I went to a Flirting Workshop, and here’s what I learnt
Last month I went to an annual sober festival with a group of dear friends. The sun was out, people were smiling, and a range of insightful, esoteric and playful workshops was offered. What caught my eye was the “Conscious Flirting Workshop” facilitated by Jayaraja and Lilamani.
The reason why I was attracted to this workshop is that I believe that I blatantly cannot flirt. In all the years of my adulthood, the most successful times I have made my feelings known to someone I was romantically and/or sexually attracted to had been to look them in the eyes (usually not sober) and either throw my lips at theirs or say “I am attracted to you. I like you.” Don’t get me wrong, these techniques work very well, but I found them to be rather crass and usually took a great deal of courage to conjure up. As a woman, I was usually met with surprise. From what I hear, it’s not common for the female sex to be so forward.
I wanted to understand if there were more subtle and delicate ways I could attract a mate. I’m one of those “assertive” women who grew up around boys and, later, men (having studied engineering and then continued to work as a young adult in male-dominated industries). I disliked wearing make-up and certainly, in the last decade, have given up dressing to look “sexy” — dressing for comfort has been my thing (and I owned this during the lockdown, mind you). What I’m trying to say here is that I don’t see myself as being delicate or subtle in many ways, least of all in the fine art of flirting.
My friends, however, appear to be very good at this “flirting” skill. One of them especially appears to be attracting romantic attention all the bloody time! How does she do this? I wanted to acquire these skills, too, instead of bumbling around like an absolute goof hoping that someone would be able to read my mind. It’s most likely that once attracted to someone, my body language is screaming at them, “don’t touch me”… *sigh*.
Getting back to the point — I felt excited, nervous and awkward as I queued up for this Conscious Flirting Workshop — along with around 120+ other people. And here’s what I learned.
1. Eye Contact
So it might be obvious to most that eye contact is a huge part of non-verbal flirting. It was and wasn’t to me. I knew I needed to look people in the eye from across the room (I’d listened to enough love songs and watched enough rom-coms), but for me, this eye contact lasted for about a millisecond. It was usually “I’m looking at them, oh my god, they’ve seen me now look away!” and then “ah… they should know I’m interested in them now.” Wrong technique. Apparently, one needs to maintain eye contact past the point of comfort. It actually felt reassuring for me to know that there is actually a point of comfort and flirting involved actively (and consciously) going past it to make your intentions known!
Luckily we had space to practice this, as around 120+ of us circled each other in the giant workshop tent, making long eye contact with each other. I still don’t know if I am comfortable doing this, but maybe with practice, I can get very good at this. But then I might come across a slightly creepy… ?
2. The “Look Back”
The “look back” involves, well, looking back. Say you are walking down the road, you’ve managed to catch the object of your attraction’s eye and maintain eye contact that is past the point of your comfort. The next step would be to look back at them once you have passed each other. I mean, I felt a little silly doing this. What if they didn’t look back at me? That was the point, though, that if they also felt attracted to you, they might glance back, and you’d catch each other’s eyes.
Again, we practised this in the workshop. Unfortunately, out of the ten or so people I “looked back” at, only one of them reciprocated and happened to be a friend of mine too who, out of sheer desperation, I had whispered, “I feel so rejected! Please look back at me” to. Which worked.
3. See the beauty in yourself to see the beauty in others. Seeing the beauty in others helps them see it in themselves
I absolutely love this quote! Effectively for me, it sums up to: compliment each other and do it confidently! I learnt that in order to be able to see the beauty in others, one needs to be able to see it first in themselves. So in small circles, we practised telling each other qualities about ourselves that we loved, e.g. “I love that I tell great jokes!”. Then we gave feedback on if it sounded confident or not. I guess part of this is that we need to feel confident about who we are and what we are offering. Once we can do that, then we can naturally see what other people are offering and give it generously. For example, “You tell great jokes!”.
I also learnt that we should be generous with our compliments. I hadn’t thought about being generous with compliments before and had only really given them when I felt like it. Or maybe subconsciously when I needed to make a relationship work for some reason (e.g. at work with colleagues or with my boss, yep, brown-nosing business). It felt great to be invited just to tell people how amazing they were and not hold back. But a few boundaries were also needed, the first being that we should compliment our partners more than we compliment others (and flirt with them more!), and the second (which was my worry) was how all this eye gazing and complimenting would be received. I mean, what if I was eye-fucking you but didn’t actually want to fuck you (or date you, or marry you) after the first conversation we had together? This leads us to the last lesson that I learned about flirting.
4. Saying No is saying Two Yes's
So, to feel confident about flirting, you also need to feel confident about saying no and receiving no. If you aren’t, then you might feel inclined to cross your boundaries to either please people (yes, I’ll go on a date with you, even though I’m not sure I feel like it anymore) or throw a tantrum because you’ve been rejected (or worse, self-pity). Learning to say “no” well was also a lesson; just screaming “NO!” at people isn’t ever really going to end well (for either party). But a no with a yes in front and a yes behind was an eloquent way of turning someone down. For example, “I’m so flattered that you want to ask me out. Unfortunately, I can’t say yes at this moment because I am with someone else”. Or “I’m not sure we would be compatible, but I know someone out there would love that quality about you”. With this no, there is a “yes” to either your partner or yourself and then a “yes” for the other person to meet someone else and find happiness (ever after).
Okay, I’m still a little rusty at this, so maybe they’re not the best examples. But I’m working on it. And because I want to be able to flirt more, I will have to learn how to graciously say no more and receive no more.
Has any of this stuff worked for me, you might ask? Well, maybe. I mean, right after said sober festival, I did end up spending several nights with a dreamy guy who gazed right back into my eyes, although he never once did “look back” when he rolled his bike out of my house (which appears to be where I am most rejected). I’m working on complimenting everyone more and enjoying the pleasure that ripples across their face. Overall, it was a wonderful workshop which I would highly recommend (if only to meet lots of wonderful single people who are trying to learn the same thing and laugh about it awkwardly, then ask each other out less awkwardly afterwards) and I learned some valuable lessons which I hope you have enjoyed.
*long eye gaze*
*look back*
