Flirting 101

Last night I was talking to a friend about my New Year's resolutions. There was one on there that I had actually forgotten about (awesome, I forgot in a week, this is promising) and I was kind of embarrassed to share it. The resolution: Learn to flirt. My friend made a good point when he asked me, "What does that even mean?" I didn't have a good answer. "What is flirting?" I didn't have a good definition for that either, so I said I'd think on it and we moved on to other topics.
Today I have been thinking of this and going to two very good sources of information, Wikipedia and my friend Kyna. :) Upon reading the list that Wikipedia provided I decided that I'm not as bad as I previously had thought.

• Banter
• Blowing a kiss
• Casual touches; such as a woman gently touching a man's arm during conversation
• Coyness, affectedly shy or modest, marked by cute, coquettish, or artful playfulness (e.g. pickup lines).
• Eye contact, batting eyelashes, staring, winking, etc.
• Flattery (regarding beauty, sexual attractiveness)
• Footsie, a form of flirtation in which people use their feet to play with each other's feet.
• Giggling, or laughing encouragingly at any slight hint of intimacy in the other's behavior
• Imitating of behaviors (e.g. taking a drink when the other person takes a drink, changing posture as the other does, etc.)
• Maintaining very short distance during casual talking.
• Online chat, texting, and other one-on-one and direct messaging services while hinting affection
• Protean signals, such as touching one's hair
• Sending notes, poems, or small gifts
• Singing specially selected love songs in presence of the girl/boy.
• Smiling suggestively
• Staging of "chance" encounters
• Teasing
• Tickling
• Winking
• Eyebrow raising

The effectiveness of these several interactions has been subjected to detailed analysis by behavioral psychologists, and advice on their use is available from dating coaches.

I do some of those things!! What have I been thinking all this time!? What is the real problem? After chatting with Kyna I have come to the conclusion that the problem is not that I don't know how to flirt, it's that there are so many different ways to flirt and I compare myself to other people. That's not really fair since we all flirt differently. When my friends tell me I'm terrible at flirting, maybe they're just comparing me to their standard of flirting and I'm really not that terrible. Also I think flirting can be kind of silly sometimes and therefore I feel silly doing it. I need to give myself permission to flirt and I need to be okay with just being me. I think I'm going to take this one off the list. I don't need to learn, I just need to practice.

Here's to a more flirty 2014. :)