Flirting - fun or fear filled?

Many people recognise that they struggle to flirt.  They feel awkward and may even stop trying as they don’t feel that there is any chance of improving.  Most people look at the surface and say something like “I can flirt with guys so easily, but I can’t with girls” or the more generalised, distanced stance, “Men are so much easier to flirt with than girls”.  Even on the surface, there can be a distinction between how your skills change depending on circumstance eg. “I can flirt when I’m tipsy, but no way when I’m sober”

For those who enjoy analysis, these statements could be broken into “I have the skills to show interest to cis-males who respond to me in a way I recognise easily.  However, I don’t know how to show interest to cis-females or even to recognise when they are showing interest back at me” OR

“When I’m sober, I am much more aware of feeling silly, embarrassed or rejected, which influences my decision to keep to myself and not show interest in people I like.  When I’m tipsy, I feel less restricted and take things much less personally, this makes it easier for me to interact with others”

Thinking of things in this expansive way, highlights your choice as well as the skills you have or do not have.  It may not feel as easy or good as the generalised statements. However, you are more likely to grow or make necessary shifts by stating things more accurately.

In conversation and across online group chats, these broad sentences are often repeated and met with sympathy or agreement that indeed, yes! It is hard to find and date people.  If you sit back for a moment, and leave the dating sphere, you will actually notice that there are many social statements just like these across other areas.  In sports, study or career paths or even family dynamics, they are many statements oft stated, oft accepted and then repeated.  It used to be, well, it still can be a way of finding common ground about a community, race or sexual preference.  Personally, I am not against finding agreement.  In a group, agreement can give you a marvellous sense of cohesion, connection and comradery however, scripts and repeated, unquestioned statements can over time, limit growth and contribute to an acceptable laziness within yourself, or within your world. 

Sometimes through a major world event or a family drama, these statements and beliefs and conclusions are shattered or dissolved.  However, more frequently it will be when this accepted statement is more agitating than assuring, that it means a new truth or new space is trying to break through.  Rather like cutting teeth, it isn’t usually pain free but once introduced, is more useful than what was there beforehand. 

I’m sure you could think of a hundred social statements which were once heard frequently and with little question, here are just a few examples “Boys are better at sport”, “The more they push you away, the more they want it” and “Smoking is cool”.  Think of any category, from health to marriage to cooking meat the right way and there will have been a belief which was held, maintained and then had to be adjusted as we gained more knowledge, social dynamics changed and humankind evolved.

If you really want to become better at something, which you feel you are not good at.  Collect up the statements, conclusions and any beliefs that you are aware of, and put them into a box.  Do this every time one pops up.  Don’t worry about dissolving each one or trying to ‘work through’ each one and work out where they came from.  In order to improve, spending time in the past and pondering reflections won’t work anywhere near as quickly or effectively as stepping into the present moment and creating a future focus.  So – lets get back to flirting.  Scoop up “I’m not good at flirting”, “Boys are so much easier to flirt with than girls”, “Flirts are just a tease” … and expand them into more useful form such as “I’m confident flirting with ____”, “I want to become more confident showing an interest in _____” or “Flirting is a skill I really want to get better at”

While doing this, take a moment to consciously step away from measuring and calculating results.  You can come back to this later, if you wish.  Results are best checked after you have become stronger at something, and when you wish to compare one point in time with another.  Due to our inner impatience and also, our desire to protect ourselves from yukki feelings, we sometimes bring results in as a reason to stop doing something.  “Oh, no, I fell off the bike twice today as I turned a corner – I’m hopeless at bike riding.  Not doing that again”.  Give it a few days, a few weeks or years and you’ll hear that adult saying “Oh, no, I’m hopeless at bike riding – cars are my thing”.  Rather than taking responsibility for the choice to stop, because you just didn't want to keep learning (and falling), it is easier to create a personal generalisation.  

Flirting, just like bike riding, can improve when practiced.  If you focus on collecting information about yourself, your motivators and the things that demotivate you.  Focus on acting with an intention of passing a message of interest to others, while checking if that person has an interest in you and then improving the process of delivery, timing and learning the tools that work well for you, you just might end up getting better because you persist. 

What you are already good at, doesn’t need more work. Most people are already pretty practiced and judgemental of their failure and success.  People often guage whether they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at something based on how successful they have been.   You will notice elite athletes like basketballers or golfers, still miss shots and fail regularly.  The difference between them and any other athlete is that they are usually prepared to keep failing, in order to get that goal and they focus a lot on the process along the way.  Elite footballers will do martial arts, mindfulness activities, swim and weights training all for the sake of improving their football game.  Most human relational skills actually call on a similarity breadth of strengthening and experience in order to improve.  

