Why don't guys pick up on the subtle hints?

When you are too shy and self-conscious, you are always thinking and thus impeding the natural flow of conversation, that should not be a means to an end- it should rather be like a rolling gumball, rolling down an alley and picking up extra pieces of gum and becoming bigger. That means you should go with the flow of the convo and expand on things your partner says. Dating is the game we play to learn about our future partner's personality. By being too shy, you come off disinterested and thus are closing off your partner's chances of getting to know you.

I used to be pretty shy, for a guy, but I opened up once I hit college and stopped caring what others though about me. This problem you have now is not just a dating problem, but a much bigger, internal issue, possibly a personality conflict. Are you ashamed of yourself, or do you think you are not good enough, or somehow hold other people in a higher regard? Do you seperate yourself from the "normal" people and strive to be one of them? When you do this you become self-conscious. Eventually, you become so self-absorbed, you only hear 50% of what the other side is saying, and the other half of the time, you are having conflicting thoughts in your head about how they may/may not percieve you. Embrace yourself. Tell yourself you are beautiful, the proof is there, you have men approaching you, and men don't approach ugly girls (hence why there are many single men). You need to learn to stop caring and to just seize the day. When you do, you are laying a foundation for what is to become your identity throughout life.

Remember one thing dear, no one has the same level of patience. Back to my example. The girl I dated probably liked me even after she said no, as I could have imagined nothing I did wrong and I have social and sexual proof as other girls at college like and want me too! But she backed out because she couldn't handle it. She saw her mistake and tried to come back, but it was late, as I took the seeming rejection. While it may take her and you some time to open up, it takes me and many others a few smiles, some exchanged words or jokes to open up. A famous Persian poet (Rumi, I suggest you read his poems, they are very helpful in this area) once said "To seek love is to break down all barriers you have built against it". I see you struggling in this same area.

You can always salvage the situation if you still like the guy, guys are usually more forgiving than women because of their forwardness and things like "it may be awkward, I don't want to look dumb, etc" don't come up in our thoughts. You can just go up to one of your old flames and show interest in them. Talk to them, start a convo. Be sure you do it. This display of interest will surprise them because I'm sure they are used to trying to initiate conversation with you about 90% of the time.

Good luck, you are just a chick spreading her wings and jumping out of the nest for the first time.

Well guys in general are more open and forward where women are more inclined to dropping hints and showing intentions through clandestine ways.Well look dear, you seem to be the victim of miscommunication. I can attest that a large number of society's, even my, failures with certain girls are because of miscommunication. Often times, as you mentioned, the girl likes the guy. She will come off as icy cold, and the guy (guys have been used to rejection more than women cause they put themselves out more and thus get rejected more), takes this coldness as general disinterest and thus, rejection. He will pull out before facing the dreaded four words, let's just be friends.

This lends itself to a nice story of my own recent experience. There was this girl I liked a tad bit. She liked me too, maybe even more than I did her. From the looks she'd give me, the way she'd talk about me to her friends, and the way others would tell me whenever she came to our dorm (somehow, though I never mentioned it, her closest male friends would know of us liking each other and they'd say "hey man, your girls here"...) it was a dead giveaway she liked me. So I asked her out and we went out. The date went well. Afterwards, she said she didn't want to date me and never gave a clear reason. But she keeps trying to open up to me and one night I got with another girl at a party and she got angry and sat in a corner. I had experienced when girls did reject me but liked me a lot and they turned around soon after, but I assumed it wasn't happening with this chick, and I'll tell you why- during our interactions before the date, she seemed very disinterested.

Initially, she couldn't even hold a conversation. Even afterwards and during the date, whatever she said seemed she went through a lot of analyzing and processing before saying it, and it sounded forced and shy at the same time. I knew she was a shy girl, but her shyness came off to me as rudeness, because it was a very self-conscious and rigid shyness. Once we had lunch with some friends and she completely ignored when I tried to talk to her and talked to others. I took offense to that and decided this girl was too much for me. So when the date came around, I didn't see her as more than an opportunity to learn about the fairer sex. She surprised me as she was pretty considerate and compassionate on the date compared to most girls I've dated. She actually gave the date her all, which is what made it good. But in the end, things didn't work out because she came off as disinterested before and after the date. At the party a couple weeks later, she ran up to me and poked me, tried to say hi, but I blew her off before a running conversation started. This is because in an interaction it's highly important not to put up roadblocks (like you are doing) because it makes things awkward in the future.