Blog post 6, How to show interest without being creepy (written by Sarah Sumner)

From time to time, I will reach out to other experts in various fields  to ask if I can repost their articles or research here. This one is from a fellow AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists) member, Sarah Sumner LCSW, licensed in New York and Oregon. Her original blog post is found  here  .  

______

You just had an incredible date. The conversation flowed, you laughed, a few times something real passed between you. You're saying goodbye and you feel the pull. Should I try to kiss them?

And then anxiety kicks in. 

What if I misread the whole thing? What if they think I'm creepy?

So you don't. You go in for the safe hug. You wait for them to make the move. You make yourself small.

And then they don't text back.

Initiating doesn't have to be awkward

I work with a lot of progressive, thoughtful, cis-hetero men who respect women. Guys who would never want to be "that guy," the one who pressures, who doesn't take no for an answer, who makes women uncomfortable. Their intentions are good. But in the effort to be respectful, they've lost access to something essential: the ability to express desire at all.

They can't get from "I like you" to "I want something romantic or sexual with you." That space feels like a minefield.

The most common thing I hear? "I don't want to come off as creepy."

If that worry is real for you, if you're paying attention, listening, caring about how the other person is experiencing this, you're not creepy. You might be misattuned. Those are very different things.

These men have read the articles. They know women field unwanted advances constantly, and they refuse to add to it. So they hold their desire back entirely and wait for an unmistakable green light before they'll move at all. The caution comes from a good place. It also reads as disinterest, which ends the connection before it starts.

The confusion is conflating consideration with complete abdication. There's a middle ground between pushy and invisible, and most respectful men were never taught how to stand in it.

What makes someone creepy

Creepy is when someone has little to no consideration of the context or of the other person's humanity, and asserts their desire onto them anyway.

What characterizes it:

* No consideration of context. Someone yelling at you on the street about how hot you are. That's not a context any romantic or sexual connection could grow out of.

* Assertion of power. They're imposing their desire without inviting a response.

 *No vulnerability. They're not risking rejection, because they're not offering themselves up for consideration. They're just taking.

 *Entitlement. The message underneath: I'm interested, so I get access to you.

Following someone home after they smiled at you. Pushing after someone already said no. "I was nice to you, now you owe me." That's not a misread. That's a violation, and it doesn't belong anywhere near healthy relating.

What misattunement looks like

Misattunement is reading the moment and still expressing desire, with the ability to repair when you miss.

What characterizes it:

Context-aware. You're reading the situation and responding to what fits this relationship at this moment.

Expressing desire. You're making your interest known through some action or words.

Vulnerable. You're risking rejection. There's real uncertainty about how it lands.

Repairable. When you miss, you can name it, apologize, adjust.

You reach for their hand while you're walking and they keep theirs in their pocket. Misattuned, not creepy. You suggest keeping the night going, your place or theirs, and they're ready to call it. Misattuned, not creepy. You lean in for a kiss and they turn it into a hug. Maybe they need more time. Maybe they don't kiss on first dates. Maybe they're just not that into you. Either way, nobody's leaving that date to tell their friends "oh god, it was so creepy, he tried to kiss me."

You’re allowed to make a mistake

You can apologize for making a mistake. It might sound like:"Oh gosh, I thought you wanted to kiss me. I'm so embarrassed. Was I reading that wrong?" Or: "Sorry, I should've asked. Are you good with me holding your hand?"

That's the vulnerable part. Admitting you misread it, letting them see the embarrassment, checking in. It tells them you care how this lands for them, that you can take feedback, that you can be wrong and survive it. Misattunement happens in every relationship that has ever existed. It was never your job to read your partner perfectly in every single moment. Mistakes are important in building intimacy. And they help you be you, and your partner be them.

What happens when you hide your desire

A lot of the hetero-men I work with have folded the vulnerability of expressing desire into some vague, unrepairable offense that's going to exile them from romantic possibility forever. So they don't express it. They make themselves small. They hand off all responsibility for the sexual and romantic energy in the connection.

Here's the problem. When you won't take responsibility for your own desire, all of it lands on her:

She generates all the momentum.

She figures out whether you're even interested.

She carries the weight of escalation.

She never gets to feel clearly wanted or respond to a move, because there is no move. She's making all of it herself.

She can't relax into her own wanting, because she's doing the work for two.

That's fucking exhausting.

It also kills the exact thing a lot of cis hetero women are after. Not passivity. A partner who shows up as an equal. Someone at the table with their own perspective, their own desire, their own pull, who's also curious about hers. When you make yourself small, you're not participating. You're handing her all the power and calling it respect, and it leaves her holding the whole thing alone.

Showing interest without being pushy

Having desire is not offensive. Expressing it is not offensive, as long as you stay considerate of the context and conscious of the power dynamic.

This isn't about ignoring consent. Enthusiastic consent usually builds gradually, and expressing interest, with attunement and responsiveness, is part of how those conversations happen, not something that runs over them.

When you say "I have a want, I'm interested," your partner knows where you stand. They have something real to respond to. They can say yes, no, not yet, or let's talk about it. Here's what that does:

Creates clarity. Your partner knows what you want and can make an informed decision.

Shows you're a whole person. You're bringing your own perspective instead of mirroring back whatever they want.

Lets both of you participate. You each get to put your desire on the table.

Makes you present. Having a want means you're contributing something, not just reacting to what others want from you.

Hiding your desire does the opposite. It breeds confusion, second-guessing, this strange distance where there should be an even exchange of power.

