Flirting - why?

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Game?



It is for me. It's my kind of dating.



Cannot recognize myself in that either. Flirting for me is absolutely not aggressive, and if it is threatening you must do it all the wrong way. It's also not sexual. It's all about showing interest and to show you are serious about it and want to invest some time without any direct reward.



Never happened to me.

What you describe seems a lot more like cat-calling than flirting.

I'm an AS guy, and I'm with others on telling him directly to stop if you don't like it. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone picks up on "vibes" easily.

Personally, I'd like almost any woman (even one who could be my grandmother) getting a little "friendly" with me, but that's because I'm very straight, sexual and sex-starved. If she's at all attractive, I might do something similar in response (turnabout is fair play, amirite?) I wouldn't want any man trying anything and I'd ask him to stop if he did. I'm not enough of a **** to cry harassment without giving him fair (and direct!) warning, however - even if said direct rejection hurts his feelings.

Unfortunately, since some people think dropping hints is as clear a "no" or "yes" as literally saying so, I'm scared to death of making any kind of "first move." All it takes is one complaint to people I know, and my innocence will FOREVERMORE be in doubt. I can get "into it" MUCH MUCH MORE if I have it spelled out in advance (verbally or even in writing) that I can do X, Y and Z. Since this is a mood-killer to many NT's, I might have to find myself an AS woman. :/

So I guess I'm somewhat capable of flirting if she makes the first move, but it's unlikely to escalate much if at all beyond what she starts with - I feel like I'm pushing it enough just responding with the same! It will take direct talk to get past first base for sure, and that's not something a lot of women are comfortable with. :/

It's inherently psychologically intrusive, no matter how you go about it. It might only be subconsciously threatening, but it's threatening nonetheless. It inherently makes people feel uncomfortable. And that discomfort might be manifested in arousal or something else. There's nothing "wrong" with that. It's just the way it is.

I think you might be confusing the effects of something with intent. Making someone uncomfortable on some level doesn't convey a desire to harm them. It's obviously innocent and harmless perhaps in most cases and not entirely unwelcome. But that doesn't make it less provocative.

I don't know how women perceive it, but I never feel threatened by flirting. It always gives me a super-good feeling, it's not provocative, it's not uncomfortable, and that's about it. I never get (sexually) aroused by flirting. It operates on a purely non-sexual plane for me.

I get the impression it serves at least in part, as an informal social intelligence test on the part of the flirter to judge the Darwinian fitness of the flirtee. just a thought.

I flirt for two reasons:

1) it is fun and exciting.
2) It is how to move the relationship to sex or boyfriend/girlfriend.

Other people might flirt for other reasons.

A social intelligence test?
Perhaps for NTs, but for me it is more of a persistence test than a social intelligence test. Without enough persistence nothing else than flirting will happen, so it does work as a fitness test, just not for social intelligence.

If you remove "sex" I'd agree with you.

Or even better:
2) It is how to get into a relationship without doing any traditional dating

In regards to flirting, I might even point out that if I had a sexual interest in somebody before I started flirting with her, the sexual interest would inevitably disappear if she responds. This has happened several times. Therefore, I can claim for sure that the flirting I do is purely non-sexual as it even turns off sexual interest. If psychological theories claims otherwise they just cannot account for my behavior and preferences, which is natural since most of psychology is about NTs.

What about subconscious effects of flirting, though? You're conflating intention with effect--it doesn't affect everyone the same way. Flirting is inherently invasive. Not inherently NEGATIVE. Not inherently UNWELCOME. But most definitely provocative. Most of the time you'll evoke some kind of cognitive response. If you're forward with someone, they may vie for the offensive and fire back with an equal or more flirtatious response, or they may become defensive and tell you what you can do to yourself. You seem to be somewhat indifferent to how it subconsciously affect others, but flirting challenges one's sense of security. All you're doing is playing a game. If you enjoy dominating someone with flirty talk, you'll feel good. If you think someone is a creep, you'll get icked out if they try something invasive like that.

Never happens. It's only a minority of girls that are receptive to neurodiverse flirting, and those that are will simply play by the rules, and they will never do anything offensive, or even say anything. The whole thing is non-verbal, and those that participate seems to know that subconsciously. The one's that are not receptive will simply break the rules of the game (like ignoring, looking too much or not doing it repetitively), and when I notice that I won't take it any further because they are incompatible and cannot handle it properly.



Absolutely not. I never talk to girls I flirt with. That would break the rules of the courtship behavior. I'm also not dominant, rather prefer a more submissive role.

Last edited by rdos on 13 Dec 2014, 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

I can't wait to kiss my second date

Exactly. You prefer being in a position of control.

Not always. I like it when women take initiatives to things that are outside of my control. In the flirting situation I'm typically the initiator though. Probably because a lot of women (as well as a lot of WPers) really don't know how this works and are afraid of initiating things that might look strange and come out as creepy. However, often nobody else will notice what is going on, so there really is no reason to be afraid. This is unlike more typical verbal flirting that outsiders much more easily can pick up on.

Doms don't have boundaries; subs do, and are in a more powerful position of control than they appear.


Well, you're talking about strictly non-verbal communication. I was in a relationship once with someone who was legally blind, so body language was out. Which left verbal communication and touch. It's almost identical to what you're describing with WP folks and some others.

But, there you go…of course they're afraid of initiating what might appear strange and creepy. They are aware on some level of how threatening it is. No, there's no actual REASON to be afraid, which is my point. But people tend to have an instinctive response to it as an invasive threat. It's very animalistic. Someone invades your emotional territory and you immediately put your guard up. The response varies with the individual… They might get seriously upset over an unwanted advance. They might get creeped out. That's a "flight" response--avoid the threat. Or the person might stand his or her ground, responding with a challenge i.e. flirting back. It creates tension either way, and ideally this tension will manifest itself as sexual arousal.

Either way, it's just a big, dumb mating ritual. It's a game. Not a zero-sum game, but a game in which hopefully all parties involved end up winning.

I'm sure you are right about it all from an NT point of view. However, I'm not talking about invasive NT-type verbal flirting (which probably is closely related to cat-calling). I'm talking about a whole different thing that is nonverbal and non-sexual.

I still claim that people avoid it because of the "creepiness" factor and because they have no idea of how it works, not because of the possible threat.

To back that up I can give you some stories where I have played this game with much younger, beautiful women that I had otherwise had no chance to get any attention from. The only realistic reason why they participated was that they did it because they acted naturally, and didn't evaluate what happened consciously. The threat-factor was non-existent as in several cases this repeated itself many times, and they certainly had the option to ignore the whole thing but they didn't. In fact, if it had triggered their fight-and-flight response they would have ignored the whole thing, but instead they participated in the game every time we met.



Sure, it is a game. A very rewarding game though.