Distinguish Flirting From Hustling
Dear Miss Manners: As a contentedly single woman in my 30s, I have a bothersome problem. People tend to assume I’m a lesbian.
I have never declared myself to be a lesbian. I live quietly and privately because I have a neurological condition that is unpredictable.
Many of the women who make this assumption take the liberty of attempting to flirt with me. Since many of these women are in heterosexual relationships (but engage in male bashing or proclaim their marriages to be unsatisfying), I am deeply troubled by this situation.
I dress and behave modestly, so that can’t be the problem. Could you address the problem of people making this assumption? After all, there are plenty of reasons why a single woman would choose to live quietly.
Gentle Reader: It occurs to Miss Manners that her answer would probably curl your hair if you and she did not agree first on the definition of flirting.
When Miss Manners uses the term, she means animated, if not actually feverish, attention, laced with flattery, which someone in a state of decently contained excitement directs at someone else in the hope of inspiring a response. Anyone with whom you are legitimately acquainted - male, female, old, young, married, unmarried - can try this, because it differs from ordinary polite sociability only in intensity.
The proper negative response is to project a polite but clear lack of interest in warming up the acquaintanceship. In the cases you mention, a good place to start would be to stave off unpleasant confidences with the quiet observation that you consider such matters really none of your business.
As nothing explicit has been said, the would-be flirt can then pull back without loss of dignity. You need not trouble yourself with the unanswerable question of why you are approached by whom as, by definition, the romantic tastes of people whom you plan to reject are of no concern to you.
What prevents Miss Manners from leaving it all at that, having neatly side-stepped the lesbian angle, is the dreadful suspicion that what you mean by flirting is something more modern and considerably less tasteful.
Are you talking about obscene, or at least direct, observations or proposals? Or blunt inquiries? Or refusals to back off? Those would be insulting from anyone and should not be tolerated.
That all sorts of people make lewd advances at whatever they find attractive is less shocking to Miss Manners than that the victims should turn defensive instead of huffily defending themselves from improper onslaughts.
Dear Miss Manners: We have friends who have owed us money for the last year and are now getting married. Would it be proper to give a card with a note saying the money they owe us is canceled? If yes, how would one phrase the note?
Gentle Reader: With apologies for her cynicism, Miss Manners can’t help wondering if you are figuring that you will never see this money again anyway.
This is - naturally - not rude nosiness on her part. It is the polite desire to make sure that you aren’t sending a present that says, “OK, deadbeats, see if you like getting nothing when you expect something.”
The way to avoid this interpretation is to send them a real wedding present, if only a small one, and, separately, a letter saying, “To start off your new life together, we’d like to erase that trifling debt.”
xxxx
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate