WFT Captain Awkward?

[thedivinegoat]

ETA: jadelennox posted CA's update/correction. Very relieved.

Hello Captain Awkward!

I’m a single woman in her mid-20s and I went to a new dentist, who might be in his late-20s, for an appointment the other day. He was extremely nice and very conversational. At first I thought he was just being nice (or flirting with his assistant – who is also young looking and beautiful).

But then he started asking me about food and restaurants, things I like, how long I plan to live in our state.

Then I saw he didn’t have a ring (which I know isn’t always a clue, but I used it) and so I started wondering, “is there more to his nice-ness?”

What are your thoughts? Was he being professional and nice to his new patient? Was he flirting with me and I have to make the move since it is his place of employment? Was he doing it to be nice around his assistant? Or something else I’m not seeing?

Thank you so much!

Hello and you’re welcome! First question of 2021, nice and gentle, let’s do it.

From what you’ve described, I can’t tell if your dentist was flirting vs. making generally charming chitchat, and he probably has to remove all hand-jewelry during the dentistry, so I think the most important question is: Do you want it to have been flirting, specifically, with you, and would you like to do it some more, with him? Answering those questions truthfully will determine your actions (if any).

If you are interested in him, I think you get one quick internet search to see what pops up in the old relationship status data field and *one* ask: “I really enjoyed talking about getting to know [City] with you the other day. When it’s safe and Covid-restrictions have lifted, what’s the first place I should check out? Any chance you’d like to join me?”

From there, you’ll have more information. “My wife’s favorite place is _________, which you should definitely try. You can tell me how it is at your next appointment!” sends one message.

Someone who comes back to you with carefully tailored recommendations heavy on the candlelight and an enthusiastic “I’d love that, it’s a date!” is telling you something else, especially if he stays in touch informally via text or email. At very least you may have made a charming new friend, and sometimes our charming new friends have single friends or hot brothers or cousins or really cool sisters and female friends who will also like you.

I’d interpret anything in the middle extremely conservatively, a noncommittal “X place is great, I think you’ll love it” recommendation that doesn’t specifically respond to the part where you asked him out is most likely a gentle “no” for dating purposes. If he changes his mind or intended something different, he knows where to find you.

I like this question for many reasons:

I think women who date men should do more of the asking out, in general, and in a world where you can’t guarantee that anyone will like you or like you That Way, refocusing the question on your own desires can be healthy and clarifying. What do you want? What do you want? If you don’t like Dr. Teeth enough to risk the possibility of mild embarrassment at possibly misreading the situation or mild faux pas of crossing professional streams, then you probably don’t like him enough to ask him out, which is a solution that doesn’t require knowing for sure what he intended.
In my quest for a world where people are collectively much better at taking ‘no’ for an answer, I think more asking out should happen sooner, where possible, when the stakes are very low and it’s possible to get a pretty swift read on the situation. I know many readers here are slow-burners who need a lot of time to build up attraction and trust, and that’s valid, and I hope you all happily date each other! <3! But especially once pandemic-safety allows it again, it is absolutely okay to ask people out, be asked out, and actually go on first dates *without knowing for sure* if you want anything to happen with the person beyond a nice time. The longer unspoken assumptions and longings build up, the greater the pressure for a certain outcome, and the harder the subsequent crash if the feelings aren’t returned.
I’m not a big fan of asking people out at their workplace or confusing professional friendliness with something more, but a dentist you see twice a year isn’t the same as a tipped employee who must be friendly to make a living and whose coffee bar you can haunt on the daily. The risks for him making a move on you are relatively high (if he guesses wrong he’s forever “that creepy dentist on Yelp”) but as long as you are 100% cool with taking ‘no’ for an answer, the risks for you are more along the lines of momentary blush and then politely forgetting it ever happened. If he wants to keep it strictly professional, he’ll gently reset the expectations for you, and you will have lost nothing and gained both a good, professional dentist and a few good restaurant recs. I’ve encountered worse odds?

Comments

[liv]

Not cool, Captain Awkward, not cool. I think the dentist's situation really is pretty much like a tipped employee who must be friendly to make a living. Not exactly the same because dentists are better paid and have higher social status, but they still don't deserve to be harassed at work. The friendly chitchat sounds like bedside manner to me. And sure, women should ask men out more in general but nobody of any gender should make inappropriate overtures towards their healthcare provider.

My negative reaction comes partly from having to comfort lots and lots of medical students when their patients made things awkward like this. Outright sexual harassment of young, attractive students is one thing, and I don't want to minimize it but at least it was obviously wrong and inappropriate and there's scripts and procedures for dealing with that. Obliviously mistaking friendliness for flirting is just confusing and horrible, and no, it's not suddenly ok if the target happens to be male.

[jadelennox]

And it's equally horrifying in the reverse. If the dentist was flirting with a patient in the chair, that is the reddest of red flags. It literally took me less than 60 seconds to confirm that this violates the American Dental Association code of ethics. If a medical professional wants to have a relationship with a patient, the overtures need to be outside the medical setting, and they need to recommend an alternate provider to the patient and stop being their provider. What the everloving hell is this nonsense, CA?

[oursin]

Also, if he is a good dentist*, do you want to mess up that by potentially making it awkward? Keep it professional!

*Personally, and perhaps I may put this down to age and where I am at in the life-cycle, I am far more interested in whether a dentist is down with their professional skills than whether they are hot or flirtatious, and consider that the important thing. (Will cop to have had some rather negative dental experiences.)

