Everyone says flirting is about a “dance of ambiguous escalation”, in which both people send progressively more aggressive/obvious hints of sexual intent in conversation.
But, like… I don’t think I have ever noticed two people actually do this? Is it a thing which people actually do, or one of those things which like 2% of the population does and everyone else just talks about a lot and it mostly doesn’t actually work in practice (like cold approaches)? Have you personally done the thing successfully with another person, with both of you actually picking up on the other person’s hints? Have you personally seen two other people do the thing firsthand, where they actually picked up on each others’ hints?
EDIT-TO-ADD: Those who have agree/disagree voted, I don’t know if agree/disagree indicates that you have/haven’t done the thing, or if agree/disagree indicates that you also have/haven’t ever noticed anyone (including yourself) successfully do the thing, or something else entirely.
Yes, I’ve had this experience many times and I’m aware of many other cases of it happening.
Maybe the proliferation of dating apps means that it happens somewhat less than it used to, because when you meet up with someone from a dating app, there’s a bit more common knowledge of mutual interest than there is when you’re flirting in real life?
The classic setting is a party (a place where you meet potential romantic partners who you don’t already know (or who you otherwise know from professional settings where flirting is inappropriate), and where conversations are freely starting and ending, such that when you start talking to someone the conversation might either go for two minutes or four hours).
Examples of hints:
Mentioning things that indicate that you’re romantically available, e.g. saying that you’re single, that you’re poly, telling a story of recently going on a date; more extreme would be telling a story of doing something promiscuous.
Mentioning things that indicate that you want to relate to the other person in a romantic or sexual context rather than a non-sexual way. For example, a woman talking about how she likes wearing revealing clothes, or commenting on her body or my body. And then responding positively to that kind of statement, e.g. building on it rather than demurring, replying flatly, or changing the subject,
Offering and accepting invitations to spend more time interacting one-on-one, especially in semi-private places. E.g. asking to sit together. (For example, person A might say “I’m getting a drink, want me to get you one?”, which is sort of an invitation to have a drink together, and person B might say “sure, let’s sit over there to have it”, which escalates the invitation to involve them talking for longer.)
Giving and accepting opportunities for physical contact.
In all cases, saying those things is more flirty if it was unnecessary for them to say it. E.g. if they say they’re single because it came up in conversation in a way that they couldn’t have contrived, that’s less flirty than if they tell a story that brings it up.
I think that online content on all this stuff is often pretty accurate.
I know this is LessWrong, and that sexual norms are different in the Bay Area, but for the average person:
Please don’t tell prospective romantic interests that you “went on a date recently” or that you did something promiscuous. The majority of the time, it would be interpreted as a sign you’re taken. Of course, if you elaborate that the date didn’t work out, that’s a different story.
I think that saying you went on a date usually is evidence that you’re not in a monogamous relationship, and if it’s ambiguous it gives the other person an opportunity to say “oh, how did it go?” which gives you an opportunity to subtly clarify that it was a casual date (and so confirm that you’re in the market for casual dating).
I guess “I was alone and masturbated recently” also wouldn’t work well, so… what are the proper words to suggest that I am available? :D
The only thing that comes to my mind, is that if you arrived with a person of the opposite sex, to explicitly mention that they are not your boyfriend/girlfriend.
Hmm.. That’s actually a tough question. As far as I can remember, I’ve rarely had to tell people outright that I’m single.
My recommendation would be to flirt away, and if they don’t casually namedrop a boyfriend or allude to having one, that’s strong enough evidence that they’re not taken.
>The only thing that comes to my mind, is that if you arrived with a person of the opposite sex, to explicitly mention that they are not your boyfriend/girlfriend.
Most tactful way to say as much would be to explicitly call them a “friend”. That should get the message across.
My disagree vote means: yes, this obviously happens a lot, and the fact that you haven’t noticed this happening, to the point you think it might be made up, reveals a huge blindspot of one kind or another.
in crazy ex-girlfriend “I’m Going to the Beach with Josh and His Friends!”, there’s a scene between White Josh and Derrick. I can’t find a clip, but the key is that Derrick is hanging on to White Josh’s every word.
Ted Lasso:
Note how and how much she’s laughing at his very mediocre jokes. Ted could reasonably be interpreted as flirting back, but the audience knows he always make those stupid ass jokes. Actually the whole Ted Lasso show might be good for watching someone who’s generally very playful and seeing how it changes when he’s actually into someone.
