Sending a friend request to a woman.

I am not a woman so this is not a first person account of reasoning, just a first person account of the facts. And my guess is if I was a woman I would never have been writing this piece. I would have had my own rules which nobody would be clear about. These would be hidden with a zeal and determination only coming out in bits and pieces in signals or words which are supposed to be caught by the one.  Sometimes I would have wondered if even me, the creature who people admire and wish to befriend knows about them clearly. There would be a deep desire for someone who would make it clear to me by understanding the things in me that I myself find tough to fathom. I would wait for him; call him a prince who would be the king of my heart. Do these future kings send friend requests? In all rationality they should. And should a woman add them as their friends? In all rationality they should. But as they say life is not as rational as a microeconomics class or a game theoretical model otherwise all the economists would have been unemployed by now once the truth was out.

So I am a man and I send a friend request to this girl. If I am a certified friend she would add me when she comes online. If she is doing well in her relationship, stable is the word, she may choose to add me or neglect my request after a small thought lest she clutter her friend list with someone she may not be comfortable with. If I have irked her in some way, there could be many ways; I may be in line for a good joke or two among her friends. Needless to say I would be rejected out rightly.

What if she chooses to keep me hanging? My request lying there like a broken piece of the cheap orange ice-cream bar in a child’s hand, just holding on to the stick with a small belief that it would rather be savored than fall off. When I have sent requests to women whom I would like to know better and they haven’t added me, all kinds of things keep running into my mind. It’s always doubt turning to anger. Did I do something wrong to her. Is my impression among her group of friends bad. Have I been laughed off in those circles! I keep thinking looking back into the pot of memory to find some proof. More often than not given my manly sensibilities, I can’t find any. Now it’s the turn of anger. What the hell she thinks of herself! Can’t she just click the button and accept. Am I going to disturb her, I haven’t disturbed a fly in my life. Go hell with these creatures, I am not sending a request to any girl in her group ever again. And so on. I would be a rebel without a cause.

The funny thing here is that there would be absolutely no change in their behaviour. They still talk to you, chat with you the same way. So what happened! May be they have not checked their profile. You go back and see that it has been active, some happy pic or an aww comment and things like that. Your pride has taken another blow.

One way is to ask them directly. This I have done with few of them. And the reply is as expected “Ohh, I haven’t seen you request. I am so Sorry” and they would immediately add you. Even if you ask them when both of you are drunk and you forget it in the morning, she is for sure going to remember. It’s difficult for me to believe that she would not have seen it. My guess is this basically proves that you were seriously wanting to be her friend rather than keeping her one among many other friend requests. Or that she has taken pity on you. But how does it matter on a social networking site, only god or a woman knows.  

Some of them do add you out of the blue let’s say after a month or two. Initially this would raise questions like why now, is there something, did she know that I am single or has she broken up or did she come to hear of my good scores etc. Now I have stopped thinking about it anymore. But if you take this as a proof that one way is to wait and wait till she gives in, that’s a difficult solution. And if it is at all a solution, the timeline is at least more than 3 years from my personal experience. If you are willing to wait for so long for a friend request to be accepted, you better start looking for a psychiatrist immediately.

The world is full of so many big issues- poverty, unemployment, nuclear terrorism, so why does this ‘not adding me on a social networking site’ matter? Exactly my point! Why not add us without any fuss. And let it be so.  But then I am not a woman. And I don’t know.