Why can't flirting be more upfront?

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I always wonder the same thing. I hate it when people aren't upfront about things. I certainly wouldn't be able to pick up on flirting. I wish they could just make it easier.

Isn't that by definition what flirting is?

Flirting to me is like an advanced game that people play with social rules, because normal social rules bore them. It's like avant garde music, you have to know the conventions they are breaking to really understand it.

Most people are so social that breaking the rules for a little fun doesn't pose much of a problem. For those on the fringes of understanding social rules, flirting makes no sense. If you ever see kids 'play' where they are loose and free with rules and boundaries of reality and making up stories... flirting seems like an advanced adult version of this.

As for me, I can only begin to flirt when I'm ultra comfortable and at ease. This takes such a long time, and my ability with words is such that it rarely happens.

In the end, my only use of flirting is playing around with a potential love interest, not as a means to have fun in and of itself. So if I'm ever caught flirting, it's equivalent to saying "I like like you."

Flirting is a way to attempt to generate interest and/or show interest without being too obvious about it. It's designed not to be too obvious for plausible deniability -- if all she did was ask a silly question and play with her hair (or whatever), then if you aren't interested, then bystanders won't see her get shot down.

It's taken me 7-8 years of practice, practice practice but I think I got it down pretty damn well now (at least well enough to maintain another's interest i think). I actually enjoy it now rather than feeling like its something I need to learn, sorta like the first couple of months of training is always the hardest if you're outa shape, there comes a point where it stops being hard work and is, well, pretty f*cking awesome with the right person! I like it, I embarrassed myself the odd occassion but its cool

I think it causes more problems than it solves.

I'm always worried that I will upset someone because they think I've shot them down when actually I just didn't read the signs. My ex-boyfriend had apparently been torturing himself (not literally. Emotionally) for months because he'd been sending out signals and I hadn't been sending any back. Luckily he eventually just asked.

A side note - I worked with two guys recently, who I got on very well with, so I was let in to some of the 'guy chats'. They seemed to think that Guys are not usually just friends with a girl, and that inviting a girl over for coffee means that you are really inviting them for sex. Is this true? Whenever I've been invited for coffee before I've been provided with a caffeine based drink!

I can count the times that I've been aware of someone's interest in me on one hand. The first was in year 6 when someone said clearly that they fancied me. However I had no idea who this girl was and didn't really care at the time so nothing came of that. The next time someone flirted with me and I was unaware until afterwards when someone else who was in the conversation commented on the flirting (this was around 5 years ago).

The only attention I've gotten since then (that I know of) was from a fellow judge at a Magic event but I have no interest in returning his affections.

When it comes to flirting, guys in general, NT and Aspie, are pretty bad at reading the signals.

They did a study on this (presumably on a mostly NT sample)--

Guys in general were wrong 50% of the time, meaning that half the time, when they thought a girl was flirting with them, she was just being nice, while the other half of the time, when they thought she was just being nice, she was flirting.

Women, meanwhile, had much closer to a 90% detection rate. It goes back to the gender-specific skills we have, the way our minds are developed, the much more social world of women, etc.

Aspies, however, tend to have it a lot worse -- their detection rate, which I don't have figures for, but can guess based on personal experience and observation here, seems to be more like 10% and under. Not sure if there's any difference in gender.

When it comes to coping and life skills, it would seem this is the one that anyone who is lonely or concerned about not attracting the opposite sex needs to take very seriously. We all have to make adjustments and effort for other general social things, but this is a deep source of a lot of dissatisfaction here, so I do think it merits particular attention and focus.

My so called pick-up line was "I'm available if you want me", and it worked well.