Roy and Keeley, also from Ted Lasso. Note she’s dating his teammate.
Roy and some lady, still from Ted Lasso
Note how long she looks at him around 0:50, even though it’s awkward while she’s putting something away. She also contrives a way to ask if he’s married, and makes an interesting face when he says no. He is giving her enough breadcrumbs to continue but not flirting back (because he’s still into Keeley).
Half of the movie Challengers (including between the two ambiguously platonic male leads)
[At this point John contacted me offline and clarified he wanted examples of flirting that successfully end with asking someone out, but I didn’t want to throw away my work]
Pretty sure My Name Is Earl: The Professor has this but can’t find a clip. Also the first season of Ted Lasso.
I second the point about physical touch being important, and add: in my experience what you’re going for when flirting isn’t “ambiguous signal” but “plausible deniability”. The level of ambiguity is to be minimized, subject to the constraint that plausible deniability is maintained—ambiguity is an unfortunate side-effect, not something you’re aiming to modulate directly. Why you want plausible deniability: If the person doesn’t respond, or responds in the negative, you want to be able to back off without embarrassment to either party and pretend nothing happened/you were just being friendly/etc. You want to send a signal that is clear enough the other person will pick up on it, but can plausibly claim not to have done so if asked, so you’re not backing them into a corner socially where they have to give you a definite yes/no. Similar to the advice not to flirt in an elevator or other enclosed space the person you’re flirting with can’t easily leave, except the “enclosed space” is the space of possible social responses.
Once you’ve done a few things they ought to have picked up on, and no negative and some seemingly positive interaction has occurred afterwards (physical proximity has increased, verbally things seem to be going well, they’re smiling… if they’ve picked up your attempts at signaling and would like it to stop typically none of that will happen) you can try a physical touch. Something small and nonsexual. Particularly if you’re dealing with a new person or a friend you have never touched before, this usually doesn’t happen by accident—and you can do it in a way that is definitely a deliberate choice on your part, but still plausibly deniable/something both of you can walk away from as a signal of sexual interest. If you get a touch back soon after, you’re good to go (by which I mean, continue escalating in a way that is no longer very plausibly deniable), if you don’t, either the person is socially unskilled, or you’ve misread the situation, but in any case it’s their turn.
Once you’ve done a few things they ought to have picked up on, and no negative and some seemingly positive interaction has occurred afterwards...
One possibility in my hypothesis space here is that there usually isn’t a mutual dance of plausibly-deniable signals, but instead one person sending progressively less deniable signals and the other person just not responding negatively (but not otherwise sending signals themselves).
I imagine that can happen for a while, but if I’m getting nothing back, I stop once I’m pretty sure they should have noticed what I’m doing. Silence in response to a received message, is a form of response, and not one that indicates “keep getting progressively less subtle please”.
If that is the wrong move (the person is interested in me continuing), they will let me know once I back off.
Another thought: You refer to this as a dance, and one model of what’s happening when one flirts is “demonstrate social skill/difficult-to-fake signal of intelligence by calibrating levels of ambiguity and successfully modeling the other person’s mind --> this is attractive --> get date”, in the same way that dancing successfully in an actual dance can be “demonstrate physical skill/difficult-to-fake signal of health --> this is attractive --> get date”. And I’m sure that happens sometimes, and for some people, but my model of flirting does not involve “demonstrate social skill/intelligence --> get date”. For me, flirting solves a different problem, which is “communicate that you like someone (in the sense one likes people one might like to date), and have them communicate back that they like you, without either of you risking much embarrassment or social awkwardness if it’s not mutual or for any other reason a date can’t happen right now”.
Depending on what you’re trying to do by flirting (demonstrate social skill vs. give someone you’re attracted to a low-pressure way to tell you whether they like you back) the approach may be different. Although, even the latter can be a tricky thing to do and ability to do it successfully demonstrates a useful skill.
I think most people who flirt are like, not super socially skilled around people they’re attracted to, and “try to get a sense of whether it’s mutual in a low-risk way” is the more important problem that flirting solves for them. But maybe that’s just me typical-minding :).
