Sometimes you hang out in a bar and you see a group of people (usually a pair) and you maybe want to ask only one of them for their number.
How do you go on about this?
I always feel kind of weird, because if I were to hang out with a friend and somebody were to randomly ask them out specifically, surely I’ll be happy for them, but especially if this were a regular reoccurrence my own self esteem would probably take a hit from that. I don’t want to put somebody else through that.
Nowadays nobody ever goes out alone, especially not in bars. And if they do, they’re usually not in an approachable state. In general there seem to be less and less appropriate places or moments to approach people. Isolating somebody or waiting for them to be alone also feels borderline predatory. I know that it became nigh-impossible for relationships to naturally form out of nowhere, but I really don’t want to resort to dating apps or something of that matter.
Also, what if you’re maybe interested in both people. You can’t just ask “And what about you, are you interested too?” That’d just be awfull for everyone. But maybe you would’ve had a better response if you would’be asked the other person first and now you’ll never find out.
I really hate to be somebody who excludes people especially in a conversation but this seems to be the only area were this is actualy unavoidable.
i’m going to add something that isn’t really visited a lot in this context: how gay culture deals with this
i find gay men are often a lot more open with this kind of thing than the straight world. we’re quite a bit more promiscuous, kiss each other on dance floors right after meeting, etc. we have a lot more non-verbal cues that imply consent too…
mutual glances and grins across a dance floor leads to moving closer, compliment them on their clothes/hairstyle/etc, that might lead to more questions about where they got it, conversation with their friends - kinda join their group for a bit and then nobody is left out… we tend to ask for socials rather than a phone number: phone number implies date, socials is just “you’re cool” so nobody is upset: they can all give you socials and worst case you have a few new friends
that said, in gay culture you’re equally likely to just go straight from that to back home with them because we place more importance on doing what’s fun rather than needing to worry so much about if the guy is safe to be alone with - we have grindr etc after all