Flirting means knowing how to do a whole heap of things better.  Getting the interest of another person is not really that hard – just jump on a table, do a dramatic yodel, lift your leg as high as your can and then pick your nose and eat it.  VOILA! You’ll have many people’s attention and maybe even their interest and curiosity.  Some will be impressed, others disgusted.  Someone may even want to sleep with you and another person may become an online stalker.  The only measure of success is whether or not it achieved what you were looking for.  And it may have missed the mark completely.  For sexual attention, grabbing someones hand and putting it onto a private part may get you that result.  

Neither of these two above examples would be categorised as flirting because two of the key features of flirting is subtlely and timing.  Sending out a message of interest in someone, while exposing just a little of yourself in order to determine whether that person may have an interest in getting to know you. This is flirting.  

When flirting becomes too obvious and showy, it can almost lose its place.  In language, we may still say ‘s/he was obviously flirting with the new employee in the staff room’ .. and for some people, just this shift in intensity and openness, may be enough to lose rather than gain interest.  Overt vs subtle.  Physical vs verbal.  Submissive vs dominant.  All choices, all take practice and all are mastered with practice while being able to cope and respond to the unexpected, uninvited and unwanted parts that arise.  

Whatever you do more of you will get better at.  Check, are you getting better at what you want or are you simply doing more of what you are comfortable with, but not moving in the direction that brings out your best self?

Take a moment to recognise how you do ‘new stuff’.  Are you someone who learns more and likes the thrill of excitement and challenge and that pushes you through the discomfort and unfamiliarity of change?  Or are you someone who prefers things to be quiet, private and studious so as to gain a level of confidence in private?  Regardless of which path you prefer, anything that is new, unfamiliar  will bring out feelings of discomfort, embarrassment and vulnerability.  

Take a moment to look at the reality of this across your life.  This isn’t something which applies just for flirting, it is true for many things like cooking your first meal for the family or riding your bike on the road for the first time.  As soon as you add an interactive layer, the difficulty level increases a hundred fold.  You can be the best goal shooter or kicker on the planet when you play by yourself or with your supportive friend.  Getting goals from the left, the right, near and even from a huge and impressive distance but the moment you have an audience, you can be left wondering what on earth you actually can do.   You may be the best cook ever when you had a chance to buy all the ingredients, prep in your time and with no other pressures and serve when you were ready BUT having a meal ready for 8 people, while making sure the table is set, drinks are all prepared and WHAT?!?!  The garlic bread wasn’t put in the oven 10 mins ago!!!! The baby needs a nappy change now and no one else wants to do it?!?! This doesn’t make you a bad cook – it makes you someone who is now doing more than just cooking AND is aware of the significance of good vs poor timing.  An audience, a critic, a cheerleader or just an expressive and loud distraction in the group can be enough to show you that your skills are not as you thought.  You may have skills which are not stable when brought out in public.  There is no problem with this, it is only a problem when you find yourself in new environments and call on a skill you thought you had, only to feel or see it completely disintegrate in effectiveness. Yes, that can be demoralising, however if you really want to get better at something, you'll just get right back to it.

At a very basic level, flirting is the skill of doing something which shows another person you are interested in getting to know them in a slightly more than friendship kind of way.  For some people flirting has a physical and sexual direction, but for many people it is just about indicating an interest in a relationship of sorts.  At this level, the flirting might be in your imagination or by making contact or conscious connection with a person more than you would normally interact.  It may be that you consider being more playful, more interactive or more verbally or physically suggestive … and at this level, whether or not the message is received can be hard to tell.  This is kind of a practice space, it can still feel a bit fun and might expose vulnerabilities, but there is not a high risk of rejection.  In fact, the message of interest (physical, sexual or relational) may not even reach the other person.  It may just be received as a ‘usual’ and friendly interaction which has nothing special about it except that it is ‘nice’. 

I will add that it is at this level that the many human behaviours which are subconscious and come through when a person looks/finds another person they want to relate with more, will come through.  There are many articles and studies done about this, so I won’t even attempt to write a summary here, but it can be useful to be aware of your natural displays of interest in other people.  You may find you stand straighter, curl your hair around your finger, bite your lower lip, look for eye contact and then either glance away OR nod upwards, avoid eye contact but try to gain side arm contact … so many approaches, and only you will know which one is your way of saying “Hey, I’m interested in you”.  It may be as simple as you actually listen to what that person is saying, when you know that you really can’t be bothered with that when it comes to long term partners or most other people. 

