Plenty of people lack confidence or have an anxiety disorder, so would be predisposed to assuming that hanging out with them was a burden without any grounds to think so, and potentially feel like they need to include an apology in any invitation. It’s obviously not healthy, but it doesn’t mean that they’re right and that the advances are unwanted.
I said “likely”, as I realize that’s not always the case, but in my experience social anxiety is more likely to manifest in “I totally understand if not” than starting out with an apology in this context. That’s just my experience, but starting with an apology is often “nice guy” behavior, which makes sense because a lot of the “alpha” accounts are actually appealing to “nice guys” and not just guys who are nice that happen to have social anxiety.
That’s fair. As a socially anxious guy, I probably would go for the “If you want” and/or “If you can’t/don’t want to that’s ok” route.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that the person on the left in the picture is aware the advance is unwanted, though. Of course, it’s an AI picture, that guy does not exist, but speaking of a hypothetical person with even worse social anxiety than even myself, I could see one like that using “Sorry”. Not because he knows that the advance is unwanted (though it could be that he knows, it just depends by case), but because he assumes any advances from him will be unwanted. Getting rejected every single time would make it hard to assume “Ok but surely next time will be ok”, and so you would operate, from the start, under the assumption that the other person doesn’t want to talk to you.
I don’t know if my point is coming across too well, but basically what I’m trying to say is this: Once you get to the point where you think every single interaction coming from you is unwanted (which is probably false. Even if most are, it’s highly unlikely all are), then you kinda stop differentiating between when someone actually doesn’t want to talk to you, and when you’re overthinking but you’re actually incorrect. So if the guy would stop trying to interact with people he thinks don’t want to talk to him, he’d essentially stop trying to interact period.
Plenty of people lack confidence or have an anxiety disorder, so would be predisposed to assuming that hanging out with them was a burden without any grounds to think so, and potentially feel like they need to include an apology in any invitation. It’s obviously not healthy, but it doesn’t mean that they’re right and that the advances are unwanted.
I said “likely”, as I realize that’s not always the case, but in my experience social anxiety is more likely to manifest in “I totally understand if not” than starting out with an apology in this context. That’s just my experience, but starting with an apology is often “nice guy” behavior, which makes sense because a lot of the “alpha” accounts are actually appealing to “nice guys” and not just guys who are nice that happen to have social anxiety.
That’s fair. As a socially anxious guy, I probably would go for the “If you want” and/or “If you can’t/don’t want to that’s ok” route.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that the person on the left in the picture is aware the advance is unwanted, though. Of course, it’s an AI picture, that guy does not exist, but speaking of a hypothetical person with even worse social anxiety than even myself, I could see one like that using “Sorry”. Not because he knows that the advance is unwanted (though it could be that he knows, it just depends by case), but because he assumes any advances from him will be unwanted. Getting rejected every single time would make it hard to assume “Ok but surely next time will be ok”, and so you would operate, from the start, under the assumption that the other person doesn’t want to talk to you.
I don’t know if my point is coming across too well, but basically what I’m trying to say is this: Once you get to the point where you think every single interaction coming from you is unwanted (which is probably false. Even if most are, it’s highly unlikely all are), then you kinda stop differentiating between when someone actually doesn’t want to talk to you, and when you’re overthinking but you’re actually incorrect. So if the guy would stop trying to interact with people he thinks don’t want to talk to him, he’d essentially stop trying to interact period.