The flirting gene
‘Help! I’m not a born flirt’, I can hear some of you say. Wrong. You were born a fabulous flirt. We were all born fabulous flirts. Psychologists believe that flirting skills are hard-wired into the human species. Since the Stone Age, we have instinctively flirted to help us identify and attract the most likely mates for successful breeding and care of the resulting offspring.
Nowadays, however, flirting is not just a vital means of identifying your best bet for a partner, it’s also a basic form of communication between people in any social setting. It simply goes into a higher gear in romantic and sexual situations. The good news is that you can develop this innate flirting ability to a state-of-the-art level. I’ll show you how you can do this with aplomb.
First, though, we need to get something sorted out. Isn’t flirting all about being a manipulative coquette, being fluffy and getting round guys – if you’re are woman. That’s not the philosophy of the independent, 21st-century female, surely? Or if you’re a guy, using all you seductive powers to get women to bed? What would metrosexual man have to say about this, I wonder?
So, what are the meanings attached to this often misused term?
The conventions of flirting
I remember my grandmother telling me how a ‘lady’ could make herself more desirable to a ‘gentleman’. Before appearing she should take a gentle breath and silently articulate the word ‘brush’, which should leave her lips enticingly parted so that they were like ‘the petals of a new rose just bursting into bloom.’
“Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.”
Oliver Herford
This glorious strategy was, I suspect, one among many listed in Victorian books on charm and etiquette for attracting the attentions of men. Visual signals, accessories and metaphors of dress were used to communicate indirectly with the object of your interest. The fan lent itself to a whole language of flirtation. (Actually, I’ve always had a sneaky suspicion it was invented to mask gusts of bad breath emanating from mossy fangs – the result of poor dental hygiene).
Flirting has been associated both with the demure heroines of Jane Austen novels and the thrusting breasts and pouting lips of Hollywood sex sirens: from the barely expressed through to the most brazenly explicit. What’s going on? The dictionary defines flirting in many ways – most of them implying superficial or pretend courtship. For example: ‘To try to attract sexually without serious intent’; and ‘One who pays or invites attention merely for amusement.’
“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.
Jane Austen, Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice
Hot flirt role models
An excellent way of getting into flirt mode is to summon up the image of a successful flirt whose style appeals to you. Who’s your flirt role model? Consider friends, fictional characters & celebs? Then try and define your flirt style – which of the following might apply:
Naughty, Sexy, Sizzling, Playful, Wicked, Witty, Friendly, Demure, Cheeky, Clever, Smouldering, – any others?
OK, in the past to be called a flirt had certain derogatory connotations, But now lighthearted, friendly flirting is regarded as a powerful communication tool as well as a means of turning up the hormonal voltage.
Playing just a little ‘hard to get’ and the ‘thrill of the chase’ can generate amazing erotic electricity. Of course, as with any communication technique, flirting can be misused. The price to be paid for exploiting it is that you will probably end up attracting the wrong people.
“I live by a man’s code, designed to fit a man’s world, yet at the same time I never forgot that a woman’s first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick.
Carole Lombard
Switching on flirtatious feelings
Learning to flirt more effectively isn’t just about learning new behaviour. First and foremost, it’s about getting in touch with the golden, feel-good space deep down inside you without which it’s impossible to flirt. This is really useful when you’re feeling nervous and inhibited – like before a date. Try the same technique that athletes use to get into ‘winning mode’ before a big event. To get them into peak performance mode they try to recreate the positive feelings related to previous occasions when they have won. By imagining the sounds, sights, smells, feelings and excitement surrounding the occasion, they become empowered.
The ‘Golden Glow’ of success
Try it now. Close your eyes for a minute and conjure up the feelings associated with a moment in your past, a golden moment, maybe in your childhood, when you were deliriously happy, relaxed, curious, wondrous and playful – in a Golden Glow. Try and identify all the sensory elements that make up this memory. What did you hear, feel, touch, smell or taste? Imagine the scene as a film starring yourself. Intensify the colours. Enlarge the picture. Put yourself right in there.
Lock on to this Golden Glow and let it flow through your body. Where do you feel it? Your throat perhaps, or maybe your belly? Describe it. Is it like the warm rays of spring sunshine? Feel the smile spreading across your face.
Now to evoke this Golden Glow to help you feel flirtations and relaxed at will you need to link it to a ‘trigger’. Choose a special gesture you can make, such as wiggling your toes. Do it right now! Repeat the gesture and generate the Golden Glow until you have created an association between the Golden Glow and your personal flirt trigger so that, any time you want to flirt, you simply ‘fire’ your trigger. This way, you can evoke the feelings directly and can quickly slip into a fabulously relaxed state that enables you to float effortlessly into flirt mode. Practise this often and then when you’re on a date just think ‘hey, I want to connect a bit more with this person’, then trigger your flirt mode, enjoy yourself and encourage your date to feel the same.
Some people also find it helpful to visualize the image of their flirt role model. They visualize their voice, their body language and conjure up a picture of this person flirting. Then they imagine they are that person – perhaps it’s that friend who hoovers up all the eligible dates at every party!
Flirt School will give you heaps of ideas for everyday situations where you can practise ‘friendly flirting’ to hone those flirt muscles for when you want to dazzle a special person with your stunning, sexy flirt skills.
Drawing Down the Moon is a premier London dating agency that uses award winning matchmakers to help you find love. Contact us to find out more.
If you are ready to meet someone special, contact the friendly award winning matchmakers at Drawing Down the Moon Matchmaking.