What makes a woman "creepy?"

A lot of behaviors that get called "creepy" when done by a man are labeled "crazy" when done by a woman. I suppose the difference is that men don't feel threatened by this stuff as often, or they're trying to dismiss the woman. This is all semantics and weird gender stereotyping, so it's up for debate and not entirely relevant to this question and not worth a derail. (I would advise against googling "crazy woman" in an attempt to learn anything useful; I have a feeling that would only lead to trouble.) What is relevant is that the type of behavior we label "creepy" when done by a man is just as inappropriate and discomforting when it comes from a woman - and women do these things too. I don't have any articles for you, but here are a couple quick and dirty guidelines to figure out whether you're acting inappropriately around another person: - Are you refusing to take no for an answer? Do you try to argue or persuade for a "yes," or do you ignore them and assume they will change their mind later? - Do you find yourself trying different tactics in order to get the response you want? - Do you "test" the other person, i.e. do you do or say certain things with the intent of seeing if the other person will act a certain way? - When you're around this person or trying to be around this person, do you neglect to take their feelings into account? - Do you refuse to compromise when you don't see a direct benefit to you? Do you accommodate the other person thinking they will "owe" you or that it will give you leverage to get something you want later? - Do you do anything without their knowledge or consent because you know it would make them uncomfortable? That's just a general, partial list. The good news is creepiness/inappropriateness is a set of behaviors, not a personality trait, and therefore it can be changed with awareness and effort. Anxiety can be helped, too, and getting help for the anxiety and feeling more self-confident and secure about relating to other people will help you act appropriately. I've been the "crazy ex" before, many years ago, and I'm not proud of that, but I learned and I changed. You can too.

I will respond totally differently! I think that the discourse of "creepy", like the discourse of "fedoras", has become so formalized, crystallized and formulaic that it is no longer a useful thing to talk about in this type of situation. (As in, situations where people are saying "am I accidentally being creepy" or "I am really awkward and I did this thing and it went bad, what do you think") Right now, "creepy" is so laden with moralizing, shame and a bunch of internet cliches (push a button and we all say "entitled", "boundaries" "break up") that...it just doesn't help. Like, in what way does it help you to set up some rules in your head around "being creepy is bad, must do THING to avoid being creepy because creepy people are bad and no one likes them"? Basically, I think that a new idea ("creepy", "entitled", etc) comes into a discourse and it's really powerful when it's new and needed. But eventually it gets old and worn and people use it to describe everything, and it acquires baggage, and it obscures things rather than clarifies them. (That is why, for example, in my lifetime when people have been trying to describe 'being against racism in a useful way' language has shifted from "anti-racist" to "ally" to "opposing white supremacy" with a bunch of stops on the way...each of those words has been really useful; each gets worn out.) I also think that there's a huge amount of moralizing language around anxiety, mostly from people who do not suffer it in an acute form. When you say that you have to do something if it makes you anxious, I know exactly what you mean. There were times when I was much younger when I either had to do something or cut my arms, it was that intense. That's not a matter of "am I creepy". I would suggest that you seek out a way to frame things that is compassionate toward yourself and that is outcomes-based, not definition-based. "I am feeling so much anxiety, I am afraid I am going to do something that will upset [person] because I am so anxious". "I want to manage my anxiety because I don't want to feel this way" "I want to be able to trust [person], not be in the grip of my anxiety". Think about specific behaviors that you have, not your motives. I truly believe that intent does count (because it always counts with me!) but it's not very useful here. You call people for reassurance - or whatever - more often or more intensely than is fair...How can you dial that back? What can you do differently so that you're not tempted to look at someone's email? What can you do when you're tempted to break up with your boyfriend for anxiety reasons? Can you write a letter and put it aside instead? It does not matter if you engage in "creepy" behavior on some abstract scale of creepiness; it matters how your particular social life works, how your friends feel, how you feel. For example, in college I was super anxious. I wish I had not put some of my friends through some of the bullshit that I did. But I also had awesome friends, and they had great times with me - I brought something to the table. We often talk as if someone being anxious/creepy/"crazy" is ipso facto a reason for people to deep six them unless they Change Right Away One Hundred Percent, You Creeper, when actually most of us who are anxious just have a few crappy behaviors that our friends would love it if we stopped because things would be even more fun.

