Flirting For Dummies

Elizabeth Clark

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780470742594
• eBook ISBN: 9781119996873
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development

A straight-talking guide to decoding the intricacies of flirting Many people are mortified by their flirting skills and get flustered when dealing with people they're attracted to. This easy-to-follow manual to mastering the art of flirting offers indispensable advice on working the dating scene and reinvigorating your love life. Exploring key areas including listening and communication skills, body language and self-image, Flirting For Dummies provides readers with all the tools they need to boost their self-confidence and engage with people in a natural and charming way.

Flirting For Dummies:

• Features black and white photographs to provide examples of flirting in action
• Gives advice on getting to grips with flirting basics and how to get noticed
• Covers how to develop a killer rapport with body language
• Provides advice on taking the next step
• Gives 'Top Ten' tips such as opening lines and flirting faux pas

About the author

Elizabeth Clark is a renowned flirting and charisma expert. She has featured on ITV's Des & Mel, BBC Breakfast, and in a host of radio shows and press articles. Elizabeth is the founder of Rapport Unlimited- a company specialising in presentation skills training and keynote speaking.

Part I

Getting to Grips with Flirting

In this part . . .

This part contains all the fundamentals of flirting you need, as well as info on how to fix your flirting approach. I aim to make you ready and motivated to get out there and start mixing it up with friends, colleagues, and potential dates.

Chapter 1

The Making of a Successful Flirt

In This Chapter

Understanding the fundamentals of flirting

Recognising and sending flirting signals

Putting yourself in the flirting zone

Mother Nature has blessed you with all the skills you need to be a super flirt. Perhaps you’ve lost touch with these skills along the way or haven’t used them enough to have full confidence in them, but believe me you do have the skills and you can improve them to whatever degree you desire.

Flirting is a subtle combination of body language, confidence, attitude, and appearance. You can employ these features of your character to flirt in different ways, from the innocent, non-sexual, mutual kind of flirting where you’re not attracted to the other person to full-on flirting when you’re madly attracted to someone. Flirting’s not just about sex, although that is a very pleasant by-product when the feeling’s mutual, but about making personal connections with people you find interesting and want to get to know.

When you flirt with someone they feel good about themselves, and in return you feel good too. Being flirted with is the ultimate confidence booster and it’s free.

If you’ve ever felt that a chapter out of your flirting life felt more like ‘How to lose friends and alienate people’, then your flirting exploits are just about to make a huge paradigm shift.

Flirting Fundamentals

For most people, the big flirting concerns are:

How do I get people to notice me?

How can I tell if they fancy me?

What am I going to say?

How do I move things on from being just friends?

I cover all of these issues in this book. What you need to know now are some of the basic principles that apply to flirting, explained in the following sections.

Tuning animal instincts

Flirting in the human and animal worlds has been studied by everyone from anthropologists to psychologists and you can use their findings to your benefit.

In the animal kingdom, the males are adorned with ornate tail feathers, impressive manes, or striking markings to attract a female. In humans, however, the situation’s reversed: with the exception of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when men sported massive wigs and flamboyant clothing, women have taken on the role of prettying themselves to attract a mate.

Studies show that women initiate flirting 90 per cent of the time. Although men appear to do most of the running, they actually do so because women have invited their advances with their flirting signals.

In addition, both humans and animals follow species-specific mating rituals and displays that the other members are familiar with. Human courtship follows a five-step pattern when you meet someone you’re attracted to:

1. You make eye contact. A passing glance doesn’t cut it; flirting requires a deliberate eye contact that’s held long enough for the other person to definitely notice.

2. You smile. Smiling shows you have an interest and is a non-verbal way to invite someone’s attention.

3. You preen a bit. Arranging your hair, smoothing your clothes, and positioning yourself on your best side catches the attention of interested parties.

4. You build rapport. Disclosing personal information about yourself and asking questions about the other person accelerates the attraction process.

Disco dummy

Jake went to his first ever school disco. He’d looked up some tips online and spoken to his big brother about meeting girls. He came back with his ego deflated. ‘I flirted at loads of girls and none of them were interested,’ he told his mother. ‘What made you think they were interested in the first place?’ she asked. ‘Nothing, I just fancied them, so I flirted at them,’ he replied. Jake was lucky enough to have a mum that could give him the lowdown on how girls think and his next disco was much more successful.

Jake made a schoolboy error that many men continue to make throughout their adult lives. First, you need to find someone who’s available; then you flirt with them, not at them. To be a successful flirt, look for the signs and follow your instincts.

5. You find reasons to touch both yourself and the other person. Touching yourself in autoerotic gestures and touching them at moments of increased rapport lets them know you’re interested.

Follow your animal instincts to attract more friends and lovers. If you want to attract the opposite sex, emphasise your sexual differences; to discourage an attraction, downplay your differences.

Flirting: A game of two halves

It takes two to flirt. You can’t flirt at someone; to have any chance of success, you flirt with them. Flirting with someone is like dancing: the movements are co-ordinated, but different.

In general, your role in and success with a romantic flirtation is determined by your gender. Women’s success with men is directly related to their ability to send out courtship signals and to interpret how they reciprocate. Men’s success with women relies on their ability to read the signals being sent to them, as opposed to being able to initiate their own flirting rituals. Both women and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part I: Getting to Grips with Flirting
• Part II: Getting Noticed! Making Contact
• Part III: Developing Killer Rapport with Body Language
• Part IV: Taking the Next Step
• Part V: The Part of Tens