Also: the higher the number of spectators, the more you have to be very careful about plausible deniability, because you have to take into consideration what everyone is going to think, and the level of social awkwardness involved in a fumble or a rejection is higher. I’ve flirted with a few women before, but it only lasts more than a few seconds if the woman is flirting back, and I have always done it 1:1 rather than with a group of onlookers. And whenever I’ve noticed someone who might be flirting with me, it has likewise been in a 1:1 situation, at least initially. So it doesn’t surprise me that you haven’t noticed others doing this. Anything done in front of a group has to be so unclear to onlookers that most people would miss it, something like an inside joke or reference to a past conversation.
What is this context in which you are hanging out 1:1 with a woman and it’s not already explicitly a date? (I mean, that of course does happen sometimes, but at least for me it’s not particularly common, so I’m wondering what the contexts were when this actually happened to you.)
Um… well, first off, flirting doesn’t have to happen when you’re hanging out. It can start with something as simple as a compliment to a stranger. Start from the premise that people like to hear positive messages about themselves without any strings attached, and hand them out like candy (but recognizing that taking candy from strangers is something some people would prefer not to do for obvious reasons, so accept whatever response you get to what is offered) - some people will respond back, others won’t, but no harm will be done. I am an introvert so I don’t do this often, but striking up conversations with new people at random is a thing I can force myself to do, and it rarely goes as poorly as one might fear.
But also, my friend-group is mixed, more women than men, and typically it’s people I’ve met one at a time over the years, less of a “friend group” than “a number of people who are my friends”- so I have lots of 1:1 time with female friends. In terms of flirting with those friends, well, they’re friends, so that almost never happens—but almost never is not never. Three times that I can recall off the top of my head, it turned out that one of my friends was attracted to me, and I learned that either because she explicitly said so (in one case, we were teenagers and both clueless about how to flirt, her idea was to follow me around everywhere, and from my perspective I just didn’t know that was a thing that I should notice) or because of some flirting (two cases). When I was younger and much, much more awkward, there were innumerable instances where I was attracted to a female friend and didn’t say anything because from young-me’s perspective of course not that’s insane and I’m lucky this amazing person even wants to be my friend and allow me to continue to be in her presence. There was once when I did say something to a good friend and it wasn’t reciprocated, we’re still close friends, but that wasn’t flirting so much as “we’ve just met had lunch because you suggested it, and I’m feeling some attraction—you? Nope? Ok then, I still think you’re awesome and we should be friends”. There have also been a couple instances where I’ve met someone at an activity or through other friends or at work, hinted at an attraction, she’d hinted back, we’d done something low-stakes like going for a walk together or having a coffee, but it wasn’t an official date or anything, and there was some attempted flirting with mixed success in that context.
What I’m picturing if I was back on the dating market (I’m with a good partner currently, hopefully in perpetuity) is, if I met a woman outside of a dating app who I’d like to date or add to my list of woman friends, depending on how she feels (I tend not to date people just for the hotness, they’ve got to be someone I could be friends with too), we’d probably do something low-stakes 1:1 that wasn’t officially a date or not a date, and depending on how that went, either become friends, go on dates, or part ways. And in the initial figuring out how things were going to go, there would likely be some flirting. At least, I expect that’s how it’d go.
I’m not so deliberate/strategic about it, but yeah. Like, there’s another ‘algorithm’ that’s more intuitive, which is something like “When interacting with the person, it’s ~always an active part of your mental landscape that you’re into them, and this naturally affects your words and actions. Also, you don’t want to make them uncomfortable, so you suppress anything that you think they wouldn’t welcome”. This produces approximately the same policy, because you’ll naturally leak some bits about your interest in them, and you’ll naturally be monitoring their behaviour to estimate their interest in you, in order to inform your understanding of what they would welcome from you. As you gather more evidence that they’re interested, you’ll automatically become more free in allowing your interest to show, resulting in ~the same ‘escalation of signals of interest’.
I think the key thing about this is like “flirting is not fundamentally about causing someone to be attracted to you, it’s about gracefully navigating the realisation that you’re both attracted to each other”. This is somewhat confused by the fact that “ability to gracefully navigate social situations” is itself attractive, so flirting well can in itself make someone more attracted to you. But I claim that this isn’t fundamentally different from the person seeing you skillfully break up a fight or lead a team through a difficult situation, etc.
Flirting is not fundamentally about causing someone to be attracted to you.
