Art of Flirtation
Once upon a time there was a baby, full of legitimate human needs, like all other babies. This baby had a mother who was, like all mothers, busy. The baby had two potent methods for getting mother to pay attention to its needs. It could scream and turn red and drive her crazy, or it could charm her into responsiveness with a smile, a gurgle, and some charming gestures. When we see babies playing happy peek-a-boo with mom, we are seeing the original model for what we now call flirtation.
Flirtation Is Everybody's First Survival Skill
From our earliest cradle days we instinctively know how to reach out playfully to get attention in order to make our world hum with comforts. Our first flirtations are innocent, vital efforts to engage intimately with our caretakers, to secure special attention by giving it. From the moment babies are born, everyone is waiting for that charmed moment when they look you right in the eye and smile and coo and connect in delightful recognition.
Watch people with babies. If all is well, two sets of eyes are locked on one another, mouths smile and laugh together, there is an easy mirroring of mood, pointless laughter is exchanged. These light-hearted interactions are the social glue in our first relationships that help us get what we need. Flirting is our first survival skill.
There is much research to show that without these early experiences of I-Thou intimacy, both babies and mothers have a hard time attaching. The playful give and take between infant and adult - along with the learned expectation of emotional responsiveness, safety, and pleasure - is the foundation for healthy relatedness.
As babies turn into children, we still see them flirting. In fact, some of the most successful flirts are three or four years old. You can see a virtuoso at work if you watch any Shirley Temple movie. But something happens after the early years of natural flirtation. The innocence is swept away and we learn to be very cautious about showing our pleasure through an animated face.
By the time we reach adolescence, our innocent efforts to give and get attention become entangled with more suspect social behaviors. It becomes almost a character defect to want attention in the first place, an act of subversion to get too much of it. If not considered downright dangerous, it is frequently thought of as shallow or selfish. That's too bad, because flirting is an important survival skill for adults as well as babies.
Since it is so important yet so often trivialized, flirtation begs for a legitimizing re-frame. Flirtation should be thought of as an exchange of mild appreciative attention which has no purpose beyond momentary mutual delight. There is no action goal involved, no manipulation indicated, and no social inequity implied. In fact, flirting is an exchange that transcends social hierarchies of age or status - probably of species. And it is virtually impossible to flirt with an unwilling partner. After all, it is the spontaneous mutuality that makes it flirting in the first place.
How to Tell the Difference Between Flirting, Seduction, and Teasing.
How can you recognize flirtation? By how you feel while you are doing it! If you are looking at or chatting with someone and you begin to feel a warm glow and start having kind thoughts about yourself and them, you are probably flirting. It makes you feel special without having to do anything. If you have any trouble identifying this innocent glow, watch Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp.
Flirtation is, unfortunately, frequently confused with seduction. To make the difference clear, seduction can be defined as giving concentrated attention to someone in order to get them to do or feel something. The focus is not on your feeling, but theirs, with an element of persuasion which may or may not include sexuality. One person is actively trying to mobilize the desire of another.
One way to tell if there is a seduction going on is that there is some feeling of pressure - pleasant or unpleasant - to do something. This is not necessarily bad. You can observe a happy seduction by watching Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. For seduction with a negative flavor, you would have to rent Fatal Attraction. But remember this distinction: seduction promotes some sort of action in the future, while flirtation is strictly in the present and requires no follow-up to complete its purpose.
Flirtation is also sometimes muddled together with an almost universally cursed behavior called teasing. To set the record straight, teasing occurs when someone gives you a concentrated dose of attention in order to get you to do something you are not going to get to do anyway. The result is disappointment flavored with humiliation. All teasing has a secret agenda, frequently a hostile one, and sometimes a sexual one.
You can usually tell if you are being teased by someone who does not wish you well because you will feel turned on, hurt, angry, and powerless all at the same time. If you want a dramatic reference for hostile sexual attention, watch Sharon Stone confront a bunch of aroused and angry police detectives in Basic Instinct. She is clearly not flirting.
Transcendental Flirting
Compared to many forms of social interaction, flirtation comes out way ahead in terms of the values it represents. Furthermore, we need it. Besides babies, I cannot think of anyone who needs to flirt more than single adults. We could all use a little more spontaneous warmth, more unexpected compliments, appreciative glances, laughter, and more opportunity to share our aliveness with no strings attached. And this not beyond our reach. Flirtation is not a capability limited to a few supremely beautify and confident individuals. It is a skill we are all born with - the original human skill of making first connections.
If you are a single person and you want to maximize your possibilities of finding a friend, a lover, a domestic partner, or a soulmate, you need to be able to receive and give attention from the highest perspective. You need to be able to send our your vital vibes. You need to transcend all the miserly messages of fear which tell you to withhold, withhold, withhold. How are you going to do this if you don't use your face and your eyes and your body to communicate yourself?
Flirtation is a necessary first step in negotiating mental, physical, and emotional boundaries. Where else are you going to start to "taste" someone's flavor if not with an obligation-free exchange of mild, pleasant attention? Specific techniques of flirtation are common across many cultures, but the key feature in adult life is the same as it is for babies: a responsive face that radiates personhood and engages through delight.
If you have any questions about this, I prescribe ten hours of Shirley Temple movies followed by extended flirtation practice with a puppy. Then put your courage behind your expansive intentions and start sharing your open countenance more generously. If you are searching for your True Companion, you must start by receiving them through a responsive face. You want a soulmate? Remember the old adage "the eyes are the windows of the soul," and start interacting on the soul level.
Finally . . . if none of this convinces you of the spiritual and social value of flirtation, you may need authoritative permission from someone who will not hesitate to tell you what to do. In that case, you have my benevolent admonition to flirt proudly.