I don’t get why anon believes he is being used. It was a miscommunication, sure. Did he spend money on her before this? Using him as a ride to go on a hike? Hikes being extremely cheap and only needing to pay parking, usually.
Oh, come on. Weeks of talking and flirting (coworkers agreed) and she never mentioned a boyfriend. To be painfully clear, this isn’t a gender thing and anyone can lead someone else on to stroke their own ego. And that’s what this is (if it happened).
Why not? I’d return, apologize for the misunderstanding, and then laugh about it. Maybe bring a small gift, like cookies or something to share, and make it clear that you’re looking for friendship.
But completely bailing is kind of weird IMO, which tells me there’s more to the story.
I don’t necessarily agree she was leading him on. It was a miscommunication. It’s an extremely common story if men misinterpreting women’s behavior as pursuit when it is often just friendly. Even then, platonic flirting is a thing. If anon really intended for this to be a date, why did he at no point ask if she was single? We can sit here all day and debate whether the girl’s “flirting” was appropriate or not and whether she should’ve said she had a boyfriend, but it goes both ways. What we do know is that, to anon, this was a date and that anon never asked if she was single at any point in the two weeks.
I don’t disagree with you that anon should’ve asked more questions, but platonic flirting is kinda wacky without a well established rapport beforehand. Otherwise it’s just flirting, and can be confusing.
Why not ask? If a guy asks a girl (or vice versa) to go somewhere and it’s not abundantly clear it’s not a date (e.g. you’ve done similar things together before, they’re openly gay, or they explicitly said it’s not a date), then it should be assumed to be a date unless clarified otherwise. So if they don’t specify and you’re unsure, then ask.
That said, her leaving is also odd. A misunderstanding shouldn’t be a big deal. Show up the next day and laugh about it, and you’re golden. I wouldn’t be mad if that happened to me, nor should either anon or the girl. It’s just a misunderstanding, it’s really no big deal.
That’s just how social expectations are. I recommend you go ask a handful of single men you know (i.e. coworkers) whether they’d consider a 1:1 outing with a woman to be a “date.” I’m guessing most would say yes.
It depends. Generally speaking they’re free. I was told by a ranger at the Great Smokey Mountains National Park that they don’t enforce (or at least specifically weren’t that day) parking passes and only give people courtesy notices to pay for parking. They were only ticketing people parking in places that weren’t actual parking spots or blocking areas.
Generally speaking I think you can expect to pay about $5 on average, some places maybe more (like if it’s a trail in a city, then parking is usually more costly). But in tons of places it’s just totally free.
My point is that anon thinking he was being used was hilarious because it’s extraordinarily cheap.
I get the point about it being a cheap activity in general, but aside from parking, who do pay the money to? Is there like a ticket-booth at the start of some trail which you couldn’t reasonably get to walking from other places?
Some places use an honesty system where you drop money into a box and get a thing to put on your dash. Other places have a gate house or booth where you can pay.
You aren’t forbidden from walking in. It’s usually just not a practical choice. Usually trails are in very remote places so you’d probably walk further than the length of the trail to get to it lol. Other places which are in more urban environments (like a trail through a city or places like Stone Mountain Georgia) might have easy places to park and walk in but it’s technically private property. And again, still usually just extra walking. For things like bike trails this is more viable probably.
In Finland there is no trespassing on private property. Well, not if it’s not gated or your yard or something. And you can’t gate large pieces of land like that, so…
I understand that the nature is very different, for instance we have no mountains. So for me, I’m just thinking “just use another road”, but some places just have one road going there, I guess. Here, I’ll show my point:
I’ve highlighted the parks in yellow. Kansallispuisto = national park, luonnonpuisto = “nature park” (which sounds silly, I hear it). My point is that the trails in those areas start from a few places, and going to the national park, there’s several parkin places you can go to, and you can get to the areas from so many different places. And this isn’t a national park that requires any park rangers. I don’t even know if we have any, but if we do, they’re in the national parks which are up North in Lapland. This is a very small one. Just a big marsh with a lake in the center, essentially.
So you couldn’t really set up a gatehouse or a booth anywhere there.
We have plenty of places like that here as well. The places where you have to pay to park are generally very popular and the fee is largely used to reduce how many go (i.e. reduce destruction) and fund maintenance and cleanup efforts.
In my area, the only places that charge are state and national parks, and not even all of them. I have dozens of hiking trails within a few miles of me without any parking fees, and there’s a massive federally owned swath of land nearby also with no parking fees.
If you go to the handful of extremely popular parks, you’ll pay a fee (and you can get an inexpensive yearly pass if you want), but if you go to literally anywhere else (dozens if not hundreds within 50 miles or so), there’s no fee. So Grand Canyon or Yellowstone = fee, local falls or BLM land (federally owned, but not a “national park”) are free.
I just don’t understand how you can “fee” Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. Those places are huge.
You have a booth on every road?
I don’t believe there’s a single place like that in Finland, what with our everymans rights
Everyman’s rights are the right of every person to use nature regardless of who owns or controls the land. The use of nature within the limits set under the everyman’s rights therefore does not require the permission of the landowner and using the rights does not cost anything.