Notwithstanding, I think flirting is substantially (perhaps even fundamentally) about both (i) attraction, and (ii) seduction. Moreover, I think your model is too symmetric between the parties, both in terms of information-symmetry and desire-symmetry across time.
My model of flirting is roughly:
Alice attracts Bob → Bob tries attracting Alice → Alice reveals Bob attracts Alice → Bob tries seducing Alice → Alice reveals Bob seduces Alice → Initiation
I never did quite that thing successfully. I did have one time when I dropped progressively unsubtle hints on a guy, who remained stubbornly oblivious for a long time until he finally got the message and reciprocated.
I interpret the confusion around flirting as “life imitating art” — specifically, there is a cultural narrative about how flirting works that a lot of socially awkward people are trying to implement.
That means there are big discrepancies between how experts flirt and how most people flirt. It also means that most people have to learn how to read the flirtation signals of other low-flirtation-skill people.
The cultural narrative around flirting therefore doesn’t exactly match practice, even though it influences practice.
It doesn’t necessarily take that much flirting to build enough confidence to ask someone out. Are they alone at a party? Is your conversation with them going on longer than for most people? Is it fun? You’re all set.
Have you personally done the thing successfully with another person, with both of you actually picking up on the other person’s hints?
Yes. But usually the escalation happens over weeks or months, over multiple conversations (at least in my relatively awkward nerd experience). So it’d be difficult to notice people doing this. Maybe twice I’ve been in situations where hints escalated within a day or two, but both were building from a non-zero level of suspected interest. But none of these would have been easy to notice from the outside, except maybe at a couple of moments.
Are people using escalating hints to express romantic/sexual interest in general?
Does it follow the specific conversational patterns usually used?
1 is true in my experience, while 2 usually isn’t. I can think of two examples where I’ve flirted by escalating signals. In both cases it was more to do with escalating physical touch and proximity, though verbal tone also played a part. I would guess that the typical examples of 2 you normally see (like A complimenting B’s choice of shoes, then the B using a mild verbal innuendo, then A making a comment about the B’s figure) don’t happen as often, since not many people are good enough wordsmiths to do the escalation purely verbally.
Plus it’s not the Victorian era anymore and it’s acceptable to escalate by slowly leaning forward as the conversation progresses, almost-accidentally brushing someone’s hand, etc.
One of the first things that (shy?) people use to gauge each other’s interests before or instead of talking about anything explicit is eye contact. So I think that wearing your glasses puts you at a disadvantage unless you take them off when you are flirting. I’m not sure why you’re wearing them, but taking them off in itself could be a flirty move. I am not particularly good at flirting. But I remember in 9th grade a girl I had flirted with for like half an hour at an event via eye contact. We didn’t exchange more than ~3 sentences in person (there were no innuendos). Then she called me later that same day, asking me out explicitly if I wanted to be her boyfriend.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t escalate those signs above a rather low threshold given any observers, and my intuition tells me other people would be similar in this regard. So not observing flirting could just imply people don’t flirt if you’re in the conversation with them. As an extreme example, I’ve never seen anyone having sex, but it seems as if people do that all the time.
In model flirting is about showing that you are paying attention. You say things that you could only pick up if you pay close attention to me and what I say. It’s like a cryptographic proof certificate, showing that you think that I am important enough to pay attention to continuously. Usually this is coupled with an optimization process of using that knowledge to make me feel good, e.g. given a compliment that actually tracks reality in a way I care about.
It’s more general than just showing sexual interest I think.
I’ve seen it happen, and have done it myself with decent success.
As @Buck notes below, dating apps, which are now a majority share of how people begin or seek to begin relationships, are far more targeted. There’s little plausible deniability involved, both of you are talking on Tinder.
Not that there isn’t some, of course. There are mind games afoot where people claim to be interested only in long-term relationships, but if you’re attractive enough, they might easily accept something shorter with no strings attached. Conversely, there are people who state they’re looking for a quick romp, but are hiding the degree of yearning they contain for something more serious.
It’s hard to break it down into a play-by-play, but in my experience, flirting starts out with friendly interactions, obvious or not so obvious signs that you’re single, gauging the reception of jokes or compliments, and then grows from there. The more you gradually establish compatibility and interest, the easier it gets to stop beating around the bush.
Everyone says flirting is about a “dance of ambiguous escalation”, in which both people send progressively more aggressive/obvious hints of sexual intent in conversation.
