Hi friends. Is it fucked up to flirt with someone with no intention of taking it further? I’m in a long-term monogamous relationship. Sometimes I crave a little validation from strangers. I’m not going to cheat on my partner, but I do have a need to feel desirable to others. I don’t feel like a bit of flirting is a betrayal of my relationship, but I’m less confident about how other people feel. Like, I don’t want to waste someone else’s time, but I guess maybe I am leading people on a bit if I chat with them without mentioning my partner.
I’m really asking about the perspective of the third party. I’m OK with it, my partner’s OK with it. What I want to know is the stranger in the bar OK with it. I know every stranger is different, but in general, how big a deal is this?
yeah and I’m saying in my opinion its not even a factor
just like accepting a drink from a man doesn’t obligate a woman to have sex with him, neither does flirting with a person obligate or necessitate that you be available for further romantic complications.
Dating already sucks and is miserable. Self-consciously going into an interaction with the goal of deceiving someone for attention is a shitty behavior. No, that does not oblige you to fuck them or whatever, literally no one here is saying that and such an idea is ridiculous and disgusting. What some people (myself included) are saying is that that initial action, the pre-meditated deception, is hurtful to people for no good reason.
Thats not what flirting is and I’m concerned with how transactional some people seem to see it being.
That’s a horseshit accusation. Obviously that’s not what flirting in general is, and I never made a claim to the contrary. From the OP:
What is the relevance of mentioning or not mentioning their partner? Might we glean that the OP acknowledges something about the social nature of their behavior?
What sort of transaction are you trying to accuse me of asserting? I don’t want to fuck some asshole behaving deceptively toward me, I just don’t want to be deceived in the first place. I have no interest in any sort of “transaction” here, I want to be treated with an extremely baseline respect, not on a transactional basis but because I’m a human being, just like me treating other people with baseline respect should not depend on them doing something for me first or being somehow bound to do something for me after.
Where does this deception you keep harping on even come into it? There is no deception in flirting with someone even if you don’t plan to form a romantic relationship with them. It’s just playful banter, it’s not a promise to take it any further than the flirtation itself. The fact that you default to flirtation without a desire to take it further as being some form of deception is what makes it sound like you think there is something transactionable about it. It makes it sound like if someone flirts with you, that you then have an expectation of them that they want to go further than just flirting, when that need not be the case.
Just as flirting doesn’t bind anyone to to do anything later either. So again, where is the deception in flirting with someone when you don’t actually want to pursue a relationship with them? I would guess that most flirtation doesn’t mean the person initiating it is seeking anything more. You talk about baseline respect, but I think flirtation is inherently respectful when done right, it is giving another person positive affirmations.
If an omission would change someone else’s behavior, it seems deceptive.
What does that even mean?
I’m assuming you are referring to OP saying
What all of a person’s life story must they share and not “omit” before they should be given the green light to flirt with someone? There is all sorts of information that literally anyone would leave out of a conversation with a stranger (or even not a stranger) that would change the nature of the conversation. Omission is not deception.
Also, OP says they are up front about their relationship if it comes up and they wear a ring to indicate that status. They are not even omitting the information you seem to think they’re obligated to share.
Check time stamps, OP only mentioned wearing a ring and being upfront after I posted.
From the information available in the thread at the time of my comment I was getting a really bad vibe about someone intentionally omitting pertinent information so they could manipulate people into behaving in a certain way for their own entertainment; a lot of people wouldn’t feel comfortable being on the other side of flirting with someone in a relationship and I was worried. That’s clearly not the case with the additional information posted, they’re just having fun and it’s fine.
But it’s valid if someone doesn’t feel comfortable flirting with another person who is already in a relationship and omission would be hurtful. A long-term committed relationship isn’t some trivial thing, that’s a very important piece of information for a lot of people. Some of us would be reliving trauma if this kind of play was just dumped on us with no warning. Being open and upfront is 100% the way to go with this and OP is totally fine.
read OP again.
monogamous relationship OP is asking about flirting with people for some kind of external validation with no intention of disclosing relationship status or unavailability.
this is directly and explicitly deceiving and using the unwitting person.
Aaaaaand we have another person infected with incel thought. Flirting usually just isn’t about hooking up, people do this as courtesy or to be nice all the time. Thinking anything else IS transactional reasoning that sees everything as bargaining in the sexual marketplace. Gross. Gross. Gross.
the social purpose of flirting is to signal potential interest without risking as big of a faux pas or being unacceptably forward. OP is misusing this construct for validation.
Sorry to revive a comment in an 8 day old struggle session, but your comment hit home because I am really bad at telling when what I’m saying is considered by someone else as flirting (probably for neurodivergent reasons). I have been called manipulative by a lot of dudes in my life because they mistake me being playful and avoiding eye contact as flirting. It’s not fun. It sucks. It’s sometimes dangerous.
So basically I just want to say thanks for pointing out that people shouldn’t feel like they’re being deceived by flirting, because sometimes the flirter didn’t even realize they were flirting in the first place.
that is what OP literally described doing
incel ass logic
I remember in the past seeing passing mention that hexbear had an incel problem but I mostly disregarded it because it seemed like it would get shut down quickly. I also have a lot of empathy for lonely men (and all lonely people) in this fucked up society even if I have zero tolerance for using that as an excuse for misogyny. But every now and then a thread will come up that really does confirm there is still an undercurrent of incel “thought” even on hexbear.
flirting implies the further complications are possible to begin with. the whole social purpose of flirting is a plausibly deniable offer to escalate towards them.
it is incredibly cruel to dangle something in front of someone when you have no intention of following through.
it’s one thing if you flirt for a while and don’t feel it, but it’s evil if you go into it misrepresenting your intentions.
At what point is flirting so obvious that it’s dangling in front of you but is also at the same time “plausibly deniable?”
a successful run goes something like
opening move -> reciprocity -> escalation -> escalation -> escalation -> etc -> romantic and/or sexual entanglement
so i’d say 3 is where you have the opportunity to say thanks and move on having had an exchange of compliments rather than necessarily flirting, and if you stick around for the second round of escalation then you’re indicating you’re potentially down for something and somebody like OP would be there in bad faith.
and again this is about the case where OP is deliberately being a vampire, if you’re flirting with somebody for a while and decide not to continue for whatever reason that’s fine, but you shouldn’t start the process if you’re completely closed off to begin with.
A SUCCESSFUL RUN i am going to puke, hooking up is not a video game. What is this PUA shit??? WTF?
like run-through? older term than video games lol
I suppose the framing of flirtation in the OP is necessarily different than something you may not even realize was happening until 2 weeks later because of the intention.
I don’t really understand the flowchart but i see what you’re saying. There’s a point where both parties are aware that explicit flirting is happening and if that wasnt where OP wanted to take it there wouldn’t be a question.
The amount of times I’ve had someone tell me I’ve been flirted with or thought about an interaction weeks later where “…wait were they flirting or just being nice?” Made me think OP was gonna go around complimenting people and seeing if they got a nice response…
see this is how I think about it. And if the person doesn’t seem into the flirtation, I withdraw. I don’t ever assume that flirtation is an invitation for something further unless explicitly stated.