Yellowstone has limited access by road, but you could hike into it.
The Grand Canyon has visitor’s centers and a few established areas with infrastructure for various activities, but you could hike to it, but getting into the canyon is another matter.
The other thing is that going in by road and paying for a pass let’s people know you are there and if you haven’t come back. Both areas are dangerous and people get in over their head because they have no understanding of the dangers of nature.
Yup, for Yellowstone, that’s 3 entrances, so three sets of booths. It’s largely to cut down on traffic (traffic gets really bad as-is) and maintain the infrastructure.
The only reason you’d go to any of the entrances is to visit the park, there are no through roads or anything, and it’s like an hour or two from the major highways, and several hours from a city larger than 10k people (aside from the tourism towns just outside the park). And the traffic to get into the park is backed up for an hour in the morning for people looking to get lucky with extra passes (there’s a maximum capacity).
You can hike in if you like, the passes are only required for cars IIRC.
In America we don’t have any sort of “right to roam” law, sadly. If you want to feel even more smug and mock my country, wait until you watch this: https://youtu.be/yBrtWXBhuuo
In the west there is a grid pattern of land like a checker board. Like this:
X O X O
O X ? X
X ? X O
O X O X
The Xs are private property and you cannot access them. The Os are public property. The ?s in the middle are public property, but how do you get to them? The only way is by crossing through a corner. Obviously, the private land owners would prefer to view the public land as an extension of their private land so they believe that corner crossing should be illegal because it passes through their property. (Even if you don’t step on it you have to cross through their airspace so to speak.) Meanwhile, everyone else says, “hey, you can’t just double your land like this! Let me have access to the public land! What the hell do you mean airspace? I’m not a plane! I’m a person! And I didn’t step on your property!”
Genuine curiosity being read as “smug and mocking” is a bit troublesome I feel. I’ve just not traveled a lot. I know things, but I haven’t been there personally, and reading about Yellowstone, it doesn’t exactly highlight that some company controls access to it, more or less.
Thank you for the info on that though, seems horrible, and is exactly the type of behaviour our laws exist to prevent.
The smokey mountains is strictly enforcing parking passes now anywhere without the park. They will tow vehicles and mail you the fee without question if you dont have a pass.
I don’t get why anon believes he is being used. It was a miscommunication, sure. Did he spend money on her before this? Using him as a ride to go on a hike? Hikes being extremely cheap and only needing to pay parking, usually.
Yeah, no harm done, but she’d been leading him on for weeks. That’d make me pissed too.
Or she genuinely wanted a friend and anon is so attention starved he can’t see the difference.
I wouldn’t want to go back to that awkward situation either.
Oh, come on. Weeks of talking and flirting (coworkers agreed) and she never mentioned a boyfriend. To be painfully clear, this isn’t a gender thing and anyone can lead someone else on to stroke their own ego. And that’s what this is (if it happened).
You only have the incel’s account of things.
… so badly that you quit your job??
Why not? I’d return, apologize for the misunderstanding, and then laugh about it. Maybe bring a small gift, like cookies or something to share, and make it clear that you’re looking for friendship.
But completely bailing is kind of weird IMO, which tells me there’s more to the story.
I don’t necessarily agree she was leading him on. It was a miscommunication. It’s an extremely common story if men misinterpreting women’s behavior as pursuit when it is often just friendly. Even then, platonic flirting is a thing. If anon really intended for this to be a date, why did he at no point ask if she was single? We can sit here all day and debate whether the girl’s “flirting” was appropriate or not and whether she should’ve said she had a boyfriend, but it goes both ways. What we do know is that, to anon, this was a date and that anon never asked if she was single at any point in the two weeks.
I don’t disagree with you that anon should’ve asked more questions, but platonic flirting is kinda wacky without a well established rapport beforehand. Otherwise it’s just flirting, and can be confusing.
It’s also confusing being asked somewhere and never being told it’s being treated as a date.
thats valid! both people here were kinda shitty to each other
Why not ask? If a guy asks a girl (or vice versa) to go somewhere and it’s not abundantly clear it’s not a date (e.g. you’ve done similar things together before, they’re openly gay, or they explicitly said it’s not a date), then it should be assumed to be a date unless clarified otherwise. So if they don’t specify and you’re unsure, then ask.
That said, her leaving is also odd. A misunderstanding shouldn’t be a big deal. Show up the next day and laugh about it, and you’re golden. I wouldn’t be mad if that happened to me, nor should either anon or the girl. It’s just a misunderstanding, it’s really no big deal.
Why do you see a date as the default for men and women hanging out together?
That’s just how social expectations are. I recommend you go ask a handful of single men you know (i.e. coworkers) whether they’d consider a 1:1 outing with a woman to be a “date.” I’m guessing most would say yes.
Context matters: they’re coworkers.
You know you only have his side of this story right?
Speak for yourself
Laughs in Finnish everymans rights.
You have to pay for hiking? Or you hike on trails where the only access is from a parking area that you have to pay for?
Seems ridiculous to me.