To me, creepy = entitlement and a severe lack of empathy. Someone who thinks their needs, emotions, thoughts, and actions are so much more important than everyone else's that they don't need to even consider other people. Usually, their own actions would not be acceptable to them if someone else acted like the same way on a much smaller scale (so, the "creepy" person persistently talking to someone "hot" who is not interested in them, but acting completely offended when someone "not-hot" expresses interest in them by talking to them)

I think that what makes that kind of persistence get described as "creepy" in men has a lot to do with how society has constructed things differently for men and women. So the behavior you see described as "creepy" in men may be called something else in women, like "obsessive", maybe - which may be why you're not finding anything about it by looking for "creepy" and "women". I would focus on the anxiety itself, as it sounds like that will take care of the behavior itself, and then it won't matter anymore whether it's being called creepy, or obsessive, or anything.

I second the above sentiment that 'creepy' frequently has a connotation of entitlement - it's "I have a right to this person's attention/affection/body, and I will act like they are unfairly depriving me of that right if thy disagree". Or (and often overlapping with this) it's a way of saying "this person is tripping my 'not safe' alarm in a way that I can't quite put my finger on, but makes me very uncomfortable to be around them." There's an implied threat there, beyond just "this person is acting in a way I don't like." So it's worth making sure nobody around you feels threatened by the way you interact with them, whether or not you call that 'creepy'. But, honestly, I suspect you already knew that. You don't come across as someone who doesn't care about the feelings, boundaries and autonomy of others. You come across as someone who cares very deeply about respecting those, to a point where you are willing to judge yourself very harshly, and very unfairly, for any time when it seems like you're putting your thoughts and wishes ahead of someone else's - even if that someone else is being totally unreasonable, or even if that someone else exists nowhere else but your imagination. Take the example of your boyfriend. As you outline it, your boyfriend is looking around on online dating sites; you have checked up on this several times, and found something incriminating every time; and you have confronted him about it, and broken up with him over it. And your reading of this is that you're the one in the wrong, because you might have hurt your boyfriend's feelings! This is not evidence that you are in any way creepy. This is your anxiety beating you up. This is the exact opposite of you acting like someone's feelings and boundaries matter less than yours - this is you acting like your feelings and boundaries don't matter, can't matter, because any time they conflict with someone else's you must by definition be the one in the wrong. You're worried about what strangers on AskMe might think of your behaviour, based on what they've said about some other stranger's behaviour in a question about some other circumstances. You're worried some people might think you are posting AskMe 'too much', despite knowing that you're not trying to violate the 7-day limit on posting questions. And it's not even "this other poster, whose judgement I really respect, might think..." - it's "some other person, whose judgement must be better than mine because they're not me, might think..." You say you didn't realise until now how not ok some of your behaviour has been. I would suggest instead that what's really, really not ok is letting your anxiety run roughshod over your self-respect, your happiness and your life in general. You deserve better than this.

