The frequency explanation doesn’t really work, because men do sometimes get excess compliments and it doesn’t actually become annoying; it’s just background. Also, when women give men the kind of compliments that men tend to give women, it can be quite unwanted even when infrequent.
The common thing, which you both gesture at, is whether it’s genuinely a compliment or simply a bid for sexual attention, borne out of neediness. The validation given by a compliment is of questionable legitimacy when paired with some sort of tug for reciprocation, and it’s simply much easier to have this kind of social interaction when sexual desire is off the table the way it is between same sex groups of presumably straight individuals.
For example, say you’re a man who has gotten into working out and you’re visiting your friend whom you haven’t seen in a while. If your friend goes wide eyed, saying “Wow, you look good. Have you been working out?” and starts feeling your muscles, that’s a compliment because it’s not too hard for your friend to pull off “no homo”. He’s not trying to get in your pants. If that friend’s new girlfriend were to do the exact same thing, she’d have to pull off “no hetero” for it to not get awkward, and while that’s doable it’s definitely significantly harder. If she’s been wanting an open relationship and he hasn’t, it gets that much harder to take it as “just a compliment” and this doesn’t have to be a recurring issue in order for it to be quite uncomfortable to receive that compliment. As a result, unless their relationship is unusually secure she’s less likely to compliment you than he is—and when she does she’s going to be a lot more restrained than he can be.
The question, to me, is to what extent people are trying to “be sexy for their homies” because society has a semi-intentional way of doing division of labor to allow formation of social hierarchies without having to go directly through the mess of sexual desires, and to what extent people are simply using their homies as a proxy for what the opposite sex is into and getting things wrong because they’re projecting a bit. The latter seems sufficient and a priori expected, but maybe it leads into the former.
The frequency explanation doesn’t really work, because men do sometimes get excess compliments and it doesn’t actually become annoying; it’s just background. Also, when women give men the kind of compliments that men tend to give women, it can be quite unwanted even when infrequent.
The common thing, which you both gesture at, is whether it’s genuinely a compliment or simply a bid for sexual attention, borne out of neediness. The validation given by a compliment is of questionable legitimacy when paired with some sort of tug for reciprocation, and it’s simply much easier to have this kind of social interaction when sexual desire is off the table the way it is between same sex groups of presumably straight individuals.
For example, say you’re a man who has gotten into working out and you’re visiting your friend whom you haven’t seen in a while. If your friend goes wide eyed, saying “Wow, you look good. Have you been working out?” and starts feeling your muscles, that’s a compliment because it’s not too hard for your friend to pull off “no homo”. He’s not trying to get in your pants. If that friend’s new girlfriend were to do the exact same thing, she’d have to pull off “no hetero” for it to not get awkward, and while that’s doable it’s definitely significantly harder. If she’s been wanting an open relationship and he hasn’t, it gets that much harder to take it as “just a compliment” and this doesn’t have to be a recurring issue in order for it to be quite uncomfortable to receive that compliment. As a result, unless their relationship is unusually secure she’s less likely to compliment you than he is—and when she does she’s going to be a lot more restrained than he can be.
The question, to me, is to what extent people are trying to “be sexy for their homies” because society has a semi-intentional way of doing division of labor to allow formation of social hierarchies without having to go directly through the mess of sexual desires, and to what extent people are simply using their homies as a proxy for what the opposite sex is into and getting things wrong because they’re projecting a bit. The latter seems sufficient and a priori expected, but maybe it leads into the former.