Stay Right There Tiger Flirting vs. Come Hither Flirting

(Shit. First 'when' obv = 'which')

New answers please. My sanity depends on you, etc.

well, do they get embarrased/start backpeddling if you stop yer flirty giggling and go all 'but seriously' a minute? one would assume then that the other party was just messing around and not tryna pull you. err, unless that's part of their devious strategy to catch you offguard. in which case there's no help for you, i'm afraid.

you won't know unless you ask. so do it.

According to Miss Manners, when plans are made to meet alone later.

Isn't the whole point of flirting to obscure that line? This is, in essence, why we flirt as opposed to saying "I would like to have sex with you" -- so we can have fun hinting in at it but always have the option of deciding that it was just a harmless non-obligating flirt as opposed to clearly stated intentions of something else. Like "hahaha I very well could want to have sex with you, but you'll never know unless you receptively imply same (in which case we'll just keep escalating until it's fully obvious that we're on the same page with this one)."

I mean, don't flirt just to kill time: it can be rude.

Although flirting with people to make them feel better can be polite, under the right circumstances.

Well, one of the benefits of opposite sex friends is the flirting free for all. Its good for the self-esteem. On the (very) rare occasion I catch the drift that the person is actually serious, be it someone who isn't safely tucked away in the platonic friend zone, I tend to freak out and run away.

Hints for me the flirting has moved beyond just play: the flirtacious banter lasts a little too long, goes a little too far, the girl doesn't laugh so much as just smile and keep looking at you, hands come into play.

"the girl doesn't laugh so much as just smile and keep looking at you"

I too have seen this and felt THE FEAR.

oh god i am hopeless at this kind of shit so i just always hope that whatever person i am interested in finds it really cute that i'm such a socially malfunctioning dork. so umm matt yr probably best not to take my advice.

Both sorts = classic.

hey, di? The dork store called. they say they're out of YOU. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

Ahem. This is my idea of flirting.

Pete demonstrated his pulling technique last night but I was at the bar and MISSED IT!

Nobody has ever flirted with me!

Tom! How can you forget Pete serenading you in the pub last night! That was extremely flirtatious!

I haven't had a good flirt in ages. I'm with nabisco though. You have to wait for escalation.

Tom: me too. In fact I think I may be unflirtable with; my embarrassment detector is set too high, and embarrassment makes me defensive and self-protective.

alan haha i am the dork in demand, can you handle it?

As I asked that question that is linked to, I still have no idea how to detact fanciers or flirts. I have been watching "would like to me" but there tips all seem a bit mental, like smiling at people at the Erotica Show, like wtf?, do you really want attract some rubber fetishist or something...and all that scaring the hell out of random people stuff (this belongs on Tom's creppy thread).

My idea of flirting is to make some stupid idiosyncratic jokes and make silly comments.

Rubber fetishists need love too!

Oh god I don't know, I guess the second kind makes for speedier beginning and perhaps conclusion of the thing.

Is ACTUAL I want you to know you rock my world flirting like just kissing someone or something?

BNW's "when the girl keeps smiling and just looks at you" thing is so true, there's nothing more uncomfortable even if you like the person. I remember the last time this happened I felt like asking if I'd joined a cult by mistake although it would have killed the moment I guess.

Would Like to Meet is fantastic! that one this week was incredible. the piano recital -- I wanted to know if she's ever touched a keyboard again. it was quite the closest story of a person's real emotions i have seen on tv in ages. it's the sort of thing that only happens in novels.

Alan is OTM - it's great! She was a bit of manic/depressive I thought. And she had some dire friends - did you see the dinner party. Oh God - they were like a bunch of pensioners. If she'd have cut off the hair and gone for a short stylee 4 real, like when she had the wig on, she might have been a little bit phwoar, but she looked like a bloody teg with the shaggy hair. Also the new clothes were crap - she looked like an ageing brothel madam.

I think something fairly unpleasant had happened to her in her early/mid 20's - the keyboard incident brought it to the surface and was VERY uncomfortable to watch. I had to look away.

Here's the thing: I've gotten escalation (or, at least, it feels like I have); we've gone out of our way to extend the night (alone) on numerous occasions. There have also been a number of seeming hints dropped on either side that could just as easily be construed as harmless.