But, like… I don’t think I have ever noticed two people actually do this? Is it a thing which people actually do, or one of those things which like 2% of the population does and everyone else just talks about a lot and it mostly doesn’t actually work in practice (like cold approaches)? Have you personally done the thing successfully with another person, with both of you actually picking up on the other person’s hints? Have you personally seen two other people do the thing firsthand, where they actually picked up on each others’ hints?
EDIT-TO-ADD: Those who have agree/disagree voted, I don’t know if agree/disagree indicates that you have/haven’t done the thing, or if agree/disagree indicates that you also have/haven’t ever noticed anyone (including yourself) successfully do the thing, or something else entirely.
Yes, I’ve had this experience many times and I’m aware of many other cases of it happening.
Maybe the proliferation of dating apps means that it happens somewhat less than it used to, because when you meet up with someone from a dating app, there’s a bit more common knowledge of mutual interest than there is when you’re flirting in real life?
Mind painting a picture of a typical example? What’s the setting, and what do the first few hints from each person look like?
The classic setting is a party (a place where you meet potential romantic partners who you don’t already know (or who you otherwise know from professional settings where flirting is inappropriate), and where conversations are freely starting and ending, such that when you start talking to someone the conversation might either go for two minutes or four hours).
Examples of hints:
Mentioning things that indicate that you’re romantically available, e.g. saying that you’re single, that you’re poly, telling a story of recently going on a date; more extreme would be telling a story of doing something promiscuous.
Mentioning things that indicate that you want to relate to the other person in a romantic or sexual context rather than a non-sexual way. For example, a woman talking about how she likes wearing revealing clothes, or commenting on her body or my body. And then responding positively to that kind of statement, e.g. building on it rather than demurring, replying flatly, or changing the subject,
Offering and accepting invitations to spend more time interacting one-on-one, especially in semi-private places. E.g. asking to sit together. (For example, person A might say “I’m getting a drink, want me to get you one?”, which is sort of an invitation to have a drink together, and person B might say “sure, let’s sit over there to have it”, which escalates the invitation to involve them talking for longer.)
Giving and accepting opportunities for physical contact.
In all cases, saying those things is more flirty if it was unnecessary for them to say it. E.g. if they say they’re single because it came up in conversation in a way that they couldn’t have contrived, that’s less flirty than if they tell a story that brings it up.
I think that online content on all this stuff is often pretty accurate.
I know this is LessWrong, and that sexual norms are different in the Bay Area, but for the average person:
Please don’t tell prospective romantic interests that you “went on a date recently” or that you did something promiscuous. The majority of the time, it would be interpreted as a sign you’re taken. Of course, if you elaborate that the date didn’t work out, that’s a different story.
I think that saying you went on a date usually is evidence that you’re not in a monogamous relationship, and if it’s ambiguous it gives the other person an opportunity to say “oh, how did it go?” which gives you an opportunity to subtly clarify that it was a casual date (and so confirm that you’re in the market for casual dating).
I guess “I was alone and masturbated recently” also wouldn’t work well, so… what are the proper words to suggest that I am available? :D
The only thing that comes to my mind, is that if you arrived with a person of the opposite sex, to explicitly mention that they are not your boyfriend/girlfriend.
Hmm.. That’s actually a tough question. As far as I can remember, I’ve rarely had to tell people outright that I’m single.
My recommendation would be to flirt away, and if they don’t casually namedrop a boyfriend or allude to having one, that’s strong enough evidence that they’re not taken.
>The only thing that comes to my mind, is that if you arrived with a person of the opposite sex, to explicitly mention that they are not your boyfriend/girlfriend.
Most tactful way to say as much would be to explicitly call them a “friend”. That should get the message across.
My disagree vote means: yes, this obviously happens a lot, and the fact that you haven’t noticed this happening, to the point you think it might be made up, reveals a huge blindspot of one kind or another.
Now THAT’S an interesting possibility. Did you already have in mind hypotheses of what that blindspot might be, or what else might be in it?
Followed up with John offline.
Some examples of flirting:
medium skill on The Wire, failing to land: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eyyqoFhXRao
in crazy ex-girlfriend “I’m Going to the Beach with Josh and His Friends!”, there’s a scene between White Josh and Derrick. I can’t find a clip, but the key is that Derrick is hanging on to White Josh’s every word.
