I wouldn't say its a one way thing or something inherent about communities, but there does seem to be a lot of confusion these days on how the dating mechanics and marriage actually work with all of the old "man asks girl out, man pays for dinner" stuff hanging over from the past, and yet contrasted with a culture not of "should we kiss on the first date", but "should we go to bed on the first date"

This contrast is pretty bad in general, especially for men who are outside the usual idea of what men should be, indeed its significant  men are far more common on dating sites etc than women, since generally its far easier for women to be asked and have choice even if those women have a disability, one study I saw stated that in five oout of six marriages where one partner was disabled, it was the woman who had the disability.

In general it seems the only solution to this is pretty much what I did, namely let all the conventions go to hell, make friends with someone and see where that friendship goes and be horrendously, inhumanly lucky enough to meet the right person.

I agree there Dwarfer, actually in some ways school is a bad place to look for relationships generally. I think in an earlier topic someone compared school to prison since its the only time in your life your forced to spend a significant time with a cross section of people who you wouldn't normally have anything in common with, which makes popularity and cliqueiness keys to survival.

This is one reason I'd suggest people go to university, since your far more likely there to meet people who are actually friends of both genders.

I'll also say that I did notice a larger Gender bias in the states, or at least in Pennsylvania where it was sort of expected that most women talked about the doings of other women and got involved in their local churches, while most men would remain pretty silent unless they got into conversation about some of the specific manly things such as sport, hunting or beer. I don't imagine this makes gender relations much harder since hell what do you have to talk to the other person about when you have few to no interests in common? Indeed I wonder if there is some corolary between formality of dating practices and excessive use of gender roles.

fortunately I can tell you in my time I've met girls who are interested in all of the things you mention (my lady herself is quite into cats and books, though less of a computer fan), so its not impossible provided you make female friends and avoid the conventions.

As to kisses, an interesting fact is that hollywood up until the 1950's actually portrayed the idea  forcible kissing, that is where the man grabs the girl and pretty much just pushes his mouth on hers irrispective of  the idea that she's secretly supposed to be enjoying it.
needless to say this is pretty invasive and rather gros if you think about it, and it always annoys me when women are seen doing this in films, tv etc (there is a particularly horrible scene when the 14 year old Selma forceably kisses the ten year old homer in a flashback in a zombie simpsons episode that is just plane disgusting! particularly because its played for laughs).

Its even got its own page on Tv tropes

I can say one piece of advice about kissing, the hole spontaneous hollywood kiss thing is really! not easy to do in real life, or at least it wasn't with my lady and I.
Our first kiss was pretty orchestrated ie in a "I'd like to kiss you" moment, actually doubly amusing given that I brought the subject up and couldn't get the words out and she completed the sentence.

Our second kiss was definitely not! orchestrated though as I was literally holding her in my arms at the time it was a fairly tense situation, ----- actually it was a situation we both had to stop before it went too far too fast, which it rather threatened to do.

We did! have a full blown hollywood kiss at our wedding, indeed the priest remarked that as we'd been singing earlier we'd gone from broadway to hollywood.

These days we kiss on a regular basis, very frequently, but obviously we're also married and as I said, probably one of those couples that everyone either hates, rolls eyes or smiles fondly at .

The gender stereotype rolls can be shown in pretty much anything you read on dating in a formal sense at all, look at Dwarfer's above comments as an example, not to mention the way everything from dating sites, to single's bars to club culture generally tends to work.

i will say that generally more intelligent women tend to ditch these sorts of things and take the initiative more often, which means if you tend to know intelligent women more frequently you'll tend to see the stereotypes less, though that doesn't mean they don't exist. For example I know one girl who actually has quite literally a hit counter and ticks off how many men she's slept with, who just walks into bars and waits until an appealing man asks her, then spends a few nights and when she gets board moves on (she's not a very nice girl).
The sister of a friend of mine also has a completely converse method of finding relationships, whereby she goes to a night club, dances around, takes a man home (since she can almost certainly guarantee to get one), and then the next day decides whether he's actually interesting or not.

