The Art of Flirting – Do You NEED To Study?
October 6, 2008 by Lara Kulpa
Filed under Relationships
Image by creativeFlutter
AKA MazerDesign via FlickrI’m not a huge fan of the site AskMen.com – all too often it comes off as ignorant arrogance to me. But I do like to read the stuff once in a while just to see what kind of crap they’re pushing out there… in this case, it’s telling men how to notice 10 signs that a woman is flirting.
I’ve been told on many ocassions that I’m a “natural flirt”. Unfortunately (sometimes) this attracts natural flirts of the opposite sex who have no intentions, they just flirt without realizing it. Or they misunderstand me, and think I’m interested (regardless whether they are or not, or I am or not) and react accordingly based on their interest (or lack thereof).
Personally, I don’t think that conscious flirting is really necessary. I think if as a woman, you’re attracted to a man, and you’re confident in who you are, then the whole thing comes so naturally that you don’t have to think about it. You can let a man know you’re interested without concentrating on it or trying too hard (which can often come off really, really badly).
AskMen focuses on silly things like “She draws attention to her mouth,” and that just tells me that they’re playing into the fantasies men have. You’re either an orally fixated person or you’re not. Personally, I’d change this one around to say, “She focuses on your mouth when you’re talking.” I say this because despite how much I consciously try to focus on a man’s eyes when I’m attracted to him and he’s talking to me, my gaze always fixates on his lips. Shoot, I just gave it away, didn’t I? 
In any event, like I said, I don’t really believe in trying to concentrate so hard on flirting. Likely because it’s just something that naturally happens with me, but moreso because I think that trying too hard to do anything is just bad.
- Be comfortable in your own skin (and, in your fabulous outfit).
- Be confident in WHO you are.
- Smile.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s ALL you need to know. 
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=dbe6316d-15da-4cad-9e4b-1e65ea298b7f)
I’m not a good flirt. My sister, she’s more of the natural flirt variety. I think I might have been better at it when I was younger. Sadly, I might just be the one person who does need to study. ;D
Okay, now that I’ve read the article I can make a better comment………
Seriously, I think that they have covered just about anything a woman might do unintentionally, just by being a friendly person in the same room with a man.
Getting in the personal space is one thing, but I was so not flirting with Mrs. Kessler today when I made eye contact, smiled at her, and touched her arm as I related something funny that a student from her class did at recess.
According to this article, I did a few more, I walked by her, I mimicked her body language, etc. I sure hope I didn’t freak the poor woman out. ;D I may be a natural flirt after all.
Hmm, I definitely disagree with some things you’ve said. You focused a lot on specifics to how you work and what you like. Which is fine, but what advice do you have for everyone who flirting does *not* come naturally to?
Your perspective also seems very female centric – if you put yourself in a man’s shoes, what do you think would be different? For one, how would it make a guy feel to get his hopes raised by a woman who just naturally flirts with everyone? You also said you can let a man know you’re interested without trying too hard. Really? Consider how *bad* men are at picking up subtle signals and reading women. Sometimes the ability to be more overt (but still in a classy way) could be helpful. Also, you may be right that a *woman* doesn’t really need to flirt, but that’s because they are the ones that are pursued in our society. If you are an attractive and fun woman, you will automatically have guys courting you and doing the “leg work” so to speak. For men on the other hand, they often *do* need to know how to flirt.
I’m actually reading a book on flirting now and they mentioned in the Victorian era flirting was very explicit, out in the open, and followed a detailed set of rules (ex, a woman resting her fan on her right cheek indicated yes, left cheek indicated no). I’d almost like that better than the ambiguous flirting we have today.
Conscious flirting doesn’t mean you have to do it in an awkward way, it just means that you are selective and don’t indiscriminately flirt with people you are not interested in. Some of this depends on how overt and persistent it is I guess – light flirting while making small talk is perfectly fine. But the “natural flirt” is a person I would avoid like the plague. I once had a friend who gave me a lot of classic flirting signs (touching my arm or leg, entering personal space, setting up 1-on-1 outings) and I fell for her pretty hard. Then when I finally told her I liked her and I thought she was interested too, she looked at me like I had four eyes and cut off our friendship permanently. So yeah, maybe she was just a whack, but I use that as an example of why the “natural flirt” who flirts with all her or his friends can be very frustrating if they are not explicit that they don’t want anything more than friendship.
Patrick, I really appreciate reading your point of view.
Believe me, not once in my entire life has a guy “friend” mistaken me for being interested if I wasn’t. In fact, there have been times when I’ve been interested in a male friend and had to flat out sit him down and tell him. And then I was the one to get rejected. Fortunately, unlike your female friend, guys tend to not care so much about ending a friendship by telling a woman they’re not interested. Why that is, I’m not sure, but for the most part, they all remained friends of mine and all was good.
I think women freak out too much over a LOT of things, to be honest with ya!
When I say “natural flirt” I don’t mean it in that adolescent way that’s described in the article I referred to either. It’s more like I just have a way of making men feel comfortable and like they don’t have to put on an act to impress me. It’s that I laugh naturally, converse freely, and don’t look down my nose at them until they’ve said something funny. It’s that I might hug them within an hour of meeting them because I loved something they said, or I’ll slip my arm through his while we’re standing in a crowd of mutual friends. (No, I wouldn’t hug him or do this on a first date if I hadn’t done it previously…)
I don’t know, Patrick… I just don’t think about it. That’s what I was getting at here. I don’t think men should really think too much about it either. Most often when they do, they wind up coming off as desperate for a hookup or something, I don’t know.
Just be yourself… plain and simple. Be the best, most shiniest you that you can be. I don’t know about other women, but I’ve got a fantastic bullshit detector and it prevents otherwise nice men from getting close to me when they put on an act.
I think flirting is the easy part. It has no emotional attachment and is all surface.
I agree, though that a person should be themselves. If a girl only likes a guy for a friend then she should not mislead him with flirting. That is giving off the wrong signals and like in Patrick’s example–someone ends up getting hurt. Men do that to women too–flirt with no intentions of it ever going anywhere.
Re: Michelle’s comment about being friendly with co-workers,
Interpreting flirting is of course very contextual. Flirting in the workplace is usually not an indicator of romantic interest while the same signals in a bar or social context usually are. Also, a single type of flirting alone doesn’t mean anything, you can only draw a conclusion when multiple types of signals are present. A girl could be tossing her hair simply because it keeps getting in her eyes.
But if she’s tossing her hair, smiling at you, and making eye contact from across the room, you can probably safely read into it.
Back to the topic of whether it’s worth studying how to flirt,
How many times have you been out and seen a guy you like across the room but been too chicken or too sober to approach him? Flirting gives you a way to indicate interest without as much of an ego hit if he is not interested.
I agree if you can flirt without thinking about it, that’s better… but for all the men (and women) in the world who can’t do that either because they’re shy, or never learned how (they don’t exactly have a class on it in college! well, some colleges do, but not mine…), things like the askmen.com column can be useful.
I don’t think you can go wrong with advice to smile more, make eye contact with strangers, introduce yourself to someone new, joke around in line for coffee, etc. I live in Seattle, where it’s well known that people are polite but not really friendly or welcoming to strangers – walking down the street most people’s eyes are glued to the pavement, and it’s pretty hard to meet people.