Nah, it can happen. I tend to look rather gloomy, so I need to remind myself to smile when looking at my wife, otherwise she’ll think I’m angry with her when I’m just thinking about stuff.

There’s also autistic people that have completely different social responses, including not smiling when looking at someone. That doesn’t mean they don’t wanna be friendly.

I’m not saying that’s the case here, and you always have to watch out for abnormal social responses, but if you deem someone safe to approach, talking is simply usually the best way to find out about people.

He hasn’t hit the threshold of emotion necessarily to cause a smile response. Your threshold is so low that you smile just by looking at someone.

Why his smile threshold is where it is can be due to many factors like culture, abuse, trauma, state of being, mental state, social conditioning, etc.

There is a Russian saying that states “A man who smiles without reason is mad(insane).” Give him a reason to smile.

Is he staring at you or just in your general direction. Sometimes I'll just look in a direction and let my mind wander - eyes are open but not seeing anything because I'm in my head. And people who don't smile can have a variety of reasons to do so.

Best thing you can do is ignore it and not dwell. Otherwise, just ask him. He knows best. "Hey, I saw you staring off into the distance, anything on your mind?" or ask him what kind of things he thinks are funny, if anything funny happened to him lately, maybe prefix it with something that you saw or happened to you that you found funny. "I watched COMEDIAN last night. They're my favorite. Do you watch comedy?" or something else.

I just wouldn't be too direct about him not laughing or smiling. It may come off as "smile more princess" and could piss him off - I know it would piss me off. But asking me about stuff that I like and am interested in can get a smile on my face. It could on him too.

Well, it usually means there’s something that makes you stand out to him compared to other people

I do not place meaning on anything like looking at a person. Trying to read into what I am observing or what I see is not going to get you any correct assumptions. Getting my attention is quite easy – just say anything I can reciprocate in kind. It can be as simple as “hey, we should get a coffee together some time.” That avoids any commitments or awkwardness; it serves the ball into his court in a friendly neutral way. I do not think of people in terms of slut. In fact, I view conservativeness as synonymous with ignorance. However, I am not judgmental at all like what you likely imagine. I have strong character ethics, but people are not static at all in my mind. People are statistics in my mental picture of the world. You are a collection of all the encounters I have had with you. In this realm of thought, you can change and so can I. I am very aware of both positive and negative potential, but internally I want to see the best in you and choose to assume so. In other words, I reserve judgement in most cases. My exceptions are dishonesty and violations of loyalty/trust. I do not let these things escape my notice, because I am most susceptible to harm from people that exhibit these behaviors. I value equality, boldness, independent thinking, passion, and depth of self awareness. If you want attention and dress in a way that gets it, I am impressed by your perceptive awareness and objective actions. That does not mean I will pursue you. It actually means I will observe your objectives and actions with curiosity about your awareness, objective goals, and how well you execute them. I will also potentially respect you for that depth, though you are unlikely to hear such a thing directly from me. When I hear some women talking about how someone else is a slut, I hear a bunch of insecure people that are jealous about a person that has more objective self awareness and the confidence to execute upon it instead of timidly molding themselves into a meaningless cultural ritual. I’m weird like that. Don’t assume anyone is like me. This just serves as an example of how different someone’s perspective can be. There are many someone’s out in the wild that are a good match for anyone that goes looking hard enough. The place you go looking is very important as that will center your relationship. The best place to go looking is to volunteer within your community at places like food banks or soup kitchens. These places will change you and put you in contact with good people. In terms of people and normalcy remember this: normal people do not exist. The concept is based on a set of assumptions you have yet to learn to question. If you try to name who you define as truly normal, you will not be able to do so with the depth required to define what normal is because normal is an idealized fantasy that only exists around people we do not know well enough yet. We are all a mess. The hard part is understanding the scope of different messes that can and do exist. We tend to think our mess is unique and the fact that others appear to have our particular mess sorted must mean our messiness is unique. In reality there are dozens of types of messes. Each one has a polar weakness while having other kinds of messes under control to various degrees. Some messes are rather rare and others are more common. This is all largely within neurotypical scope. If one’s mess causes real harm and dysfunction then they may need a little bit of help doing the figurative house cleaning, and there is nothing wrong with that. Learning about messes is important for healthy function. Life is messy, so try not to put too much impetuous on initially exploring someone else’s mess and be open to exploring and engaging with any and everyone. There is a whole lot more out there if one is open to exploring. With that knowledge exploration includes an insulating layer of confidence. If someone is uninterested in exploration with you, so what, their mess was probably a dump anyways. There are lots of dumps, and even some that act as camouflage for gold mines.

You don’t need to understand before you ask. That’s why you ask. To find out.

When I was younger I used to waste a lot of time thinking and wondering about people instead of just making moves. And so I didn’t go out with people, I didn’t get to do a lot of stuff.

Now I just ask people. Sometimes there’s rejection, but that’s okay. Sometimes there’s success, too.

(Written from the perspective of a man. Women are often held to different standards, and some people may take offense to a woman acting independently. Personally, I think those people stink, and you probably don’t want to be involved in someone who’s going to be mad about you using your agency anyway.)

Just a note, 8% of men are colourblind. I have often been told that someone is blushing but can’t tell at all.

I’d say if you make move don’t try to send signals and be more direct if you want a result

Man, I really hope there’s a woman that thinks about me like this, and I’m just too stupid to realize.

Ask if he wants to grab a coffee. Maybe he’s just oblivious.

You only control you and only know your brain and thoughts.

You are allowed to imagine a number of reasons why not to do it :)

Ugh, silly mind games. Ask. Him. Out.