When I was growing up, I was in the unenviable position of being the best friend sort of guy. It wasn’t that I was unattractive. Everyone told me I was good looking, and I knew they were right about it. It wasn’t even that a I wasn’t ready for relationships. I was desperate to meet women and start dating. I think the real problem was that I did not know how to flirt with a girl. Even worse than that, I did not know how to tell if a girl was flirting with me.
I think I was the only one who took the advice “just be yourself” to heart. Most of my friends learned to flirt with girls early on. I think for them it was almost an instinctual thing. Without even thinking about it, they would take a playful silly tone when they were around girls they were attracted to. For me, however, I had to think about it. I wasn’t even sure how to flirt with a girl, and could never tell when I was doing it. I think I must have given off the wrong signals to quite a few attractive girls. I must’ve really seemed like a guy who just wanted to be a good friend.
Some people just learn certain things slower than others. For some reason, I could not pick up how to flirt with a girl my own, so I needed to study it. For a while, I actually started going to bars with friends and watching them flirt with girls. I stopped short of actually taking notes, but you can bet that I was describing everything that was happening to myself in my head. I was actually doing this for weeks before I ever tried to flirt with a girl myself.
