Dating is hard. I'm sure this isn't news to anyone. One thing that is definitely a requirement for dating: good communication and there seems to be a pretty big communication gap between straight men and women these days when it comes to expressing romantic interest, which confuses men, makes women feel threatened and isn't helping anyone in the meeting people department. Guys, how many of you have been called "creepy" by a girl for something that you considered to be fairly innocuous behavior? According to most guys I've spoken to, this happens reasonably often. So what's going on here? Are you being a creep without realizing it? Is every girl you meet crazy? Is dating just dead in the age of information?

No, no, and no. Guys of the world who feel like you're being labeled creepy left and right, you're probably wondering where that's coming from. To understand that, you need to learn a bit about what it's like to be a woman in the contemporary dating culture. As soon as we're old enough to be interested in boys or dating, or as soon as we're old enough that boys may be interested in us, girls and women are taught that we need to be, above all else, vigilant. Our parents, our older siblings, our schools, our churches, our friends, the news, pretty much ever source possible tells us we need to be incredibly cautious about how and with whom we interact with in a romantic or intimate way, in order to protect ourselves from all kinds of harm. From sexual assault to abusive relationships, whenever a woman is a victim of a crime perpetrated by a romantic partner, there is a slew of insinuations from everyone from family members to law enforcement that it was somehow her fault, and that she should have been more careful or this wouldn't have happened. (I'm well aware that men can also be victims of domestic violence and assault and face similar challenges in trying to do something about it; that's just not the example I'm using here.) Well-meaning parents and school administrators put the focus on teaching victims how to protect themselves rather than teaching perpetrators not to commit the crime in the first place, and all this adds up to a strong sense of hyper vigilance that we are taught from our preteen years on.

The vast majority of men are not evil predators seeking out women to victimize, and odds are your intentions are not malicious, but you have to understand we have no way of knowing that for sure when we don't know you well. When a girl calls you creepy for seemingly no reason, it's not because you're actually a stalker, it's because she's been socialized to view men as a threat, and when you look at the statistics, the media coverage, and the endless stream of horror stories about abuse and assault, can you really say those fears are completely unfounded?

This communication gap is no one gender's or one group's fault. Rape culture and all the ways it manifests come from many, many different sources. But, we can certainly both play a role in closing this gap. So whether you are male or female, consider where the other person is coming from when it comes to dating. It's awkward and nerve-wracking for everyone, but there are some places where different experiences add up to wildly different interpretations of each other's actions. That guy might have honestly believed his behavior was innocuous, and that girl might have good reason to believe it wasn't, but things tend to work out a lot better in general when you treat the person as an individual instead of projecting your past experiences onto them.