The Flirting Dictionary

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Several people on this forum have been told they were flirting when they didn't intend to, and weren't aware that they were doing so, simply because they don't know where the line is drawn between being friendly and flirting. I felt that it could be useful to have a thread where the finer points were discussed. I'll start it off:

1) If a boy continues teasing a girl he doesn't know very well, is this automatically considered as flirting? What if the boy is teasing her because she likes it and is easy and 'good value' to tease?

2) If a boy invites a girl he doesn't know very well to have a coffee with him somewhere, is this automatically considered as a request to go out on a date? What if he just wants to get to know her further but doesn't have romance in mind?

It's only flirting if you comment on how attractive someone is or how intelligent they are or any other comment that required you to somewhat "evaluate" them. People "evaluate" each other to see if there's a good fit. Flirting involves commenting on the superficial and making general statements to someone you don't really know well. A person can actually go on a date without any flirting involved. Being friendly is inviting someone to coffee to chat - not about how good-looking they are but about current invents. If you were to say to this person over coffee that you really liked how they view the world - now, that a flirt. It's a general statement involving your "evaluation" of them. Sometimes Flirts are seen as shallow people.
That's why Flirts tend to make superficial comments. If you talk about politics but say something like,"I like how your eyes get real big and pretty when you talk about socialized medicine." Now, that's a flirt. Being friendly is being generous with your in time in order to socialize with a particular individual. You leave the conversation actuallly knowing something about that person and whether there is anything in common between you. Flirting is just "indulging" in another person. It's not a two-way conversation. You shouldn't tease people you don't know very well - it's inappropriate. It's a type of flirting. Flirting is generally seen as a shallow behavior because people do it al the same especially in the street and in groups. It's superficial. It's done between complete strangers. The only reason why a girl would "like" being teased is because she sees your teasing as flirting with her. Maybe that's what she was taught. You're telling her in a sense that she is "physically" appealing to you.
A date IS for getting to know a person. How could you possibly have romance in mind if you don't even know the person. Usually if you flirt with someone you hardly know and invite them to coffee with supposed "romance" in mind, you're after casual sex...not romance.

I'm not sure how it would come across that I like her physically, although it would obviously show that I enjoy her company. In addition, I don't see where you draw the line between indulging in someone and being generous with your time. If I have a conversation to get to know them for five minutes, and it degenerates into humorous teasing, you say I am flirting. If I play chess with them for five minutes whilst having a humorous conversation to get to know them, am I flirting? If not, why? I've spent the same amount of time with them, doing the same thing, for the same reason.

Perhaps I should rephrase the question. If someone says, "Mike and Susan are dating", then it means they are in a relationship with each other. If Charles asks Danielle on a date, then it means Charles wants to be in a relationship with Danielle. If Danielle turns down the invitation, then it means Danielle doesn't want to be in a relationship with Charles. The very usage of the word suggests that it is impossible to have a date without there being some underlying romantic interest between the parties. Additionally, I know that an invitation to have coffee is used both as an opportunity for platonic socialising, and also as a standard request for a date (the coffee outing being the date itself). So the question is, if I invite a girl I hardly know out for coffee but I'm not romantically interested in her, how can she tell the difference between it being a request for platonic socialising and being a request for a date?

Last edited by CrinklyCrustacean on 24 May 2011, 4:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

Explaining exactly 'how' to flirt is difficult and possibly dangerous territory to tread, because there are cultural differences involved depending on where you live in the world.
I'm struggling with flirting myself, it's something I've never been good at.

I sure know how to flirt. I have the opposite problem. I'm far too good at it.

'she was really juicing' = she heated up like an oven

'sniffing around each other' = much like dogs, self explanatory

'brewers droop' = unable to sustain an erection because of alcohol

'humping her leg like a small dog' = when a man tries very hard to bed a woman

Yeah, I can get really flirty. I'm better at it in text than in person though. Alcohol helps though.

How do you tell the difference between getting to know a person for the sake of a friend vs. a date? You can try to get to know a person for the sake of just wanting to be friends but that person might mistaken it for you being interested in them? Often times, I sometimes dont even know that Ive been asked out by guys, I just go along with it.

Oh boy. I may have unknowingly done that some 10 years ago. And when later she said I should take her out for dinner sometime I thought she was joking. No wonder I got some odd comments from other people a few days later. I wonder what she's doing now.

Like saying "You sure need to have a lot of patience to do what you do, I certainly wouldn't be able to do that" while she's performing her job?

Well, she'd just read the body language and the subtle between-the-lines messages you've given her, of course.....just kidding.

Seriously, even for a NT it might not be possible to know. There used to be a very juicy phrase applied to some married men - "he's been seeing another woman" - so I grew up thinking it was taboo and always led to sexual activity. But it seems to depend on the social group. In my experience, bohemians, dropouts and hippies rarely read sexual connotations into a simple social meeting. But the more traditional, Abrahamic types would rarely see it as innocent. In my limited experience, when a boy and a girl get together like that, there's nearly always some kind of sexual interest going on, even if it remains forever in fantasy. Ultimately I guess it boils down to whether or not you fancy each other much.

I suppose for a male there's always what I call the "burst test" - i.e. just come onto them and see how they react. Not for the squeamish....though you won't necessarily ruin a beautiful friendship by doing that inappropriately - as long as you don't come on TOO strong, and can back off without letting your behaviour deteriorate into embarrassment or resentment, you might just find that you've strengthened the firendship - also once somebody knows you feel that way about them, sometimes they'll reconsider you, if you don't overload them with your advances in the meantime.

I suppose in theory a girl could simply ask what kind of date it's supposed to be. Though it's surprising how often such stuff is kept shrouded in mystery. I suspect that society has this unwritten rule that says you don't explicitly reveal your sexual interests verbally, you reveal it with your bodies by coming on to each other. Normal human mating behaviour would appear to be full of deception.

There's this saying that goes something like... 'If a woman and a man is stuck on an island, given enough time, the talk will eventually always lead to sex'.
Don't know if that's true for aspies though...

In 1979 I declared the following equation to have considerable validity in real life:

Boy + Girl + Sufficient Time in Private = Sex

But I have to admit it's not universally true. Siblings and many other family members are strongly tabooed because of the genetic damage problem, then there's gay people who would need a slightly different equation, then there's the asexuals, and of course everybody has some self-control, and some people have figured out that some sexual encounters wouldn't be worth the heartache. And sometimes one person just doesn't fancy the other. And sometimes they're already having a great sex life anyway. But apart from that, my equation is pretty good.

With the desert island, obviously a lot of the normal social pressures will have gone. If you thought you were going to be there for the rest of your lives, it would be rather difficult not to, I mean you'd have to be lucky every night but the Selfish Gene would only have to be lucky once.

I don't know about Aspies. Obviously the asexual and gay ones wouldn't, unless they got REALLY bored.

It's flirting as long as she welcomes or permits it. If she rejects it, then it's harassment.

It's like sex: if she says 'yes', then everything is okay, but if she says 'no' (even during the act), then it becomes rape.

What always fazes me is that I don't quite know what flirting is, though I'm sure I must have used it and responded to it at times.......the OP has already mentioned teasing and dating.......I found this on the Web
http://dineshskd.blogspot.com/2011/03/t ... rting.html
Any advances on that for a thorough breakdown of the elements? It seems a bit lightweight to me.