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> I wish women would make more of an effort to understand why men do what they do. Here is my general take on it... From the author's referenced post[1]: > My

> I wish women would make more of an effort to understand why men do what they do. Here is my general take on it... From the author's referenced post[1]: > My experience is that men are either not very willing to talk to me one-on-one or, if they are, talking shop is the last thing they had in mind. They are looking for romance, not looking to help me professionally. When I say this to other women, they generally express immediate agreement. Men often deny it, criticize it or just stop talking when I say such things. Most people are not attracted to most people. What this means is that most of the people you are attracted to won't find you attractive, and most of the people who are attracted to you are not going to be attractive to you. Given this simple fact, believing that most of your interactions with members of the opposite sex are motivated by romantic interest is simply not realistic, no matter how handsome/beautiful or charming you are. Maybe the tech industry (or a particular subset of the tech industry) is completely dysfunctional, but in my experience, most adult women and men are capable of interacting professionally without believing that all these interactions are somehow romantic in nature or fearing that they will be interpreted as such. [1] http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-gray-zone.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-gray-zon...

Mz 11y ago
A man does not need to be attracted to me to be worried that close collaboration -- working late together, having dinner together, etc -- will lead to other people wondering if there is an affair. Bonus points: My experience has been that men who aren't attracted react really negatively to me giving off signals that I am interested. So men who are not hoping to sleep with me can have powerful reasons to just not want to work closely with me in the kind of manner that could dramatically further my professional goals. (I am the author, in case that is not obvious.)
- 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
  > A man does not need to be attracted to me to be worried that close collaboration -- working late together, having dinner together, etc -- will lead to other people wondering if there is an affair. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with professionally-appropriate "close collaboration" between two colleagues, "close collaboration" is possible without "working late together" or "having dinner together." In my experience the vast majority of working professionals, even those who forge close ties with their colleagues, don't see working late or dining frequently with colleagues after work hours as being fundamental to "close collaboration." They have their own lives and don't want to be spending their evenings with co-workers, male or female. > My experience has been that men who aren't attracted react really negatively to me giving off signals that I am interested. So men who are not hoping to sleep with me can have powerful reasons to just not want to work closely with me in the kind of manner that could dramatically further my professional goals. If a man or woman takes the risk of signalling romantic interest in a co-worker, he or she should be prepared for the possibility that the co-worker will react "negatively." While most adults are capable of handling this situation maturely and kindly, for obvious reasons the rebuffed party will almost certainly experience some level of discomfort after being rebuffed. This is the primary reason folks should be careful about expressing interest in somebody they have to work with. Are you prepared for the potential of self-inflicted awkwardness? Unless you are frequently signalling romantic interest in the co-workers you are hoping will work most closely with you, I don't understand why you believe men who are not hoping to sleep with you are generally disincentivized from building a healthy and mutually-beneficial working relationship with you. The only thing I can surmise is that your expectations around what "working closely" with a colleague looks like are unrealistic.
  - Mz 11y ago
