Are You Leading Him On Accidentally? Here's How to Stop!

One of the most frustrating things a man in the dating scene can experience is “being led on.”

A girl he likes gives indicators that he should pursue her, and then, out of the blue, she tells him that she’s not interested. There are two things that make this situation painful for a man. The first is that it’s a huge disappointment for a man to hear “no” when he was previously confident that he was going to hear “yes.”

The second thing that can make the situation painful for a man is the feeling of having been used. A man often feels that the woman who “led him on” was doing so because she was getting an ego boost from the attention he was showering on her. 

Now, chances are that if you have ever “led a guy on”, it was neither intentional nor the result of you using the man as a way to boost your ego. You probably didn’t know that your words/actions seemed to be encouraging him to pursue you. Or, you might have just wanted to avoid telling him you weren’t interested, because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

So what can you do to avoid “leading a guy on”?

First, let’s get this out of the way: being friendly with a guy isn’t the same as leading him on. Some guys interpret normal expressions of friendliness as signs of romantic interest. That is not a woman’s fault. When that type of situation comes up, often it’s because the guy hasn’t had a lot of dating experience, so he doesn’t know how to read the cues yet. So let’s put that scenario aside.

Let’s say a guy asks you out to coffee. You grab coffee with him and have a nice experience, but sparks don’t fly for you. At the end, he says, “This was fun, we should do it again.” You don’t want to hurt his feelings, so you say yes, thinking to yourself that grabbing coffee with him one more time isn’t the worst thing in the world. After all, he might well lose interest after the second coffee date.

This would be an example of leading a guy on. In a situation like this, you should tell the guy nicely but directly that you think he’s nice, but you aren’t interested in a relationship.

Another way to lead a guy on is by non-verbal cues.

Let’s say the guy has previously expressed interest in you. You told him no, and he handled it well. A couple months later the two of you are chatting with each other at a party. He tells a horrible pun. You laugh and say, “Oh, Ryan, you’re working on those dad jokes for your future kids, huh?” as you give him a brief pat on the shoulder.

Now, that kind of casual physical contact may just be your normal mode of interacting with people. But if a guy knows that you’re aware of his attraction to you, there’s a good chance he will think that kind of playful physical contact means that you are reconsidering your previous “no”. So if you know that a man is interested, but you don’t reciprocate that interest, avoid that kind of casual, playful contact.

It’s fine to give him a hello hug, or to say “yes” if he asks you to dance at a party (after all, it’s perfectly normal for people who are not interested in each other to dance together). But try to avoid any other physical contact that could be construed as flirty.

You could also accidentally lead a guy on before he’s even expressed any interest in dating.

Let’s say you’re talking with a guy you’ve just met. You tell him that you like to hike, he tells you that he does too, and you start talking about the different trails you like to hike. At some point you say, “We should go hiking sometime.” What you don’t specify, until much later, is that you meant, “We should go hiking with a group of my friends.”

You didn’t mean to indicate romantic interest, but since the guy thought that you were suggesting the two of you go hiking alone, he feels “led on” when you later tell him that other people are joining the hike as well. So just make sure that you are clear with your intentions from the start.  

Most Catholic women don’t want to give men false hope, but it does happen accidentally sometimes. Hopefully, by keeping in mind some of the things we’ve looked at here, you can minimize the number of times this occurs, and foster healthy friendships with men who aren’t “Mr. Right”, but do make good friends!