Innocuous things that make you irrationally embarrassed

I don't know how anyone navigates the minefield of cheek-kissing. Once, twice or three times? Cheek to cheek or lips to cheek? Starting on the left or the right? It's impossible to get right.

Even if you can remember all the different national variations (three for Russians, two in Spain, etc) there's no guarantee the other person isn't going to try to tailor their cheek-kissing to your presumed cultural context (which i guess would be one or two in the UK). It always goes wrong. I leave about 50% of my business meetings feeling like an idiot and not for the normal, justifiable reasons. I just want a handshake.

i once kissed my girlfriend's best friend full on the lips because of this confusion.

also shaking hands with women in the paris office produces an understandable wtf is this guy am i a leper look. italians i worked with just ended up saying "we know, inglese, non toccare" which was about right.

touching cheek or peck on the cheel or gradations in between.

whether to kiss or not is a nightmare, and then how many. if i do one kiss i feel like paddy irishman if the person was about to do two, if i do two and they were intending one it's like i think i'm some deluded europhile.

told this story on ilx already but in a noisy drunken pub situation, a girl i vaguely know once stopped me in the middle of going for the second cheek and thought i was attempting to kiss her - and like actually full-on kissed me in response to this - i was like "whoa that's not where i was going at all!" and she said "that was weird! i suppose it's no harm" - her bf was across the room...

to hug or not in the U.S. is similar, most people I'm friends with, men or women, give a hug and that makes sense and I like that but there are so many couples we know in which the wife gives me a hug but the husband just gives this distant handshake and it is just like wtf dude I have known for years and been to your wedding and shit and am going through parenting together just give me a fucking hug. my goddamned brother in law still just gives me a handshake. gtfo. Makes me both angry and embarrasses when I go for the hug but they just offer their hand. wtf u afraid of dude

yeah hug or handshake is a prob here too. i've seen people act weird about a handshake.

my brother shook my mum's hand once bcos he got confused about the hug.

just realized I went through an entire trip to quebec without anyone doing the kiss greeting. I'd have botched it badly, again, but I need that awkwardness in my life

I don't hug. Not fond of handshakes either. Fist bumps are ok.

Maybe I'll hug if drunk. But nobody wants that.

Hugging is weird and hard to figure out. My brother and I hugged for the first time in about 2007 at the airport after my dad's funeral. It was awkward.

My extended family started hugging in the 90s. When I saw my dad hug his sister it called everything into question. Midwesterners no toccare.

I'm a hugger now.

Love 2 hug

i hug ppl i know but go for handshake if i dont

which, idk i find that ppl think bcz I am a woman that i want to hug.

nuh uh. shields up, buddy

I'm a hugger but a lot of our friends are not so I abstain but sometimes it's hard because I'm just really happy to see you, man.

Unless it's hot in which case don't touch me with your gross damp body heat.

When I met lj for the 1st time irl he went str8 for the hug, I was into it & knew we would get on

:)

:)

yeah fyi i'd be up for a hug with an ilxor

hug sug

I think I hugged je55e last week when it was oppressively hot and I was kind of drunk after a conversation about glory holes.

iirc I have hugged carl

Chilxors are the huggiest ilxors in my experience.

theyre cold is why

don't get me wrong - who doesn't love hugs? (apart from my brother) it's the whole stranger in a strange land/professional acquaintance thing that can wrongfoot me.

I prefer loving punches over hugs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VIpTAKQ58

iirc I have hugged carl

It was hot as fuck too so now you know how much I like you.

theyre cold is why

Would hug VG

you better! :D

I've become a hugger since I've been going to the dreaded Burning Man. Not so much before.

greetings in general make me feel awkward and embarrassed, if i don't know the person.

otoh i get really annoyed when a man will shake ytth's hand and just sort of head-nod at me or something.

I prefer loving punches over hugs.

― Jeff, Saturday, July 25, 2015 4:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol this reminds me of a dude I know who was bonding with a woman at some party (turns out she worked for h1gh t1m3s!) and somehow they ended up thinking it was cool to give each other black eyes

that sounds like displaced sexual energy
hugs are different!!

I go straight for a snuggle, all-in or nothing

dayo, fyi, is not a snuggle and now I know that

I think I hugged je55e last week when it was oppressively hot and I was kind of drunk after a conversation about glory holes.

This shouldn't be overlooked.

i've adopted a hugging policy to be done once and for all with the usual british uncertainties about it, but still when anyone greets me with more than one kiss it feels like i've been thrown into a particularly fiendish spatial reasoning puzzle

(somewhat rational embarrassment - accidentally posting this in the velvet underground albums thread)

Maybe this should go in one of the many phrases you dislike threads but I am embarrassed by and for anyone who has ever said the words "easy tiger"

they are trying to indicate you are in the presence of an extraterrestrial iirc

The spoken part and subsequent cheerleader rap in "Shake It Off"

I only really have one opinion about Taylor Swift and it's really more of an indisputable fact than an opinion, and that is that every spoken aside in a Taylor Swift song is corny and bad

― o.m.g. lol @ hurt butt (wins), Wednesday, 21 January 2015 17:11 (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sex scenes in R rated movies
yes, still

singers who *make themselves laugh* in the middle of a song, especially when the laughter is obviously rehearsed/overdubbed and the preceding line wasn't particularly funny, ex. Taylor's "go on too many dates--huh huh" Terence Trent D'Arby's "a riverboat gambler--hahaha" and Lorde's giggly "and you can watch from your window"

the word 'stoush' which stuff.co.nz uses in too many headlines.

IA @ the woman who parked her car sideways across two handicapped spaces and sat in the driver's seat talking on her cellphone. I honked my horn at her 4 times, but I don't think she got the idea. she probably thought she was doing nothing wrong because she was inside the car and she could move if anyone needed the spaces. gtfo.

oops, wrong 'irrationally' thread

I'm IE for you, bro.