    You seem to be making a lot of inferences that I don't see grounds for. As one example, I did not say that I was giving signals of interest to coworkers, much less on a regular basis. I only made a general observation that if a man has no desire to be personally close to me, it is easy enough to avoid any of the potential downside that might concern him by just choosing to not work closely with me. Done. It leaves me out in the cold when most men consistently do that, but that isn't his problem. I worked for a large corporation for over 5 years. My opinions on how this works are certainly informed by those experiences. However, I currently do freelance work and my own independent projects. So, when I network now, I am not representing a company or department or whatever. I am only representing myself. That appears to inherently come with challenges that men do not seem to have. When I try to make professional contacts, I am asking individual men to trust me as an individual. Many of them have far more reason to decline taking that bet than to accept the risks involved. I have spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to make forward progress on this issue. Framing the problem the way I currently frame it has gotten me far better results than what I used to get. Trying to emulate what men were doing was flat out failing to get me the results I was looking for -- i.e. the kinds of results men got. There are no doubt many factors involved in determining any particular outcome, so it is not possible to prove my hypothesis beyond a shadow of a doubt. That fact doesn't inherently make it a weaker hypothesis than the rest of them. Thank you for commenting. I appreciate the engagement.
    - 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
      > As one example, I did not say that I was giving signals of interest to coworkers, much less on a regular basis. You previously wrote: > My experience has been that men who aren't attracted react really negatively to me giving off signals that I am interested. I'm genuinely confused. If you are not giving signals of interest to men you are interacting with in a professional capacity, how do the reactions of men who you're ostensibly interacting with in a personal capacity relate at all to your professional ambitions? > When I try to make professional contacts, I am asking individual men to trust me as an individual. Many of them have far more reason to decline taking that bet than to accept the risks involved. Our backgrounds and experiences might very well be quite different, but I think attitude plays a big role in how your efforts pan out and going into interactions with this kind of world view is not healthy in my opinion. I am an adult male professional. If there's a good reason we should do business together or help each other professionally, I don't care if you're half squirrel. I don't know what you're asking of the folks you meet, and when and how you're asking, but in my experience, most professionals, male and female, don't harbor irrational reservations about building strong working relationships with colleagues of the opposite sex.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  So I'm a man, and I'm married, and I'm committed to my marriage. I'm not just worried about my reputation; my marriage is a more important issue. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I'm immune to temptation. So if I'm having to work closely with you, and you're interested in me, and I also find you attractive, I'm going to take steps to distance myself from you. That may take the form of not working late with you. It may even take the form of asking to be assigned to a different team than you. (Note well: It's not OK for me to try to get you fired, or damage your career. It's not even OK for me to ask that you get reassigned.) If you want to blame me for that, saying that it's my weakness that is the problem, I can agree with you. But I'm not trying to discriminate against you, or put a glass ceiling on your career, or anything like that. I just know that I can be tempted, and if I give in, it will really mess up my life. Unfortunately, that can still leave you blocked from your professional goals. I don't know how to fix this.
  - Mz 11y ago
    Thank you very much for that. That is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about: Men can be trying to be good men and make this choice. It isn't some nefarious, malicious, woman-hating choice. It's simply a hard problem to solve and the sooner we can look at in that light, the sooner we can find real solutions.
  - 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
    1. How many years have you been working? 2. How many times in your career have you found yourself working closely with a woman who you found attractive and who made it clear she was interested in you? 3. In these situations, how many times were you the woman's superior, equal or direct report? I think answers to the above would be more beneficial to this discussion than the admission that you could theoretically be tempted by a co-worker to cheat on your wife.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      1. 30 2. Once. I found her attractive, and I think she was at least willing to become interested in me. (Of course, I'm a clueless male geek, so I easily could have been mistaken.) 3. Her equal. So, yeah, it hasn't happened to me very much. But the time it did, I did what I felt I had to to make sure that nothing happened. (What did I do? I sent one message that I wasn't going to play, and I asked a male co-worker that I trusted to hold me accountable for what I did and thought about her. It was enough.)