As flirting can happen online as well, you may want to take a moment to work out what your written or online interactive style is too.  It will not be the same as the approach you take online.  Most importantly, it may not even convert neatly from online to reality.  Which is why some people start to feel as though ‘they can’t do it’ in real life .. as timing, holding space and intention becomes a lot more exposed in real life interaction.  Online, there is the advantage of more timing and space to breathe between responses and interactions.  It becomes very easy, and fun to send a gif or a picture or a meme, using someone elses joke to help communicate what you would find tricky to do yourself.  There is a layer of safety which can help you feel more comfortable to be yourself.  In real time, there are so many more cues to be aware of, and it becomes this that gets in the way of committing to flirting. It is your commitment to flirting which will leave most people feeling awkward, flat and cautious.

Once you take away the layers of protection and safety AND put to the side the results focus, there is really only thing that will help you become better at flirting.  

Focus.  Flirting takes focus.  Often there is a person who is your focal point and then there is the focus on getting your message across, while not being derailed by emotions such as self doubt, embarrassment and feeling silly. 

Expressing an interest in someone while trying to establish whether they have an interest in you, takes courage, consistency and confidence.  At the least, an illusion and the practice of these elements, will lead you to best getting a message across.  At best, feeling these will allow you to enjoy the process regardless of outcome.  Giving you a chance to laugh at yourself (kindly), improve with practice and eventually, gain strength in understanding yourself and whether you actually wanted that persons interest or simply wanted to see that you could gain that persons interest. 

If you need results to feel more confident – then it is possible to flirt, express interest in others, with no other purpose than to see whether another person will be responsive to you.  Needless to say (but I’m saying it anyway), as you accumulate data in the form of success or failure, you are communicating to others who you are.  Not everyone will be impressed with success focused personalities, especially when it comes to human interactions.  Then again, this may not be your concern.

If you need to feel less awkward – then it is possible to practice flirting, showing people you are interested in them, using different approaches until you find the way that is most comfortable for you.  Don’t forget, every coin has a flip side.  If you approach flirting one-style, don’t be surprised if that attracts the attention and gains the interest of a one-type of personality. 

Have you ever met someone who, in your eyes, is just the best ever master flirter?  Did you want to be like them?  Do they have a single strong relationship? Or several great relationships? Are they popular in your eyes? Confident?  Or just subtle and strong?  Take a moment to check why flirting has become important for you to learn.   I know people who are both, single or happily in relationship/s, who can express interest in others well and not feel like they need to recuperate for a week, after missing out on a positive response from someone they were focused on.  However, I also know incredible people, either single or happily in relationship/s, who either don’t flirt, don’t worry about flirting or I have never seen flirt.  I don’t think of them as being any less or more than any other person. I know some people who will flirt as a way of distracting from the tension or discomfort of social settings and because it gives them responses (both positive and negative) that they are comfortable and familiar with, and don’t have to worry about reflecting upon.  Just like a person who takes on a ‘joker’ hat or becomes the ‘entertainer’, being ‘a flirt’ can be as much a role and a cover, as anything else.   

As with any other incredible skill in life, (horseriding comes to mind) flirting isn’t an essential one.  If the only reason the idea of flirting comes up in your life, is because you are looking to subtly guage whether another person is interested in you, while expressing interest in them – maybe flirting isn’t the answer.

If I was happy at home and caught public transport when I needed or walked, and the only time I considered learning to drive was when I wanted to visit a friend in Cooberpedy (Regional Australia, hard to visit without driving) … well, then driving isn’t really my interest.  Wanting to visit a friend is my motivator.  I do not have to learn to drive to travel there.  I do not have to get my licence or buy a car, all I need to do is work out a way which works for me.  I might pay someone else to drive me or catch a bus.  I might look for travel-share options of people looking for companions on their drive outback and share the cost of petrol.  I may even just ask them whether they like the option of visiting Adelaide, and help make that happen instead.  So too with flirting, if the only time you notice that you lack the skills to get other peoples interest while conveying your own interest, is when you are wanting to date again or meet new people and start new relationships, well, perhaps another way of doing this will be just as good.  For me, if I am really interested in someone, I just chat to them and at some point I tell them directly that I like them or that they have gained my interest.  At some point, I may ask a question to find out whether they have space in their life for getting to know someone new or I may simply share about the space in my life, and let them know that I would welcome them stepping into it a little more frequently. 

I can flirt.  I have the skills to flirt and when I was younger and working on not taking things personally, acting in confidence and decreasing worry while increasing enjoyment, flirting was something I would engage in, honestly, ethically and because I had the time to be around people in social environments.  These days, my environment is more home and family focused.  I am social however am rarely looking to ‘pick up’ or develop relationships further when I am in celebratory or other social environments.  I focus on being myself in the event I connect with someone in friendship, and to enjoy the moment I am in for what life sparkles it presents.  If I have an interest in someone, I will usually let them know and in turn, I will open up space for that person to feel welcome to step closer while still feeling accepted if they stay where they are or even, move away.