Can I ask a question of the females here, and get an HONEST answer? Are you really telling us that you have NO IDEA how to tell if a guy is interested in you without an overt, verbal exclamation of interest? I'm really finding that hard to believe, and contrary to a lot of human nature. I am the farthest thing from a jealous person, but I'm dealing with something like this a little in a personal relationship. I just find it hard to believe that it's so all or nothing.
I don't think anyone here is painting the picture quite like that. Actually, I think that's an extremely narrow-minded way of looking at it. What I would say instead is that every situation is different and it shouldn't be the woman's responsibility to figure everything out and bring it all out into the open.
I actually dealt with this situation from the other side fairly recently. This girl kept hinting that she was falling in love with me, and I kept hinting that I didn't feel the same way. Now, I was pretty sure that she really did have some pretty strong feelings about me, so maybe I should have been clearer. Maybe you could accuse me of teasing her or leading her along. But the bottom line is, I felt I was being every bit as clear as she was. She was only giving me hints, so I was only responding with hints. Admittedly, I could have been clearer, but I didn't want to. Why? Because I legitimately valued my friendship with this girl, and I didn't want to make things any more awkward between us than they had to be. What if I was wrong? What if she only wanted to be friends after all, and it turned out her feelings were only my imagination? Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be for me?
And for the record,
that has happened to me, too. I once told a girl that I only wanted to be friends, and that I hoped she could settle for that. Turns out she had never thought of me as anything more than a friend in the first place, so when I brought this up, she thought it was creepy and weird, and stopped talking to me. That situation isn't any fun, either, I assure you.
Basically, my point is that its a two way street. It's awkward for everyone involved. It's not fair to pin all the responsibility on one side. Even if a girl does suspect that a guy might be interested in her, that doesn't make it her job to initiate a potentially difficult conversation.
Think of it this way: why should a woman have to make an overt, verbal declaration of
lack of interest?