It depends. Generally speaking they’re free. I was told by a ranger at the Great Smokey Mountains National Park that they don’t enforce (or at least specifically weren’t that day) parking passes and only give people courtesy notices to pay for parking. They were only ticketing people parking in places that weren’t actual parking spots or blocking areas.
Generally speaking I think you can expect to pay about $5 on average, some places maybe more (like if it’s a trail in a city, then parking is usually more costly). But in tons of places it’s just totally free.
My point is that anon thinking he was being used was hilarious because it’s extraordinarily cheap.
I get the point about it being a cheap activity in general, but aside from parking, who do pay the money to? Is there like a ticket-booth at the start of some trail which you couldn’t reasonably get to walking from other places?
Some places use an honesty system where you drop money into a box and get a thing to put on your dash. Other places have a gate house or booth where you can pay.
You aren’t forbidden from walking in. It’s usually just not a practical choice. Usually trails are in very remote places so you’d probably walk further than the length of the trail to get to it lol. Other places which are in more urban environments (like a trail through a city or places like Stone Mountain Georgia) might have easy places to park and walk in but it’s technically private property. And again, still usually just extra walking. For things like bike trails this is more viable probably.
In Finland there is no trespassing on private property. Well, not if it’s not gated or your yard or something. And you can’t gate large pieces of land like that, so…
I understand that the nature is very different, for instance we have no mountains. So for me, I’m just thinking “just use another road”, but some places just have one road going there, I guess. Here, I’ll show my point:
I’ve highlighted the parks in yellow. Kansallispuisto = national park, luonnonpuisto = “nature park” (which sounds silly, I hear it). My point is that the trails in those areas start from a few places, and going to the national park, there’s several parkin places you can go to, and you can get to the areas from so many different places. And this isn’t a national park that requires any park rangers. I don’t even know if we have any, but if we do, they’re in the national parks which are up North in Lapland. This is a very small one. Just a big marsh with a lake in the center, essentially.
So you couldn’t really set up a gatehouse or a booth anywhere there.
We have plenty of places like that here as well. The places where you have to pay to park are generally very popular and the fee is largely used to reduce how many go (i.e. reduce destruction) and fund maintenance and cleanup efforts.
In my area, the only places that charge are state and national parks, and not even all of them. I have dozens of hiking trails within a few miles of me without any parking fees, and there’s a massive federally owned swath of land nearby also with no parking fees.
If you go to the handful of extremely popular parks, you’ll pay a fee (and you can get an inexpensive yearly pass if you want), but if you go to literally anywhere else (dozens if not hundreds within 50 miles or so), there’s no fee. So Grand Canyon or Yellowstone = fee, local falls or BLM land (federally owned, but not a “national park”) are free.
I just don’t understand how you can “fee” Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. Those places are huge.
You have a booth on every road?
I don’t believe there’s a single place like that in Finland, what with our everymans rights
Yellowstone has limited access by road, but you could hike into it.
The Grand Canyon has visitor’s centers and a few established areas with infrastructure for various activities, but you could hike to it, but getting into the canyon is another matter.
The other thing is that going in by road and paying for a pass let’s people know you are there and if you haven’t come back. Both areas are dangerous and people get in over their head because they have no understanding of the dangers of nature.
Yup, for Yellowstone, that’s 3 entrances, so three sets of booths. It’s largely to cut down on traffic (traffic gets really bad as-is) and maintain the infrastructure.
The only reason you’d go to any of the entrances is to visit the park, there are no through roads or anything, and it’s like an hour or two from the major highways, and several hours from a city larger than 10k people (aside from the tourism towns just outside the park). And the traffic to get into the park is backed up for an hour in the morning for people looking to get lucky with extra passes (there’s a maximum capacity).
You can hike in if you like, the passes are only required for cars IIRC.
In America we don’t have any sort of “right to roam” law, sadly. If you want to feel even more smug and mock my country, wait until you watch this: https://youtu.be/yBrtWXBhuuo
In the west there is a grid pattern of land like a checker board. Like this:
The Xs are private property and you cannot access them. The Os are public property. The ?s in the middle are public property, but how do you get to them? The only way is by crossing through a corner. Obviously, the private land owners would prefer to view the public land as an extension of their private land so they believe that corner crossing should be illegal because it passes through their property. (Even if you don’t step on it you have to cross through their airspace so to speak.) Meanwhile, everyone else says, “hey, you can’t just double your land like this! Let me have access to the public land! What the hell do you mean airspace? I’m not a plane! I’m a person! And I didn’t step on your property!”
Genuine curiosity being read as “smug and mocking” is a bit troublesome I feel. I’ve just not traveled a lot. I know things, but I haven’t been there personally, and reading about Yellowstone, it doesn’t exactly highlight that some company controls access to it, more or less.
Thank you for the info on that though, seems horrible, and is exactly the type of behaviour our laws exist to prevent.
Light hearted banter being read as troublesome is also troublesome.
The smokey mountains is strictly enforcing parking passes now anywhere without the park. They will tow vehicles and mail you the fee without question if you dont have a pass.
This was in November 2023. It may have just been that day or it may have changed since then.