Ted Lasso:
Note how and how much she’s laughing at his very mediocre jokes. Ted could reasonably be interpreted as flirting back, but the audience knows he always make those stupid ass jokes. Actually the whole Ted Lasso show might be good for watching someone who’s generally very playful and seeing how it changes when he’s actually into someone.
Roy and Keeley, also from Ted Lasso. Note she’s dating his teammate.
Roy and some lady, still from Ted Lasso
Note how long she looks at him around 0:50, even though it’s awkward while she’s putting something away. She also contrives a way to ask if he’s married, and makes an interesting face when he says no. He is giving her enough breadcrumbs to continue but not flirting back (because he’s still into Keeley).
Half of the movie Challengers (including between the two ambiguously platonic male leads)
[At this point John contacted me offline and clarified he wanted examples of flirting that successfully end with asking someone out, but I didn’t want to throw away my work]
Pretty sure My Name Is Earl: The Professor has this but can’t find a clip. Also the first season of Ted Lasso.
I second the point about physical touch being important, and add: in my experience what you’re going for when flirting isn’t “ambiguous signal” but “plausible deniability”. The level of ambiguity is to be minimized, subject to the constraint that plausible deniability is maintained—ambiguity is an unfortunate side-effect, not something you’re aiming to modulate directly. Why you want plausible deniability: If the person doesn’t respond, or responds in the negative, you want to be able to back off without embarrassment to either party and pretend nothing happened/you were just being friendly/etc. You want to send a signal that is clear enough the other person will pick up on it, but can plausibly claim not to have done so if asked, so you’re not backing them into a corner socially where they have to give you a definite yes/no. Similar to the advice not to flirt in an elevator or other enclosed space the person you’re flirting with can’t easily leave, except the “enclosed space” is the space of possible social responses.
Once you’ve done a few things they ought to have picked up on, and no negative and some seemingly positive interaction has occurred afterwards (physical proximity has increased, verbally things seem to be going well, they’re smiling… if they’ve picked up your attempts at signaling and would like it to stop typically none of that will happen) you can try a physical touch. Something small and nonsexual. Particularly if you’re dealing with a new person or a friend you have never touched before, this usually doesn’t happen by accident—and you can do it in a way that is definitely a deliberate choice on your part, but still plausibly deniable/something both of you can walk away from as a signal of sexual interest. If you get a touch back soon after, you’re good to go (by which I mean, continue escalating in a way that is no longer very plausibly deniable), if you don’t, either the person is socially unskilled, or you’ve misread the situation, but in any case it’s their turn.
One possibility in my hypothesis space here is that there usually isn’t a mutual dance of plausibly-deniable signals, but instead one person sending progressively less deniable signals and the other person just not responding negatively (but not otherwise sending signals themselves).
I imagine that can happen for a while, but if I’m getting nothing back, I stop once I’m pretty sure they should have noticed what I’m doing. Silence in response to a received message, is a form of response, and not one that indicates “keep getting progressively less subtle please”.
If that is the wrong move (the person is interested in me continuing), they will let me know once I back off.
Another thought: You refer to this as a dance, and one model of what’s happening when one flirts is “demonstrate social skill/difficult-to-fake signal of intelligence by calibrating levels of ambiguity and successfully modeling the other person’s mind --> this is attractive --> get date”, in the same way that dancing successfully in an actual dance can be “demonstrate physical skill/difficult-to-fake signal of health --> this is attractive --> get date”. And I’m sure that happens sometimes, and for some people, but my model of flirting does not involve “demonstrate social skill/intelligence --> get date”. For me, flirting solves a different problem, which is “communicate that you like someone (in the sense one likes people one might like to date), and have them communicate back that they like you, without either of you risking much embarrassment or social awkwardness if it’s not mutual or for any other reason a date can’t happen right now”.
Depending on what you’re trying to do by flirting (demonstrate social skill vs. give someone you’re attracted to a low-pressure way to tell you whether they like you back) the approach may be different. Although, even the latter can be a tricky thing to do and ability to do it successfully demonstrates a useful skill.
I think most people who flirt are like, not super socially skilled around people they’re attracted to, and “try to get a sense of whether it’s mutual in a low-risk way” is the more important problem that flirting solves for them. But maybe that’s just me typical-minding :).
