As a male, my radar *is* particularly sensitive to clingy types, particularly because gender roles in society have been perpetuated to where women are stereotypically conditioned to desire different things from relationships than men. I’m not talking sex or money: I’m referring to the level of commitment, and the level of interaction.

Generally, men are emotional introverts compared to women. This is not to say that all men or all women are the same, but from my guy friends to myself, we all tend to keep to ourselves and have trouble communicating our emotions. This is a result of our socialization and how we’ve been taught to “be a man.” Personally, I’m better at communicating my feelings than my friends, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll be blunt and admit my feelings so readily; after all, as humans, we are all afraid of both change and rejection.

In reference to the scenario in this post, men *do* think of such an expression of feelings as being clinginess, largely because we’re not used to people (not just men or women) communicating such feelings in such detail. Even if they are merely feelings of friendship, we’re not used to having such importance placed on feelings or their expression.

And yes, we *do* misinterpret much of what women say because, again, we’re not conditioned to communicating our feelings, so when we assume there’s any hint of attraction, we automatically cling to that hint and never let go of that instinct. There are very few men and women who are able to distinguish attraction from friendship.