Sometimes the answer is just no

Sometimes you'll put your interest out there and the answer is a flat no. Not "not yet," not "I need to know you better." Just no.

That's not misattunement. That's your partner having their own desires that don't include you, and that's information too. Your job is to receive it with grace. A no doesn't mean you did something wrong or that your desire was inappropriate. You offered something and they're not taking you up on it. Both people get to show up with their truth.

Permission to be misattuned

If fear of being creepy has kept you frozen, here's some relief.

You're probably not creepy. You're being careful in a way that's manufacturing the exact disconnection you're trying to avoid. Misattunement is normal. Nobody reads signals perfectly, every time, ever. What matters is how you move when you miss it.

Your desire is not an imposition. It's information. It's an offering. It's your half of the equation. Your partner gets to do whatever they want with it, and what they do doesn't make your wanting wrong.

So next time the paralysis hits and the thought comes (should I? what if they think I'm creepy?), run it: Am I considering the context? Am I offering this with vulnerability instead of entitlement? Can I handle being wrong and repair it if I've misread the whole thing?

Three yeses and you're not being creepy. You're a person who's showing up. That's what makes the connection you want possible.

A note on boundaries

If any of this is landing as permission to push past someone's discomfort because "misattunement is normal," that's not what this is. Misattunement is normal. Ignoring the feedback about it is where you cross into creepy. The whole point is staying responsive to what you're learning about what your partner wants, not steamrolling toward what you want.

When the Two Most Taboo Research Topics Walk Into a Lab Together

By Dr. JP Thornton | June 2026

Let me paint you a picture. You're at a dinner party, and someone asks what you research. You say "human sexuality." Eyebrows lift. You say "psychedelics." More eyebrows — we're getting into Spock territory now. You say both — and suddenly you're explaining yourself for the next forty-five minutes while someone's Aunt Linda nurses her Chardonnay with quiet concern.

Welcome to my life. And honestly? I think it's the most interesting place in psychology right now.

I came to this intersection by a circuitous route — finance degree, an MBA, a DBA — before eventually landing in psychology research as an APA member who should probably know better than to pick the two subjects most guaranteed to make grant committees nervous. But here's the thing: the science doesn't care about social comfort. And the convergence of psychedelic research and the study of human sexuality is producing some of the most clinically promising, intellectually honest work in behavioral health today.

A Tale of Two Taboos

For decades, both fields operated in the shadows of stigma. Research into human sexuality was largely derailed after the culture wars of the 1970s and 80s — funding dried up, IRBs grew skittish, and the subject became politically radioactive in ways that had nothing to do with scientific merit. Meanwhile, psychedelic research — which had shown genuine clinical promise in the 1950s and 60s — was essentially bulldozed by the War on Drugs, leaving decades of data on the table and a generation of researchers quietly changing the subject when asked what they were really interested in.

The result: two legitimately important areas of human experience, systematically neglected not because the questions weren't worth asking, but because the questions were uncomfortable.

That's changing. Fast.

The Renaissance Is Real

The last decade has seen a genuine, peer-reviewed, FDA-fast-tracked resurgence in psychedelic research. Psilocybin trials at Johns Hopkins and NYU. MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD moving through Phase 3 (check out https://maps.org/advancing-research , a good start) Ketamine already in clinical use. The New England Journal of Medicine is publishing this stuff .

That's not fringe science anymore — that's the main stage.

And researchers are increasingly pointing those tools toward sexual health. MDMA, with its capacity to reduce fear responses and increase interpersonal trust, is being studied as an adjunct treatment for sexual trauma — a population for which existing therapeutic options are often inadequate. Psilocybin's ability to loosen rigid cognitive patterns makes it a candidate for addressing sexual compulsivity, shame-based sexual dysfunction, and even certain paraphilias that are better understood as stuck loops of thought and anxiety than moral failures. The mechanisms that make these compounds interesting for depression and PTSD — neuroplasticity, emotional processing, reduced default-mode-network rigidity — don't magically stop at the bedroom door.

The science is following the biology, which has never been particularly concerned with what makes us uncomfortable at dinner parties.

Why This Intersection Matters

Human sexuality sits at the center of a staggering amount of psychological suffering. Trauma, shame, relational dysfunction, compulsion — these are not niche concerns. And our therapeutic toolkit, while improving, has notable gaps. If psychedelic-assisted approaches can open new windows in that treatment landscape, then studying this convergence isn't prurient — it's responsible.

What I find most exciting is the epistemic humility the moment demands. Both fields require researchers to approach their subjects without the comfort of consensus, to tolerate ambiguity, and to hold complexity. Sexuality isn't simple. Altered states of consciousness aren't simple. Putting them in dialogue forces a kind of rigor that I think makes the science better.

The View from Savannah

I'll admit there's something fitting about doing this work from a city that has made an art form of being simultaneously genteel and deeply weird. Savannah gets it. Some things that look scandalous on the surface are, on closer inspection, just honest.

That's my pitch for this research area. Not that it isn't eyebrow-raising — it absolutely is — but that the eyebrows are the problem, not the questions. 

The questions are overdue.

More to come.

Dr. JP Thornton holds a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA), MBA, and BS in Finance, and is currently pivoting into psychology research with a focus on psychedelic-assisted therapy/ research and human sexuality. He is an American Psychological Association (APA) member and American Board of Sexology member based in Savannah, GA. Aunt Linda remains skeptical.