[lemonsharks]

Same. My dentist is scorching hot but he's also a really good dentist, and even if we, say, matched on a dating app? I would swipe NOPE forever because this man has turned so many root canals into "filling and see what happens" even though he makes less money on those.

[likeaduck]

Tangent theory: I feel like dentistry in itself messes up some people's (read: my) ability to read social cues. Having someone so close in your space and especially in your face for such a long time, especially if they're also smiley and friendly and chatty, feels really intimate in a way that can really confuse your gut about what's going on. Like I feel like part of the confusion prompting the questions could be coming from that feeling of jumping some intimacy boundaries, which is then read as potential flirting. Which mostly puts me way over on the side of assuming he is not flirting, while having some compassion for the confusion.

But I do actually think the confusion about flirting is the part that I'd be interested in addressing with the LW, because getting hung up on "is he flirting" vs. "do I want to be flirting?" or "what are my values around asking people out in their place of work?" or "do I find him charming and attractive or does some part of my brain-body matrix assume I have good reasons to let someone this close to my face, the way we like people more after we do them favours?" or "am I passively waiting for a man to show interest in me without consulting my own desires?" does seem to be missing the point.

[melannen]

I also feel like - in the US at least - there's a weird thing about dentists needing to act friendly, even compared to other doctors. Maybe I'm skewed because I've been going to the same dentist since I was small, so they would probably know me there even if dentists weren't weird, but I don't expect my GP or optician to know me by name and ask after my pets and family and job the way a dentist and dental hygenist do.

(I think, therefore, this question is kind of a red herring - the chit-chat was almost certainly dentistry, not flirting. "It it appropriate to ask out my dentist in a non-pressure-y way" in general is a trickier question, and I don't have an answer to that one. I do think it's different than a barista or so on, because the dentist is usually at least nominally the boss, and I think a flat rule that you can never ask out anyone outside an explicitly social situation is probably too strong? IDK I am aroace as hell, it feels awkward and inappropriate and pressure-y when I get asked out even at a party. The kind of feeling-it-out-without-quite-asking that the Cap mentions is probably the best answer.)

[likeaduck]

Yeah, same, I've (in Canada) had the same experience of cultures of intense chattiness in dental offices and for that reason my read of the LW's description is definitely...dentistry. And I have similar feels about the appropriateness of asking out a dentist. I do think it's different from a tipped employee, and while I'm typically on the "don't ask people out in their place of work" side of things I do allow for exceptions--but I doubt this was an exception-worthy situation.

I am actually wondering if the feeling-it-out vs. directly asking is the best approach. Like, upside, it can give everyone plausible deniability and polite cover--downside, if the person it's directed at does feel like being asked out at work is crossing a boundary, it can leave them in a confused place where they might not feel like they can respond by setting a clear boundary if they want to, for fear of being seen as overreacting. I tend to assume that the chatty friendly dentist has the social skills and comfort to navigate that smoothly and feel in control, but I don't know if I would generalize the approach. And it differs from CA's usual advice, which tends to be to ask people out on clear dates so if they want to clearly say no they can.

[lemonsharks]

You also spend anywhere from 30 minutes to N hours with your dentist each visit, whereas other HCPs are scheduled to the 15 minute bloc. And as you said, other HCPs aren't poking around in your mouth while staring in rapt concentration at your face (which is where your mouth is.)

It creates a weird artificial intimacy which is why the ADA and other professional orgs have serious consequences for

Maybe if you find out you know your dentist from Pseud Space? Or even name space if they're a John Smith or a Jin Kim who (and you had no idea that the new dentist was YOUR John Smith or Jin Kim) you could bring up in a non-professional space (text, facebook) after the first visit that you would rather be their friend than their patient? MAYBE?

But even then I'm leaning on the side of NOPE, you have been HCP-zoned by professional ethics, please deal with your feels somewhere else.

[likeaduck]

I mean the thing is, unless you already know them pretty well (like maybe well enough that they shouldn't be your provider anyway) from elsewhere, the odds of you having a connection strong enough to make having to take the winding road around/through professional/patient guidelines to something halfway ethical worthwhile seem slim at best. So just, why even?

[lemonsharks]

Well said. That's what I was trying to get at.

[jadelennox]

Oh yay she has fixed.

Edited To Add/Remove: I have been completely corrected on this one and I’m replacing my answer with corrections from readers.

I was wrong. I do think women should ask men out more, and I got kind of caught up in the “instead of trying to parse out a dude’s hints forever you could ask and know?” part of the question, but let us not look for excuses to cross the streams of professional courtesy and romantic attraction. This was a complete flop on my part, and I am deeply sorry.

[liv]

Oh, what a relief. And I thought 'K's gentle correction to CA was really excellent. They so clearly explain why you shouldn't flirt with or ask out your healthcare provider. Much kudos.

[mommy]

That's much better. Thank you for sharing!

[frenzy]

Oh glad to read this.

[lannamichaels]

This one is so bizarre. The dentist should not date you; you are a patient and they are a medical provider.

[sporky_rat]

I spent too much time as a patient at the dental school to really ever be aware of my dentist's social activities while dealing with my teeth.

Theh were learning and being awkward and I think I assume, deep down, that they're all awkward and trying to break the ice.

(it does not work that way with everyone.)