I have a friend who is absolutely stunning. She is about as attractive as a woman can get and I really like her as a person - she is very hard not to like, very friendly, very self-effacing. Naturally she is surrounded by men who would like to date her, and while in every other respect she is a friendly person she treats most of these men like dirt. She ignores them/shrugs them off and sometimes won't answer direct questions from them. Sure, it's obvious they are trying to flirt with her but she just has this WALL when she wants to discourage attention. But sometimes she will flirt really conspicuously with a particular man she likes, and in our social sphere it makes many of our guy friends feel like she's delivered quite the blow to their self-esteem, like, "Carmen won't even let me TALK to her, but there she is sitting in that stranger's lap. What's WRONG with me." These days Carmen has a fiance, and now she has REALLY shut down to other men, almost pretending they aren't there. I think this is rude.
I think Carmen ought to flirt with everybody a little bit. Frankly, I think EVERYONE should flirt with EVERYONE a little bit. Married, in a relationship, single, doesn't matter. I think everyone could use a little lift every once in awhile, especially if they happen to be kind of old and/or not that hot, so that they feel a little special. You can't violate the tenets of monogamy by paying someone you aren't married to a compliment, and Carmen could totally make someone's day just by being kind to them, or god forbid saying something like, "if you were a little younger, I'd have been into you" and flashing that famous smile of hers. But now she says, "Oh, I couldn't, I'm practically married now." As if she wasn't behaving that way toward helpless men who were just looking for a tiny bit of validation since we were in college (and probably before)!
Why are people so uptight about this? Just because you say something modestly flirtatious doesn't mean you're on the brink of infidelity. I think it's just playfulness and charming. What do you think?
I think Carmen ought to flirt with everybody a little bit. Frankly, I think EVERYONE should flirt with EVERYONE a little bit. Married, in a relationship, single, doesn't matter. I think everyone could use a little lift every once in awhile, especially if they happen to be kind of old and/or not that hot, so that they feel a little special. You can't violate the tenets of monogamy by paying someone you aren't married to a compliment, and Carmen could totally make someone's day just by being kind to them, or god forbid saying something like, "if you were a little younger, I'd have been into you" and flashing that famous smile of hers. But now she says, "Oh, I couldn't, I'm practically married now." As if she wasn't behaving that way toward helpless men who were just looking for a tiny bit of validation since we were in college (and probably before)!
Why are people so uptight about this? Just because you say something modestly flirtatious doesn't mean you're on the brink of infidelity. I think it's just playfulness and charming. What do you think?