I have an anxiety disorder and I frequently say or do things I feel *might* be inappropriate, but I do it anyway because I'm so used to pushing myself through anxiety (another person touched on this in that other thread as well, but I can't find the post.) I even have a rule that if something makes me anxious I *have* to do it. Therapy is really your only solution here, but in the meantime, I can tell you what helped me out a bit: my advice would be to learn to identify which behaviors your anxiety is pushing you towards, and which behaviors it is pushing you away from. Try to compensate for disordered thinking, in other words. In other words, ask yourself: Is this anxiety making this a compulsion, or an avoidance? So me, for example. I deal with ADHD in my day to day life. For the most part, I have a pretty good handle on it when medicated. When not medicated (there was that shortage in 2011), there starts to be an emotional component to it - I get unreasonably anxious, and impulse control becomes hard. That's when bad behaviors start to emerge. So that's where I'm speaking from here. What I started to notice was that I never had to push myself through anxiety when it was telling me to do unhealthy things. If I felt compelled to snoop, or check up on someone, or text or call someone more than was necessary, I found that I was doing it to assuage anxiety. What I was pushing through was not anxiety but reason. It was a compulsion. If I felt like I didn't want to be around people, or I couldn't handle talking to someone, or I didn't want to get out of bed or whatever, I found that anxiety was pushing me away from these things which were healthy behaviors. It was an avoidance. I promise you that when you snoop, you're doing it because it momentarily soothes that angry buzzing in your chest (until you find something that sets it off, which you will, because that's how snooping works), whether you realize it or not. I have always found that when you deal with an unreasonable amount of anxiety, the really unhealthy behaviors (saying things you shouldn't, etc) actually feel kind of effortless. What helped me, as much as anything, was becoming determined to starve the Anxiety Monster to death. The less you feed it, the easier it becomes to not feed it. As far as being socially awkward...I don't know. I was a late bloomer and I spent years of my life being pretty cringeworthy. I am now someone who's able to turn on the charm when I want to, situation depending, and I think that only came from just spending time around people and observing how they interact with each other. Paying attention to the people who seemed to be having the most fun. Seeing what they had in common, what they were doing that seemed to be charming to others. It's a process. I agree that creepy seems to be used to describe men more than women, but it's definitely not a strictly gendered thing - I've known women whom I (and others) would describe as creepy. The problem with it is that it's qualitative. It can't be quantified easily. Sometimes it's a definitive list of Things That Person Did Which Were Wrong, sure, but sometimes there's just something off-putting about their manner which is impossible to explain but you know it when you see it. So maybe just go to more parties and spend more time observing. Do more listening than talking. Speaking of, here's one more thing that jumped out at me: I tend to get told I'm making excuses a lot and I never understood why until that; I explain why I did things to other people because I like to know why other people do things. I hate receiving apologies with no explanation of "why," and I always thought it was universal. I get the impression that you're someone who lives in their own head a lot. Which is fine, that's how some people are, and there's nothing wrong with that. But you may find it massively helpful to try to cultivate the habit of taking your cues from other people when dealing with other people. I don't just mean when explaining things to others - it's just what made me think of that. Pay attention to cues other people are giving you, pretty much. Again, this is something you're going to need to work on with a therapist. The good news is that if you're even at the point where you're able to ask this question, you're in a good position to make some progress once you get there. But you have to get there. This won't be especially easy, and it'll take time and effort, but you can do it. Good luck.

Creepy is when you suspect their intentions aren't for your safety & well-being. Their actions are innocuous in and of themselves, but you just get this feeling like they're playing a different game here. They want something from you & they're trying to manipulate to get it. So they didn't 'just' give you flowers or 'just' try to chat you up & say hi, they're trying to lead you somewhere and that somewhere ain't good. You don't sound creepy, just emotionally immature & impulsive. To that end, I would google around about emotional maturity and how to handle strong emotions.

Nthing the people who've mentioned the creepy/crazy gender breakdown. I'd also like to chime in with something Dan Savage has often brought up, which is "good judgment"... he says that it's sometimes not someone's behavior ITSELF that's the problem, but the fact that their actions demonstrate bad judgment. I've found that relying on this metric is sometimes easier than analyzing individual actions... in other words, rather than asking myself "should I call my ex for a 10,000th unsolicited time?", I'll ask myself "would a person DISPLAYING GOOD JUDGMENT necessarily act the way I'm acting?"

It seems to me that you were in a relationship that was guaranteed to trip all of your anxieites. You actually sought out the drama in sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. This reinforced your justification for the soothing/snooping that you were doing. So yes, you need to corral the anxiety, and rather than feed it, you need to learn to disspate it in a healthy manner that doesn't compromise the privacy of your partner. These are things one learns in therapy. I take medication for anxiety and it helps an awful lot. If you don't, explore the possibility with your GP. Anxiety is horrible, I get it, and I am so much more mellow and happy when I'm not trying to control the entire world.