Why men don’t ask women out - The Contribution of Yancy Ismalsin

I’ve always wondered about my fellow “brothers” who complain about how women always play games, which makes them feel a need to be superficial in their relationships out of defense. Unfortunately, I can now understand their position, because I’ve experienced some of that game-playing just recently since moving to the Phoenix area.

Of course, it’s true that I’ve experienced game-playing before, but I’ve never seen it played out with such visciousness from women anywhere other than in Phoenix, and when I started attending a church highly recommended by a friend of mine who used to go there when she lived in Phoenix, I would’ve never expected to find such a den of vipers.

My first experience of this church’s singles group was an ice cream social at the home of one of the members. Being a very outgoing person (an ENFJ, for Myers-Briggs enthusiasts), I had no problem going up and talking with both men and women at the party and getting involved in some of the games (fun games, that is, like Taboo, cards, and the like). The thing that shocked me was that one of the guys in the group approached me later in the evening and told me I should wait after a few months of being in the group before asking any of the women out.

At the time I heard this, I thought that was a pretty controlling thing to say; I mean, women are always wondering why men don’t ask them out, and if a guy is told he’s not allowed to ask a woman out, then the guy issuing the commands sounds like he’s trying to hoard the wealth. In retrospect, I should’ve seen this as a sign it was not a friendly group and that I should’ve started looking elsewhere for quality friendships. However, I decided that they really didn’t know me and, for all they knew, I could be a really bad person, so I gave it some time.

I did try to get to know a few women as only friends, but when I finally decided to ask one out, I found out just what kind of evil really lurked in the souls of the women at this supposedly Christ-centered singles group of this conservative church in the Phoenix area.

Yancy Ismalsin (not her real name) was a very attractive and athletic woman with a very beautiful smile (the first thing I noticed about her and attracted me to her). Since I only had her e-mail address, I sent her an e-mail to see if we could get together some time. I knew she enjoyed dancing, so I suggested that but also said that just meeting for coffee some time would be fine for me. Unfortunately, my office at the time was located in the southeast section of the valley, and Yancy’s was in the northeast; those familiar with Phoenix know that can take almost an hour to drive, so we couldn’t meet during the work day, and she said she probably wouldn’t be able to go dancing because she was a single mother with younger sons to care for; unfortunately, that also kept things from working out for a date before work or immediately after work, so I waited for a better time before asking again.

Since my office was closed the entire week of Thanksgiving, I saw a chance to have lunch with some of the friends I’d met as well as having the chance to hook up with Yancy again.

When I made my second request, I was highly shocked when Yancy made wild accusations about me being an unsafe person and how I didn’t take no for an answer. When I asked her what I did to get this kind of response, she only would say that I would never listen and wouldn’t tell me. Because this disarmed me severely and I was incredibly homesick for Dallas, I decided to go back to Dallas the next weekend and see some old friends.

When I arrived, I hooked up with some really close friends (both men and women) who know me very well, and they also were very confused by this girl’s reaction, so I resolved to see Yancy as the unsafe person she accused me of and, although not the kind of solution I would’ve preferred, chose a special boundary of avoiding her at every opportunity. When she had a party at her house a few weeks later, I even went so far as to go back to Dallas that weekend.

Just as it says in Romans 8:28, God used Yancy’s behavior to help me get over my mounting homesickness by giving me an extra good reason to see my friends in Dallas that I’d been missing so much. Although it is difficult, God has put it on my heart to pray for her so that she will get the healing she needs and so He will protect other men from being maligned by her until the time she gets better.