What Is Flirting, Really?

Flirting is typically misunderstood. It’s not just something that single people do at bars. It’s not a trick or manipulative scheme. And it doesn’t have to be a prelude to sex.

What comes to mind when you picture flirting? Is it a schemy guy or a vivacious woman? When we change our mental pictures, and open our minds to what flirting actually is in its purest sense, a whole new world of healthy, erotic fun becomes available to us.

At its heart, flirting is a form of adult play. It’s relational creativity that arises from presence, pleasure, and attention. It’s the natural result of allowing someone to feel our aliveness – our delight in existence – without needing anything from them in return. The art of flirting is human and extremely needed.

The School of Life breaks it down beautifully in this witty video. They invite you to flirt and (tastefully, respectfully) give the gifts of approval and acceptance to those around you – since that’s what we’re often craving from sex, and those gifts should be shared more freely, without agenda. 

As the video says: “Good flirting is, in essence, an attempt driven by kindness and imaginative excitement to inspire another person to believe more firmly in their own likeability, psychological, as much as physical.”

(The School of Life’s quick, cartoon-style videos have a uniquely dry, very British sense of humor that makes emotional education really fun. I recommend them, especially their content on attachment styles. This video about flirting is genius, I think.)

How to Practice the Art of Flirting

So much full-bodied joy can come into our lives when we treat flirting in this way, instead of getting wrapped up in what we think it looks like or whatever narratives we’ve picked up from our cultures of origin.

Of course, a lack of erotic integrity is one of the main things that blocks the flow of playful flirting. We can all feel when someone is struggling to contain their energy and has a not-so-subtle agenda. And nothing squashes the feeling of play like an agenda.

So, let’s forget about the potential outcomes or outward appearances of flirting – and tune into how it feels. 

Try It with This Embodiment Practice

When you allow yourself to relax, to down-regulate your nervous system, and to consciously turn your attention towards pleasure, it changes the complete feel of your presence. People pick up on it when your energy shifts out of anxiety and into pleasure – even if you never say a word to them.

This art of turning toward pleasure is a skill, and like any skill, it requires practice. We tend to treat attention like something that happens to us, but we actually have a great deal of control over it. We can choose to tune into our to-do list or our worries. We can also choose, even for just a few moments, to tune into something more life-giving.

I invite you to practice with me. Bring your attention to the seat that you’re sitting on. Feel where it touches your skin and your skin through your clothes. This object was literally made to hold your body – so, in a sense, the more you allow it to hold you, the more you are helping it fulfill its purpose on earth.

How would you relax if you knew the chair loved having you relax into it? How would you exhale and sit back if it could let you know that cradling your body feels so good?

Expand your view beyond your chair. How would you walk if you knew that the earth longed to feel the full weight of your body? How would you breathe if you knew that the air liked being inside your body?

When the air moves into your lungs, it processes its constituent elements and travels through your blood to every inch of your skin. What if you imagined that the air loved penetrating you in this way? How deeply would you breathe?

Then Start Sharing the Love

When you really think about it, the environment is always playing with you – always participating in a free, non-transactional flow of energy. A lot of what you see is poised to support you, to nourish you, to invite you into real kinship with life itself… when we let it connect with us, flirtatiously.  

That’s why good flirts flirt with everyone, regardless of the gender they’re attracted to. Good flirts move with their environment and give their heart to life and its simple delightfulness. With practice, you can, too.

Why the Art of Flirting (So Badly) Matters Today

I recommend you try it! Skilled flirting becomes an embodiment practice, a path for inspiring true connection. It’s one of the needed medicines of our times, as the world can certainly seem overwhelming, heavy, even hateful.  Now we need the art of flirting more than ever, for these reasons and many more:

• It helps us see our own beauty: The School of Life’s video wisely tells us that, “Flirting matters because of how rarely most of us get to experience ourselves as desirable.” Whether we’re single or partnered, our sense of desire waxes and wanes throughout our lives; there are two main types of desire, and both can be difficult to communicate without education and practice. Flirting takes the pressure off by reminding us that we are desirable, and lovely, and charming, and wanted. 

• It reminds us of the importance of play: Next to the loss of flirting in long-term relationships, one of the other tragedies of adulthood is that most of us are so stressed, and success-driven, and purpose-driven that we’ve lost that flow state that comes from playing. Playing has no agenda, and it cultivates an inclusive sort of presence. 

• It cultivates connection and intimacy: Flirting can be such a refreshing way of connecting with other people, one that invites them into their own goodness and pleasure as much as your own. By nature, it breaks down the barriers between people – or between self and environment, self and life itself – and reminds everyone that we’re having a shared experience here.[1] Who doesn’t need that reminder these days, especially when it’s given so playfully?

The art of flirting allows us to get in touch with intimacy by showing us how it feels to be freely intimate with life. Give it a try. See how it feels to open your senses up to what and who surrounds you, generously and without expectation. Notice what starts to shift.

Connect with Christina Sophie Intimacy Coaching for More

In our sex & intimacy coaching sessions, I help my clients cultivate meaningful intimacy in all areas of their lives. We dig into how they can find greater satisfaction and pleasure in life. I’m delighted to work with both individuals and partners and people of all sexual orientations, gender expressions, and relationship structures. This work – the art of flirting and choosing to turn our attention towards pleasure – is for all of us and our whole world.   Are you seeking personalized guidance along your journey with intimacy? Looking to reconnect with your partner, your body, or life more broadly? I’m here for you and here to give you the sex education you always wanted but never got. Send me an email at info@christinasophiecoaching.com to schedule your free 15-minute heart-to-heart chat with me.