Also: the higher the number of spectators, the more you have to be very careful about plausible deniability, because you have to take into consideration what everyone is going to think, and the level of social awkwardness involved in a fumble or a rejection is higher. I’ve flirted with a few women before, but it only lasts more than a few seconds if the woman is flirting back, and I have always done it 1:1 rather than with a group of onlookers. And whenever I’ve noticed someone who might be flirting with me, it has likewise been in a 1:1 situation, at least initially. So it doesn’t surprise me that you haven’t noticed others doing this. Anything done in front of a group has to be so unclear to onlookers that most people would miss it, something like an inside joke or reference to a past conversation.
What is this context in which you are hanging out 1:1 with a woman and it’s not already explicitly a date? (I mean, that of course does happen sometimes, but at least for me it’s not particularly common, so I’m wondering what the contexts were when this actually happened to you.)
The classic is at a party where conversations of different sizes are regularly starting and stopping.
Um… well, first off, flirting doesn’t have to happen when you’re hanging out. It can start with something as simple as a compliment to a stranger. Start from the premise that people like to hear positive messages about themselves without any strings attached, and hand them out like candy (but recognizing that taking candy from strangers is something some people would prefer not to do for obvious reasons, so accept whatever response you get to what is offered) - some people will respond back, others won’t, but no harm will be done. I am an introvert so I don’t do this often, but striking up conversations with new people at random is a thing I can force myself to do, and it rarely goes as poorly as one might fear.
But also, my friend-group is mixed, more women than men, and typically it’s people I’ve met one at a time over the years, less of a “friend group” than “a number of people who are my friends”- so I have lots of 1:1 time with female friends. In terms of flirting with those friends, well, they’re friends, so that almost never happens—but almost never is not never. Three times that I can recall off the top of my head, it turned out that one of my friends was attracted to me, and I learned that either because she explicitly said so (in one case, we were teenagers and both clueless about how to flirt, her idea was to follow me around everywhere, and from my perspective I just didn’t know that was a thing that I should notice) or because of some flirting (two cases). When I was younger and much, much more awkward, there were innumerable instances where I was attracted to a female friend and didn’t say anything because from young-me’s perspective of course not that’s insane and I’m lucky this amazing person even wants to be my friend and allow me to continue to be in her presence. There was once when I did say something to a good friend and it wasn’t reciprocated, we’re still close friends, but that wasn’t flirting so much as “we’ve just
methad lunch because you suggested it, and I’m feeling some attraction—you? Nope? Ok then, I still think you’re awesome and we should be friends”. There have also been a couple instances where I’ve met someone at an activity or through other friends or at work, hinted at an attraction, she’d hinted back, we’d done something low-stakes like going for a walk together or having a coffee, but it wasn’t an official date or anything, and there was some attempted flirting with mixed success in that context.What I’m picturing if I was back on the dating market (I’m with a good partner currently, hopefully in perpetuity) is, if I met a woman outside of a dating app who I’d like to date or add to my list of woman friends, depending on how she feels (I tend not to date people just for the hotness, they’ve got to be someone I could be friends with too), we’d probably do something low-stakes 1:1 that wasn’t officially a date or not a date, and depending on how that went, either become friends, go on dates, or part ways. And in the initial figuring out how things were going to go, there would likely be some flirting. At least, I expect that’s how it’d go.
I’m not so deliberate/strategic about it, but yeah. Like, there’s another ‘algorithm’ that’s more intuitive, which is something like “When interacting with the person, it’s ~always an active part of your mental landscape that you’re into them, and this naturally affects your words and actions. Also, you don’t want to make them uncomfortable, so you suppress anything that you think they wouldn’t welcome”. This produces approximately the same policy, because you’ll naturally leak some bits about your interest in them, and you’ll naturally be monitoring their behaviour to estimate their interest in you, in order to inform your understanding of what they would welcome from you. As you gather more evidence that they’re interested, you’ll automatically become more free in allowing your interest to show, resulting in ~the same ‘escalation of signals of interest’.
I think the key thing about this is like “flirting is not fundamentally about causing someone to be attracted to you, it’s about gracefully navigating the realisation that you’re both attracted to each other”. This is somewhat confused by the fact that “ability to gracefully navigate social situations” is itself attractive, so flirting well can in itself make someone more attracted to you. But I claim that this isn’t fundamentally different from the person seeing you skillfully break up a fight or lead a team through a difficult situation, etc.