Mz 11y ago

A man does not need to be attracted to me to be worried that close collaboration -- working late together, having dinner together, etc -- will lead to other people wondering if there is an affair. Bonus points: My experience has been that men who aren't attracted react really negatively to me giving off signals that I am interested. So men who are not hoping to sleep with me can have powerful reasons to just not want to work closely with me in the kind of manner that could dramatically further my professional goals. (I am the author, in case that is not obvious.)

7Figures2Commas 11y ago
> A man does not need to be attracted to me to be worried that close collaboration -- working late together, having dinner together, etc -- will lead to other people wondering if there is an affair. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with professionally-appropriate "close collaboration" between two colleagues, "close collaboration" is possible without "working late together" or "having dinner together." In my experience the vast majority of working professionals, even those who forge close ties with their colleagues, don't see working late or dining frequently with colleagues after work hours as being fundamental to "close collaboration." They have their own lives and don't want to be spending their evenings with co-workers, male or female. > My experience has been that men who aren't attracted react really negatively to me giving off signals that I am interested. So men who are not hoping to sleep with me can have powerful reasons to just not want to work closely with me in the kind of manner that could dramatically further my professional goals. If a man or woman takes the risk of signalling romantic interest in a co-worker, he or she should be prepared for the possibility that the co-worker will react "negatively." While most adults are capable of handling this situation maturely and kindly, for obvious reasons the rebuffed party will almost certainly experience some level of discomfort after being rebuffed. This is the primary reason folks should be careful about expressing interest in somebody they have to work with. Are you prepared for the potential of self-inflicted awkwardness? Unless you are frequently signalling romantic interest in the co-workers you are hoping will work most closely with you, I don't understand why you believe men who are not hoping to sleep with you are generally disincentivized from building a healthy and mutually-beneficial working relationship with you. The only thing I can surmise is that your expectations around what "working closely" with a colleague looks like are unrealistic.
- Mz 11y ago
  You seem to be making a lot of inferences that I don't see grounds for. As one example, I did not say that I was giving signals of interest to coworkers, much less on a regular basis. I only made a general observation that if a man has no desire to be personally close to me, it is easy enough to avoid any of the potential downside that might concern him by just choosing to not work closely with me. Done. It leaves me out in the cold when most men consistently do that, but that isn't his problem. I worked for a large corporation for over 5 years. My opinions on how this works are certainly informed by those experiences. However, I currently do freelance work and my own independent projects. So, when I network now, I am not representing a company or department or whatever. I am only representing myself. That appears to inherently come with challenges that men do not seem to have. When I try to make professional contacts, I am asking individual men to trust me as an individual. Many of them have far more reason to decline taking that bet than to accept the risks involved. I have spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to make forward progress on this issue. Framing the problem the way I currently frame it has gotten me far better results than what I used to get. Trying to emulate what men were doing was flat out failing to get me the results I was looking for -- i.e. the kinds of results men got. There are no doubt many factors involved in determining any particular outcome, so it is not possible to prove my hypothesis beyond a shadow of a doubt. That fact doesn't inherently make it a weaker hypothesis than the rest of them. Thank you for commenting. I appreciate the engagement.
  - 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
    > As one example, I did not say that I was giving signals of interest to coworkers, much less on a regular basis. You previously wrote: > My experience has been that men who aren't attracted react really negatively to me giving off signals that I am interested. I'm genuinely confused. If you are not giving signals of interest to men you are interacting with in a professional capacity, how do the reactions of men who you're ostensibly interacting with in a personal capacity relate at all to your professional ambitions? > When I try to make professional contacts, I am asking individual men to trust me as an individual. Many of them have far more reason to decline taking that bet than to accept the risks involved. Our backgrounds and experiences might very well be quite different, but I think attitude plays a big role in how your efforts pan out and going into interactions with this kind of world view is not healthy in my opinion. I am an adult male professional. If there's a good reason we should do business together or help each other professionally, I don't care if you're half squirrel. I don't know what you're asking of the folks you meet, and when and how you're asking, but in my experience, most professionals, male and female, don't harbor irrational reservations about building strong working relationships with colleagues of the opposite sex.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
So I'm a man, and I'm married, and I'm committed to my marriage. I'm not just worried about my reputation; my marriage is a more important issue. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I'm immune to temptation. So if I'm having to work closely with you, and you're interested in me, and I also find you attractive, I'm going to take steps to distance myself from you. That may take the form of not working late with you. It may even take the form of asking to be assigned to a different team than you. (Note well: It's not OK for me to try to get you fired, or damage your career. It's not even OK for me to ask that you get reassigned.) If you want to blame me for that, saying that it's my weakness that is the problem, I can agree with you. But I'm not trying to discriminate against you, or put a glass ceiling on your career, or anything like that. I just know that I can be tempted, and if I give in, it will really mess up my life. Unfortunately, that can still leave you blocked from your professional goals. I don't know how to fix this.
- Mz 11y ago
  Thank you very much for that. That is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about: Men can be trying to be good men and make this choice. It isn't some nefarious, malicious, woman-hating choice. It's simply a hard problem to solve and the sooner we can look at in that light, the sooner we can find real solutions.
- 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
  1. How many years have you been working? 2. How many times in your career have you found yourself working closely with a woman who you found attractive and who made it clear she was interested in you? 3. In these situations, how many times were you the woman's superior, equal or direct report? I think answers to the above would be more beneficial to this discussion than the admission that you could theoretically be tempted by a co-worker to cheat on your wife.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    1. 30 2. Once. I found her attractive, and I think she was at least willing to become interested in me. (Of course, I'm a clueless male geek, so I easily could have been mistaken.) 3. Her equal. So, yeah, it hasn't happened to me very much. But the time it did, I did what I felt I had to to make sure that nothing happened. (What did I do? I sent one message that I wasn't going to play, and I asked a male co-worker that I trusted to hold me accountable for what I did and thought about her. It was enough.)