Hmmm, I can’t speak for all women, but as a girl who finds it easy to flirt and enjoys meeting strangers, I can tell you I actively avoid eye contact with almost all strange guys no matter how attractive.
The issue is that sustained eye contact is actually a fairly “expensive” signal while giving almost no information value about if the guy is a “creep”. By which I mean, a guy who will get you in trouble and make your night significantly less fun. I think there are very few of such guys, but the cost is so high that they are worth actively avoiding!
Instead, if I find a guy attractive I will plausibly-deniable move myself much closer to him. If he is in a group, I’ll try to join that group, while generally not focussing on him. I’ll try to chat to different people, including him.
Why?
So I can quickly gather information about if he is likely to be chill and safe to show interest in! This process generally only takes me a few minutes, and if he does stuff that is not my vibe, I can easily continue without risking being the target of a potential 1% (or whatever ass number)
I have no clue how much my strategy generalizes for women at large, but I can at least say that eye contact really is not the primary way to flirt with strangers for some of us, for pretty logical reasons.
PS: It is a “natural” way of flirting and the reason I also “naturally” stopped is getting too many negative experiences with this at an early age. I would guess this is a common teenage rite of passage for girls, but I’m not sure.
Good question! I wish I had a satisfying answer for you. My preferred style of ‘flirting’ is not distinct from my general form of socializing, so mostly the above step serves to check if it is ‘safe’ to disinhibit my natural social and emotional instincts. All of these seem to work really well for me and are quite black boxy. I suspect my social cognition is high and fairly neurotypical and I can’t tell why I do what I do, or even entirely notice what I am doing in the first place [shrugs helplessly] sorry that I don’t have something more satisfying XD ❤️
Hmmm, I can’t speak for all women, but as a girl who finds it easy to flirt and enjoys meeting strangers, I can tell you I actively avoid eye contact with almost all strange guys no matter how attractive.
The issue is that sustained eye contact is actually a fairly “expensive” signal while giving almost no information value about if the guy is a “creep”. By which I mean, a guy who will get you in trouble and make your night significantly less fun. I think there are very few of such guys, but the cost is so high that they are worth actively avoiding!
Instead, if I find a guy attractive I will plausibly-deniable move myself much closer to him. If he is in a group, I’ll try to join that group, while generally not focussing on him. I’ll try to chat to different people, including him.
Why?
So I can quickly gather information about if he is likely to be chill and safe to show interest in! This process generally only takes me a few minutes, and if he does stuff that is not my vibe, I can easily continue without risking being the target of a potential 1% (or whatever ass number)
I have no clue how much my strategy generalizes for women at large, but I can at least say that eye contact really is not the primary way to flirt with strangers for some of us, for pretty logical reasons.
PS: It is a “natural” way of flirting and the reason I also “naturally” stopped is getting too many negative experiences with this at an early age. I would guess this is a common teenage rite of passage for girls, but I’m not sure.
Out of personal curiosity, once you’ve decided someone is chill/safe to show interest in, how do you show interest, if at all?
Good question! I wish I had a satisfying answer for you. My preferred style of ‘flirting’ is not distinct from my general form of socializing, so mostly the above step serves to check if it is ‘safe’ to disinhibit my natural social and emotional instincts. All of these seem to work really well for me and are quite black boxy. I suspect my social cognition is high and fairly neurotypical and I can’t tell why I do what I do, or even entirely notice what I am doing in the first place [shrugs helplessly] sorry that I don’t have something more satisfying XD ❤️
That’s totally fair and would explain some of the other responses and my general experience.