Have you ever flickered your eyelids at a handsome stranger? Or maybe brushed up against sexy co-worker? Flirting can be exciting and worthwhile. Learn the rules and find your match.
I ‘m sitting opposite a prominent businessman. A high earner whose money my company wants. We’re negotiating for a chunk of that money and conversation is deadly serious until, unexpectedly, our eyes lock and hold for several seconds. The adrenaline rush is sudden and breathtaking. Our eyes lock a second time. There’s the slightest suggestion of a smile on his lips. The flirtation game – however inappropriate at this juncture – is on. An old flirtation addict, I’m familiar with the game – but every encounter offers new rules that need to be negotiated and that’s what pulls me in again and again. That dance with the unknown, that ego-boosting power play that sends my self-esteem into orbit. Or at least that’s what I thought.
Science says flirtation is far more complex, and that the reasons we engage in this eons-old mating dance are varied and many. “The capacity of men and women to flirt and to be receptive to flirting turns out to be a remarkable set of behaviours embedded deep in our psyches. Every come-hither look sent and every sidelong glance received are mutually understood signals of such transcendent history and beguiling sophistication that only now are they beginning to yield clues to the psychological and biological wisdom they encode,” says Joann Ellison Rodgers, author of “Flirting Fascination” in Psychology Today.
FINDING A HEALTHY MATE
At its most basic, flirting is a tool we use to identify a potential mate. It’s the first step in determining the best genetic material for our off-spring and it’s universal, occurring regardless of language, socio-economic status, religious upbringing or even species. The clues we subconsciously seek as we flirt are key in establishing our potential mate’s health status. “The virtually visceral responsiveness to physical features in flirtation may be as good a guarantee as one can get that a potential partner shapes up on a hidden but crucial aspect of health immunity to disease,” says Rodgers.
But where our caveman ancestors may have responded to more obvious clues like a muscled physique indicating likely success in hunting for food, in the urban jungle intellectual superiority can act as a greater determinant of a potential mate’s ability to provide. “When creativity, humour and intelligence are deployed during flirting, they act as an honest signal that we’ve got a reasonably well put together nervous system. They may indicate there is some developmental integrity underneath our brain,” says Steven Gangestad, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico in the US. Women, says Gangestad, are particularly good at interpreting the clues picked up during flirtation.
Reading facial gestures and emotional expressions, for example, offer us the chance to check for the presence or absence of psychological weaknesses. Having learnt all of this, I think back to my encounter with the businessman. While he is not lantern-jawed, particularly tall or well-muscled, the intellectual superiority which has earned him status as one of the country’s most successful business brains suggests to my subconscious that here is someone who can provide. When our conversation elicits the fact that he exercises regularly and eats healthily, his attractiveness grows.
The fact that he takes of care his appearance – expensive shirt, trendsetting tie – suggests that he’s determined to compete in business for some time to come; yet again, indicating his suitability as a long-term provider. Of course, flirtation is but the first step in finding a mate and often, on further investigation, we determine that those early clues failed to paint the full picture.
Some people are so practiced at flirtation that the clues they offer a potential partner may actually hide, rather than reveal, the truth. The businessman, I subsequently learnt, had been forced by his doctor to change his exercise and eating habits because of a high cholesterol count so the “health” that suggested to my subconscious his suitability as genetic material for my offspring, was not as good as I would have liked it.
NO MATE NEEDED
There are, of course, many other reasons why we flirt which are not linked primarily to the search for a mate. “We flirt to feel attractive and desirable; we flirt for spite, for fun, even to punish. We flirt from boredom,” says Johannesburg sex therapist Dr Lorraine Becker. “Obviously, not all of these are with the best intentions and you have to find out what is motivating the flirting,” she warns. Take a typical night at a pub. A group of men notices a couple of attractive young women. They confer, and then several of the men wander over to flirt with the women.
The intention is to score points in the group. The flirtation is motivated by competition, to show superiority over one another. It becomes a game with the winner the one whose flirting is reciprocated. His status in the group is instantly superior. A woman, on the other hand, might flirt in a deliberate attempt to hit back at men.
She may have had her heart broken and wants revenge. Or perhaps she is in long term relationship where her partner has stopped telling her she’s attractive; where the pressures of running a home and being a mother have left her feeling frumpy and undesirable.
To elicit a response from flirtation is a massive ego boost. “I’ve met women who will deliberately target only powerful men, reel them in then dump them at the point where they’re ready to do anything to please her. This is power play,” says Johannesburg relationship counsellor Kathryn Levinson, “and it may stem from an incident in her past where she felt devalued by a man.” All of these reasons could be interpreted as determinants of the flirter’s emotional and psychological health, so understanding what is motivating the flirting becomes necessary for self-protection. “Flirtation is governed by a complex set of unwritten laws of etiquette.
These rules dictate where, when, and with whom and in what manner we flirt. The more complex and subtle aspects of flirting etiquette can be confusing, and some of us have become so worried about causing offence or sending the wrong signals that we are in danger of losing our natural talent for playful, harmless flirtation,” says the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC), a UK-based independent non-governmental body which conducts research into social and lifestyle issues. Whatever your reasons for flirting – fun, ego, power, to find a mate – understanding those laws of etiquette will determine your level of success, and insure your status in society. “Flirtation is good for you, but can be dangerous if you go too far when you aren’t willing to pursue it. Know your limits and stick to them – and don’t be a cock teaser,” warns Dr Becker.
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