It is important though to recognize the difference between "being a flirt" and "leading someone on". Just because many INFJ's are not guilty of the former does not mean that they are not guilty of the latter. In your case you told the guy you were not romantically interested in him and in the case of this INFJ girl from work she told this other guy who wanted to date her that they were just friends and she didn't see him like that. Neither of you are guilty of leading someone on in those situations but in general I can see many INFJ's being guilty of leading men on because of their general nature. Hopefully most of them will realize when they are doing this and come clean with the guy as to not hurt him further or manipulate him.
I would agree with this completely.
As for my response to the OP, which really has nothing to do with the title of the thread (the title of the thread has to do with what constitutes leading someone on or being a flirt; the OP has to do with the question of whether or not men and women can be friends. These are two separate questions) I think it is possible under certain conditions for men and women to be just friends, but not under general circumstances and here's why. First off, you seem to not be accounting for the difference in social and cultural norms between men and women. Most women assume that men do and talk about the same things around other men that women do around other women. This is a very false misconception about male culture. Women in general spend the majority of their time talking about boys or fashion or gossiping about other girls with their friends (I went to a college campus with 75,000+ student's and heard enough conversations of women passing by, and eating in the dining hall, and talking on the phone to realize this). Men, believe it or not, hardly ever talk about girls when they are with other men. They talk about sports and video games and guy stuff. Their is this concept called
male camaraderie that doesn't exist in female culture. When we are with our guy friends we talk about everything besides girls. We might call out a hot girl on the street here or there but we don't talk about our love life or our love interest or any of these topics that girls talk about with their girlfriends. A man might confer with a really close friend on an off occasion about some girl issue but it is generally a one on one conversation and is not a frequent occurrence. This is why it is one of the worst things a woman can do to deny her boyfriend or husband from hanging out with his friends or having male bonding time. This is when he gets to relax and not think about girls. The rest of the time we have to appear like macho sex crazed lunatics to keep up the appearance for womens sake.
Women on the other hand spend much of their female bonding time talking about their various love interests and about guys in general (Maybe INFJ's and INTJ's are less into such gossip than most women but even you have to admit it is the norm for unmarried women into their late twenties and possibly even longer). They don't have this same camaraderie experience because they have a completely different social culture. Now, a woman can embrace the male culture and hangout with the bros and do bro things and that would most certainly guarantee her a spot as a genuine friend to her male counterparts. In fact, she is likely to have to go completely outside that circle to find a relationship because none of them will be romantically interested in her because she is just another "bro" to them. That's one way to become friends with guys or just be a known lesbian (not bisexual but just completely uninterested in men and let your male counterparts know this. That would probably work too). If women want guy friends a good place to look is to gay guys who may or may not mind talking about boys and fashion with them (I certainly do not want to generalize all homosexual men as being interested in these topics though), straight men are not going to want to engage in the social practices of female culture. No straight guy, no matter how much you think of him as a "friend" is going to want to listen to you talk about boys you're interested in. You have your girlfriends for that. And if you want to attempt to enter the male friendship domain of "male camaraderie" then you almost guarantee that they will no longer see you in any sexual way whatsoever. So if I may ask you [MENTION=5301]jupiterswoon[/MENTION],
what exactly is your idea of a genuine male/female friendship? What things would men and women do together as friends outside of male social culture (talking about sports and video games etc. with the bros) and female social culture (talking about boys and fashion with their girlfriends)? Go to a concert together? Or a movie? Or a sporting event? All those things are generally seen as dates when done between a man and a woman. So you want a man to do the same things but without the possibility of sex or a relationship? What straight guy would spend time doing those things with you when he could more productively spend his time doing the same things with a woman who is romantically interested in him? I'm genuinely curious.
Movies and concerts are kind of intimate, usually I will invite guys out for coffee or lunch if I think we could be friends or are friends. Movies are things I would consider date material, as well as the other stuff you mentioned. I might recommend group outings, or getting a group of people and inviting the person you want to get closer to then getting to have a one on one conversation during the evening.
"All those things are generally seen as dates when done between a man and a woman. So you want a man to do the same things but without the possibility of sex or a relationship? What straight guy would spend time doing those things with you when he could more productively spend his time doing the same things with a woman who is romantically interested in him?"
I don't want guy friends to take me on dates, that's awkward and weird. I don't think I ever said I wanted those things. In a guy friend, the only thing I can really hope for is the occasional good conversation. If I want a date, I go with my boyfriend. Guy friends are also good for group outings.
I had two close female friends in college who would always hangout with my roommates and I. They would be at all our parties and even if we weren't throwing a party they would sometime come over to our apartment and just play drinking games with us and stuff. I thought we were all genuine friends. It turned out one of the girls had a major crush on me and the other one started dating one of my roommates the following year. So, it's not fair to claim it's just men. That's just the nature of male/female relationships (between straight members of the opposite sex).
I had another really close female friend in college. She and I had similar taste in music and would go to some concerts/shows together and also had a few philosophy classes together. Even though she was very pretty (she was a professional model, actually) I was not romantically interested in her because, well, she was a fellow INTJ and I have just never been romantically interested in T women. Just as a personal preference I have always liked feeler type women. Though it was still awkward when we would go to a show together and she would be making out with some random guy at the show in front of me. This one time another guy came back to her apartment with us from the show (clearly trying to hook up with her) and when we got back to her apartment it was just awkward and I was like wondering if I should leave and then the other guy ended up leaving and then she invited me to this after party and we came back and I crashed on her couch. Still, kind of an uncomfortable night. Would I have had sex with her had our relationship progressed to that? Of course, she was a professional model and gorgeous. Was I actively pursuing that? No, because I'm not promiscuous and prefer to have sex within a relationship and I didn't see myself having a relationship with her. But that doesn't mean that it was off the table. I think it basically comes down to what DonTaushMe said:
There are certain times when men and women can be friends; (1) when one or both are in a relationship and unavailable, (2) when a girl makes herself sexually unappealing by making herself "one of the bros", or (3) when one of the parties is homosexual or wildly below the other's physical standards. Other than that I don't see it working out without one of the parties developing feelings or ending up with uncomfortable situations like when my friend almost hooked up with another guy while I was at her place. That relationship ended for other reasons (it turned out we held wildly different world views and ideologies) I still cannot be sure to this day whether that female INTJ did not have feelings for me (I was one of the first people she told that she got a boob job, I don't know what sort of a response she was expecting to get from me but that's a whole different story... that was uncomfortable too).
