I should also say that with strangers (in a bar say), this whole thing usually starts earlier with looks at someone punctuated with looks away when you see them looking back.
Surely this is more general than that? I mean, you didn’t say it wasn’t, but ISTM it wouldn’t be worth mentioning if that was what you meant. Did you actually mean it in a more inclusive sense?
Or am I just very wrong about interpreting/doing this? :-/
I didn’t mean to imply that trading glances like this was exclusive to strangers. However: it is a larger portion of the initial signaling, because fewer signals are available than between friends or people otherwise interacting. Secondly, it’s more noticeable in strangers, again because of the relative lack of other interactions and signals.
Oops, that wasn’t the generalization I was thinking of. Sorry; I should have been more explicit. I meant I do this to strangers a lot simply because, e.g., I’m outside and it’s nighttime and I’m trying to determine whether or not they’re someone I know in the first place, which has nothing to do with this.
Oh. Yes, people look at each other a lot, naturally, without any signals being sent. It’s going to be near impossible to tell from short textual descriptions whether what you’re doing is anything like the sexual signaling, but I would suspect not. It’s usually done at a fairly subconscious level
Surely this is more general than that? I mean, you didn’t say it wasn’t, but ISTM it wouldn’t be worth mentioning if that was what you meant. Did you actually mean it in a more inclusive sense?
Or am I just very wrong about interpreting/doing this? :-/
I didn’t mean to imply that trading glances like this was exclusive to strangers. However: it is a larger portion of the initial signaling, because fewer signals are available than between friends or people otherwise interacting. Secondly, it’s more noticeable in strangers, again because of the relative lack of other interactions and signals.
Oops, that wasn’t the generalization I was thinking of. Sorry; I should have been more explicit. I meant I do this to strangers a lot simply because, e.g., I’m outside and it’s nighttime and I’m trying to determine whether or not they’re someone I know in the first place, which has nothing to do with this.
Oh. Yes, people look at each other a lot, naturally, without any signals being sent. It’s going to be near impossible to tell from short textual descriptions whether what you’re doing is anything like the sexual signaling, but I would suspect not. It’s usually done at a fairly subconscious level