The problem here is that certain extenuating circumstances mean that the situation is FAR too sticky to risk complicating by making some overt pass. In the instance that what I'm reading as flirting *isn't* actual flirting, I'd feel like a total nitwit. And I'd risk losing the friendship, which is turning out to be rather wonderful.

Is there an easy way to say something without really saying anything?

well they did mention the flatmate stealing and then marrying her boyf. i've enjoyed the other shows, but that was a bit of a scene stealer, eh?

I missed the final WLTM bah. It sounds interesting.

> My idea of flirting is to make some stupid idiosyncratic jokes and > make silly comments. How does this differ from say, the office joker archetype?

exactly Nick, it doesn't work, i'm not blind to my faults. Give me a break.

**we've gone out of our way to extend the night (alone) on numerous occasions. There have also been a number of seeming hints dropped on either side that could just as easily be construed as harmless. **

Mark - obv I don't know all the nuances and details here, BUT I think you should step on the gas. It probably IS flirting-with-intention.

**And I'd risk losing the friendship, which is turning out to be rather wonderful**

Not necessarily IMHO.

My limited experience tells me it's better to bite the bullet and make whatever's going to happen happen now, rather than wait around and be safe.

I don't think you'd necessarily ruin the friendship, perhaps it might make things awkward for a while, but she's not going to want to stop being friends with you because of how you felt. At least that would be unusual anyway.

Hope it goes well.

(bugger has 20m stopped image loading?)

Alan get an account at graffiti.net, they allow remote hosting!

you have maxed your cute kitten allowance alang

http://home.graffiti.net/alantrewartha/TITS1.jpg

Cute allowance? Bad mang allowance more like.

(hurrah, and thanks jel!)

Alright. Full disclosure:

I ended a very serious three year relationship about two months ago. This other person is someone I met through my ex (with whom I'm still very close with, BTW), and she's just getting out of a long-term, long-distance relationship as well. We met within the context of a large group of friends, of which my ex and a lot of mutual friends belong. Not soon after, we started to break off from the rest of the group occasionally, to see concerts or whatever.

Since our respective breakups (which happened within about 2 days of each other, oddly), our relationship has kind of moved in waves where we'd spend concentrated periods of time together and then not. When we would see each other, it'd always be for heroically long amounts of time, during which we'd put ourselves in situations not always befitting of two strictly platonic friends. Nothing overt, mind.

Since we so frequently seek advice from each other regarding our recently ended relationships, I'm not sure whether she even thinks of us in that context. I also get the sense that she is a naturally affectionate person, which means she may have a tendency to do/say precisely the type of things that some hapless bugger (ie. me) might otherwise misconstrue. Worse yet, I've just inadvertently found out about a friend of hers who 'put the moves' on her and creeped her out a bit.

Re-evalutions?

Sadly, the 'Wank On My Tits' candy is probably not an option.

Feck, the potential of this getting Googled has just sprung to mind. Now I'm paranoid.

Advice as before. Best of luck.

ha ha i read "Hither" as "Hitler"

Sorry Jel.

I'm not sure any amount of details means much more than what is always true, i.e. that it is more complicated than that and hard to know, especially via message board.

As for flirting, I only flirt with people I either fancy or who are completely out of my class. Like our former receptionist, more or less, at work. I am 43, she was about 25, taller than me, blonde, beautiful, looked a bit like Gwyneth Paltrow - that was okay, because she didn't take it at all seriously, and I knew she wouldn't. Someone ten years older, a bit shorter, a bit less stunning, and I wouldn't be likely to flirt unless I was interested, because I could easily be taken seriously.

(it's okay N., I was a bit touchy today)

M***k, god bless you for that "heroically long amounts of time" turn of phrase. So true. sigh

Do you have the concept of "on the rebound" in your culture? The potential danger of the mutually- supportive-type situation is the possibility of becoming associated with negative unresolved feelings about the prior relationship. Not always the case, but just a thought.

Best of luck.

felicity is right OTM with that. my advice is don't go there, (at least not for about a year!) it'll just make things worse in the long run.

That sounds complicated and I have no advice but I hope things work out painlessly somehow.