Flirting or "Flirting"

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Flirting freaks me out.

I have just read an article about flirting and I look back on my life and realise how many people I fancied were not just flirting with me, they were practically telling me they really liked me. I just totally didn't notice or read the signs. It is so annoying. I once worked at a company and out of all the people there I only fancied one person. Looking back, that person flirted with me several times. The last time I remember involved extreme personal space invasion, intimate body contact, and a long silent look into my eyes. I just thought they were straightening my collar and looked a bit funny.

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Last edited by Ante on 09 Nov 2005, 4:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think the biggest step in the right direction is being able to get down beneath it and sort out what their feeling, to what extent, what boundaries they wouldn't want broken, etc. My problem, I'm so overly conservative on that last part that I'm too scared to break the boundaries that they do want me to break. Then again, half of that comes from the fact that a lot of times as well I'll realize that my lifestyle ( ie. a largely stay-at home type guy whose not prude but still a nerd in the semi-shy introvert sense) would run cross-grain with the social expectations of her own life enough to where I can see that by her orientation to life that we aren't right for eachother. A lot of these girls, no - most of em, are all about being at the bar 3 days out of the week and living in the fast-lane like that.

One thing I can say I'm pretty happy about though, I've come up with some very NTish ways of broaching AS - ways that almost make it seem like I'm seeing where they may be misinterpreting things and exercising the empathy of telling em everythings ok. Example: I was at a bar last night with a whole bunch of people I know and since I have this social muzzle on my brain I was just sitting there doing nothing aside from drinking & smoking. A girl who I used to work with came up to me and asked me if I was ok, told me I looked sad, and asked about 3 more times just to make sure. about 15 minutes later she happened to be passing back the same way, asked me if I was ok, "Are you sure?", etc. and she envited me to go chill with her friends. Before that though, when she'd been asking me if I was ok I'd been telling her "Don't worry, I always look like this when I'm out" and right about the time we were halfway down the bar and she just got done talking to someone I mentioned to her "By the way, with what you were talking about earlier, I'm mildly autistic. It's not that I'm sad or anything, just that it's like having a muzzle on my brain and I get brickwalled by it everytime I wanna chill and shoot the s**t with people." - in otherwords I was telling her that I appreciate your concern though I'd feel bad if your worrying more than you need to, everythings about as ok as it's gonna be.

As I figured she was able to take that in without any negative effect and from the context I put it in, it came out more like a show of good NT social and empathy skills. Now the next step is finding a slick way to pass that on to a girl who I'm interested in hooking up with at the right time - first thig is meeting someone who's a). really interested in me and b). has that kind of personality where its not gonna be a strike against me. I have a girl like that in one of my classes but the problem is she's as tenative and guarded on that end as I am, it took 4 or 5 months of sitting next to her for us to really warm up and chit-chat regularly, and it might be another 4 or 5 before either of us can think of a safe enough excuse, context, and time to say, "Hey, what are you doing saturday?"

Lol, by the way WooYay, didn't mean to ramble and go way off point on that post. I just figured that last part was some info that everyone could use and that post was a good excuse to pop it up somewhere. Yeah, we're all aspies, I know its all chillin, but I still like to explain why I do stuff like that at times.

You know I had an interesting experience regarding flirting. Before this 'event' I was terrified to flirt, because I didn't understand it and I didn't want to scare my interest off.

But I was fortunate that an old friend that I hadn't spoken to in a couple years invited me to his pre-birthday-party party (don't ask!). Now, one of my good qualities is my unusual sense of humour, which stems from my thought process (see my sig, for details). A girl there took a liking to that and started talking to me. Now, I was at a party with people I didn't know, and was likely to not see again. The girl who was interested in me, I didn't know and she was also tipsy, if not drunk.

I thought I'd use this as a platform to test the waters of flirting. Like at one time she sat across my lap, and I placed my hand on her ankles, and the the other arm around her back. I started complimenting her, all of which I think is flirting. When the night ended, I thought that was it, and I considered it a successful experiment.

Imagine my surprise when my friend called me two days later to offer me a chick and a movie (premiere night of Spiderman 2); the one who liked me at the party. Of course, a girl interested in me is a rarer event than the Big Bang, so of course I went. And with no thanks to the other friends who came along, they constantly pressured me to kiss her and all. That kinda reminded me of my self consciousness and so I got nervous, and simply did what they were telling me to do to shut them up. After another awkward and touchless date, I ended up going to her friends birthday party to find her trading large amounts of saliva with another guy. So that one didn't end well.

But I still learned a little and I consider that a positive....

For me, the calculus is simple: If she appears to be flirting, I hit on her. Why pass up a perfectly good opportunity?

I try that and they stop trying to flirt with me... it's most peculiar and annoying at the same time...