Notwithstanding, I think flirting is substantially (perhaps even fundamentally) about both (i) attraction, and (ii) seduction. Moreover, I think your model is too symmetric between the parties, both in terms of information-symmetry and desire-symmetry across time.
My model of flirting is roughly:
Alice attracts Bob → Bob tries attracting Alice → Alice reveals Bob attracts Alice → Bob tries seducing Alice → Alice reveals Bob seduces Alice → Initiation
I never did quite that thing successfully. I did have one time when I dropped progressively unsubtle hints on a guy, who remained stubbornly oblivious for a long time until he finally got the message and reciprocated.
I interpret the confusion around flirting as “life imitating art” — specifically, there is a cultural narrative about how flirting works that a lot of socially awkward people are trying to implement.
That means there are big discrepancies between how experts flirt and how most people flirt. It also means that most people have to learn how to read the flirtation signals of other low-flirtation-skill people.
The cultural narrative around flirting therefore doesn’t exactly match practice, even though it influences practice.
It doesn’t necessarily take that much flirting to build enough confidence to ask someone out. Are they alone at a party? Is your conversation with them going on longer than for most people? Is it fun? You’re all set.
Yes. But usually the escalation happens over weeks or months, over multiple conversations (at least in my relatively awkward nerd experience). So it’d be difficult to notice people doing this. Maybe twice I’ve been in situations where hints escalated within a day or two, but both were building from a non-zero level of suspected interest. But none of these would have been easy to notice from the outside, except maybe at a couple of moments.
There’s two parts here.
Are people using escalating hints to express romantic/sexual interest in general?
Does it follow the specific conversational patterns usually used?
1 is true in my experience, while 2 usually isn’t. I can think of two examples where I’ve flirted by escalating signals. In both cases it was more to do with escalating physical touch and proximity, though verbal tone also played a part. I would guess that the typical examples of 2 you normally see (like A complimenting B’s choice of shoes, then the B using a mild verbal innuendo, then A making a comment about the B’s figure) don’t happen as often, since not many people are good enough wordsmiths to do the escalation purely verbally.
Plus it’s not the Victorian era anymore and it’s acceptable to escalate by slowly leaning forward as the conversation progresses, almost-accidentally brushing someone’s hand, etc.
One of the first things that (shy?) people use to gauge each other’s interests before or instead of talking about anything explicit is eye contact. So I think that wearing your glasses puts you at a disadvantage unless you take them off when you are flirting. I’m not sure why you’re wearing them, but taking them off in itself could be a flirty move. I am not particularly good at flirting. But I remember in 9th grade a girl I had flirted with for like half an hour at an event via eye contact. We didn’t exchange more than ~3 sentences in person (there were no innuendos). Then she called me later that same day, asking me out explicitly if I wanted to be her boyfriend.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t escalate those signs above a rather low threshold given any observers, and my intuition tells me other people would be similar in this regard. So not observing flirting could just imply people don’t flirt if you’re in the conversation with them. As an extreme example, I’ve never seen anyone having sex, but it seems as if people do that all the time.
In model flirting is about showing that you are paying attention. You say things that you could only pick up if you pay close attention to me and what I say. It’s like a cryptographic proof certificate, showing that you think that I am important enough to pay attention to continuously. Usually this is coupled with an optimization process of using that knowledge to make me feel good, e.g. given a compliment that actually tracks reality in a way I care about.
It’s more general than just showing sexual interest I think.
I’ve seen it happen, and have done it myself with decent success.
As @Buck notes below, dating apps, which are now a majority share of how people begin or seek to begin relationships, are far more targeted. There’s little plausible deniability involved, both of you are talking on Tinder.
Not that there isn’t some, of course. There are mind games afoot where people claim to be interested only in long-term relationships, but if you’re attractive enough, they might easily accept something shorter with no strings attached. Conversely, there are people who state they’re looking for a quick romp, but are hiding the degree of yearning they contain for something more serious.
It’s hard to break it down into a play-by-play, but in my experience, flirting starts out with friendly interactions, obvious or not so obvious signs that you’re single, gauging the reception of jokes or compliments, and then grows from there. The more you gradually establish compatibility and interest, the easier it gets to stop beating around the bush.