Flirting Mistakes: When Chemistry Hires a Director

Flirting is supposed to be one of the lightest things two people can do.

A glance lasts half a second longer than necessary, a smile appears for no particular reason, the conversation becomes slightly warmer and more playful, and suddenly two perfectly sensible adults are aware of each other in a way they were not ten minutes earlier.

Lovely.

Then one of them actually cares how it is going, and the director arrives.

Now every natural reaction requires supervision.

Welcome to opening night.

The Performance Begins

The strange thing about flirting is that the moment you really like a man, you may stop trusting the woman who was doing perfectly well before you liked him. She was relaxed, funny, opinionated and perfectly capable of speaking in complete sentences, but this situation is important, so surely it needs improvement.

You begin directing yourself: be warmer, but not that warm; laugh, but perhaps not that much; look interested, but good heavens, not desperate.

Before long, a conversation that might have developed perfectly well on its own has acquired choreography.

This is how a reasonably amusing man can suddenly become the funniest person you have met since birth. He makes a small joke and you laugh, then another and you laugh again, and eventually he says something about parking and, somehow, the evening remains hilarious.

The poor man may leave believing he has extraordinary comic gifts.

He has no idea that attraction has hired a laugh track.

Of course, the opposite performance is equally popular, because once you notice that you are very interested, you may become equally determined not to let him notice.

Enter the Ice Queen.

She is elegant, composed and emotionally available by appointment only. A man flirts with her and receives a pleasant smile normally reserved for someone who has just held an elevator; he suggests another date and she answers with a mysterious “Maybe,” although internally several small trumpets have begun playing.

This is considered seductive.

The man, rather inconveniently, may think she means maybe.

Some people simply refuse to appreciate theater.

The Woman Playing the Woman

This is where flirting becomes particularly funny, because you are no longer simply talking to a man; you are also watching yourself talking to a man.

One part of you is having the conversation while another is standing somewhere nearby with a clipboard, quietly making notes: too eager, too quiet, excellent smile, perhaps retreat slightly.

It is exhausting being both the leading lady and the director.

And if the performance continues long enough, the actual woman can begin appearing only in brief cameos.

A little teasing enters because you want to seem playful, then another little tease arrives because the first one worked, and before long the man’s taste in music, favorite restaurant and weekend hobby have all been lightly insulted in the name of chemistry.

You are flirting.

He may feel he has survived something.

This is the peculiar danger of trying to manufacture sparkle: eventually you begin polishing things that were already shiny. Real chemistry rarely needs this much assistance; it is usually doing something much quieter in the background while everybody else is busy trying to look irresistible.

The Great Effort to Look Effortless

Perhaps the funniest flirting mistake of all is how much work can go into appearing as though no work is happening.

You want the interaction to feel natural, so naturally you become intensely aware of everything you are doing—the tone of your voice, the timing of a reply, how much you reveal, how much you do not reveal.

Meanwhile, the man sitting opposite you may simply be enjoying himself.

Imagine the irresponsibility.

There is something wonderfully absurd about two people who are attracted to each other spending half the evening trying not to look too attracted to each other. Both are sending signals, decoding signals and pretending not to notice that any signals are being sent.

Romance has apparently become amateur espionage.

And because nobody wants to be the person who likes the other one more, a perfectly nice little spark can disappear beneath all this careful handling. One person leans in, the other pulls back, the first becomes more interested, the second becomes less available, and before long nobody knows whether they are flirting or negotiating a border dispute.

All because two people found each other attractive.

Chemistry Was Already on Stage

The irony is that the best flirting often happens before anyone decides to flirt.

You laugh because something was actually funny, ask a question because you genuinely want to know the answer, and tease him because the moment invites it—not because an invisible director has whispered that mystery is important.

Nothing is being measured or carefully produced; you simply become a slightly brighter version of yourself because someone interesting is standing in front of you.

That was probably the good part.

Because the mistake is not necessarily flirting badly. Sometimes the mistake is believing that flirting needs to become a performance at all.

Somewhere underneath the extra laughter, mysterious pauses, careful indifference and perfectly timed sparkle, there may already be two people who like each other.

The audience is seated, the lights are on, and chemistry has been on stage for twenty minutes.

Nobody seems to have noticed because the director keeps shouting instructions.