No doubt that flirting is one of the hardest and most difficult thing to learn on your journey to become better socially. When helping begineers overcome their social anxiety, we quickly prescribe principles, scripts or whatever else to help someone feel a more secure sense of self. Even then it still fails!

But you as the user knows is that it doesnt work in the long term. Speech is almost infinite in its nature. The moment you create a theory around flirting, you may quickly come to find that this theory does not apply in XYZ situations and on you go looking for the next theory.

I have a very simple way to help you make sense of flirting.

First you have to understand that the "objective experience" is not so objective when it comes from person to person. You struggle with flirting, building connection, love and trust exactly for this reason. You have failed to acknowledge that experience is not objective but subjective.

Consider this:

  1. Raw data enteres through our five senses
  2. Our awareness discriminates between raw data using attention
  3. What we have paid attention to now filters through a layer of past experience
  4. Past expereince greatly shapes how we intrepret raw data
  5. Intrepretation now becomes conscious thoughts

Second is that you have to bridge your subjective experience and overlap it with the experience of another person. Consider this:

  • Trust is built when you accurately describe their experiences and perspectives
  • Trust is built when you do not exploit their weakness and vulnarabilities
  • Trust is built when the perceived commitment is high (anti-slutty)
  • Trust is built when there is confidence in the process

The only thing that bridges a lousy flirt and a great flirt in my experience is the ability to emphatize and step into the experiences and perspectives of another person. Look at the comment section of all posts in this subreddit, most people are only interested in pushing forward their agenda, and this is the reason why people are bad at flirting.

I might also be a great flirt with one woman and a terrible flirt with another (chemistry). What this really means is that I was able to empathize with one woman, and was unable to do so with the other.

A great flirt simply means this.

That he is able to consistently step into the subjective reality of strangers, and communicate that he understands their experience and perspectives accurately.

Cheers,
FriendlyWrenChilling