Of course neither of these women are particularly stable, and neither are happily married, though equally neither has had trouble finding interest  which proves society is depressing.

its not just psychos who go in for stereotypes though, I know one girl who met her now husband in a bar, and I will say My lady fell badly for the "being asked" business, not so much because she's heavily taken up with that idea, as that she's intrinsically very gentle and so unlikely to put herself forward with things, which also led to her getting mixed up in a couple of less than healthy relationships, one reason why our sort of mutual asking each other was so surprising for both of us.
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Yeah Dark, when we kissed, it was 99% of the time a mutual thing. The first one in fact was something she proposed; I wasn't in fact going to say anything until I knew she wanted to.

I miss Arcades; anyone else miss Arcades?
I mean, sure, they were hard to hear because of all the noise, and I couldn't get as close to the screen as I needed to for the vision I had until right before I lost it, but still!

@cmerry, there is a lot of stuff here, some of which I'm probably not the best person to comment on anyway.
firstly, your correct that adult relationships don't bother about age gaps, my lady is 9 years older than I am, however, the younger one party is, the more the age gap matters.

think of it this way, a five year old and 8 year old kid are in almost different worlds. a 10 and 13 year old might be friends, but there will always be a clear big brother/big sister, where as someone who is 19 and someone who is 22 are far more on an equal footing.

16 is still at the younger age in relationship terms, especially since there is so much paranoia these days about child abuse, ---- admittedly less when  younger party is male, but it's still there.

So, there is a lot of complexity for her at the moment, even more if as you said, she saw you when you were twelve and you behaved in a far less mature fashion.

I'll also say from personal experience, you describe this as "You really feeling something" and as "more than a crush", however bare in mind that unless you actually get an indication of what the other person is feeling, then things will always be of the one sided admiration sort, however deep that admiration is, and unless you discuss matters directly, in person, in real time, it's hard to get that via text message only.

I exchanged casual emails with my lady for a good six months and never realised there was chemistry or attraction until we met in person.
Even after that point, we did everything via long distance phone, and it took  three months of phone calls as friends.

I'm not denying your feelings for her, what I'm questioning is whether those  feelings are one way or indicate an actual connection.

I'm also wondering, you mention "not wanting to seem desperate" however bare in mind women are people too and despite all the "man must ask first" crap, can be equally confused about things, my lady said she had suspicions about the way I felt, but things which to me seemed very blatant, she did not pick up at all, and with all of the business with the age gap etc, it's possible this lady is in an equally confused position and is avoiding the issue, or worse, has found something you said creepy because (as we all know from forum drama), text is not voice, and misunderstandings are possible.

You've done the first thing I'd suggest, just sending a casual message, but depending upon your past history this might or might not result in anything.

if this lady chooses to get back in touch, just chat and be friends for a while (as I've said several times in this topic), then at some point, see if you can have a real time conversation over skype etc, and see what happens.

Lastly, I'm going to say something infuriating. Relax! your sixteen, and everyone at sixteen, women included, has a deep attraction to someone else which doesn't work out.
In my case I was seventeen, and there was far more baggage involved.

You have time, just relax, meet girls casually and treat them as friends,  try to associate with girls with brains, don't be a bastard and things will work out eventually.

If they worked out for me, they'll work out for everyone, and most people don't have my hangups.

sorry, I know it's trite, but having lived it, I can say it's actually true.

Hi.
I’ve had some time to think since last night, and for now I’ve deleted my post. I don’t want it to incriminate me any more than it already might have done. I appreciate the advice though. I came into this hole thing when I was not in a very good place mentally and I wasn’t being entirely rational. My hole life I’ve kind of felt like I’m in the wrong body, and following recent discussions with family we may finally be getting something done about that. My fears of being disowned, of ending up on the streets because of my inability to accept my gender might have caused me, at least in part, to do more than a few stupid things in an effort to make myself feel male. I’ll say more when I know more, but I’m really hoping now my depression may soon come to an end.
FYI, this does not mean my feelings for her weren’t, aren’t genuine, just that I might have over stepped things in my head, and possibly shot myself in the foot in the process.