Faulty male introspection may explain why men so often misinterpret women’s indirect messages to stop or slow down the escalation of sexual intimacy, according to new research. “When she says ‘It’s getting late,’ he may hear ‘So let’s skip the preliminaries,'” the researcher says. “The problem is that he is interpreting what she said by trying to imagine what he would mean — and the only reason he can imagine saying ‘It’s getting late’ while making out is to mean ‘Let’s speed things up.'”