19 Subtle Ways to Flirt With Someone You Like

Matthew:

He’s single. She’s single. Both think the other one is attractive, and then they walk straight past each other and neither does anything about it.

“Hey Jason, it was so lovely speaking to you.” That would’ve been fine, but it wouldn’t have been flirting. Flirting is nuanced. Flirting is like putting a little bit of bait on the tackle and throwing it out there on the line to see who grabs at it.

Every day, people walk past each other in the street. He’s single, she’s single. Both think the other one is attractive and then they walk straight past each other and neither does anything about it. I had a woman recently at my event in Chicago, she told me that she keeps meeting guys online and that they don’t turn into dates and she ends up incessantly in a texting conversation with them. And I said, “Well, why don’t you get out there in the real world? Why don’t you meet people there?” And she seized up a little because for most people the idea of actually meeting people in real life is scary, but it doesn’t have to be so scary. If we don’t take ourselves as seriously, if we stop censoring ourselves and if we actually get a little more free and easy with the interactions we have. So to get out of this paralysis of playing it safe and not flirting with people, I’m going to give you three simple things you can do to flirt more with the guys you like.

Number one, look more. I know what women do. They go out, they look at a guy once, then they look back at their friends and they say, “OK, he knows.” Ladies, I’ll let you in on a little secret, we don’t know. So as a general rule, I want you to look four times more than you think you need to.

Strategy number two, mouth the word, “Hi.” Whether you’re walking past someone or you’re standing next to them in a line and you catch their eye for the first time, you doing more than making eye contact and actually mouthing the word, “Hi.” It doesn’t even have to be audible. In fact, it might even be more cute if it’s not audible, but that moment shows that you are sweet and warm and kind and inviting and like the first example, just gives a guy that extra license to start talking to you.

Number three, when you have a date with someone, express that you are looking forward to seeing them. Be honest about that. So on the day of the day, if it’s the first date, text him and say, “I’m looking forward to meeting you tonight.” Or if it’s your second or third date and you have a bit more of a bond or a connection by now, text him and say, “Not going to lie, I’m excited to see you tonight.” Those moments of not only flirtation but warmth and sweetness as something that elevate your character.

Flirting is interest plus challenge. I’m going to give you three specific real world examples to prove this. Now, let’s say in the first one, you go out tonight, you see a guy across the bar that you think is attractive. Now, if you were just demonstrating interest, you might look at him, stare endlessly, have three more drinks, then stumble over to him, half drunk, and by the time you get there, say, “You’re really hot.”

Now, if she was showing interest and challenge, she could start by simply looking at him until he sees her. Then when they catch eyes, she could look away as if she’s just been caught out. Then she could look again and start building that tension a little bit. Now you may say, “What is she actually doing in that moment to be challenging?” But the challenge is inbuilt. All she needs to do is show a little interest because he has the challenge of having to walk over there and do something. Think about it, for a guy at that point, he’s got to have the courage to think of something to say and then walk across the room and open his mouth to this woman.

Example number two, let’s fast-forward this night. He’s now asked for her number and they have parted ways. An hour later he texts her saying, “Hey, it’s Jason.”

She says, “Who?” He’s like, “Jason from the bar.” She says, “Hmm I don’t recall. Unless you’re that handsome guy with the nice shoes,” winky, tongue face. Love that winky tongue face.

Now look, it would’ve been fine if he said, “Hey, it’s Jason,” and she said, “Hey Jason, it was so lovely speaking to you.” That would’ve been fine, but it wouldn’t have been flirting. Flirting is that moment when she pretends not to know him and then all of a sudden, just as he is off balance, she swoops him with a compliment about him being handsome and having nice shoes. I was once told attraction is about keeping someone just a little off balance.

And so we come to real world example number three, let’s flash forward a couple of weeks in their relationship. They’ve been seeing each other, they’re having a good time. She’s at work one day and she comes out of a meeting and texts him.

“I just finished a meeting and I definitely wasn’t thinking about you most of the time. OK bye.” Now again, if all she’d texted him was, “Thinking of you,” that would’ve been fine. It would’ve been a perfectly reasonable thing to say and it would have worked. But if we want to turn this from a compliment into a flirtation, now we use this message because that moment where she says, “I definitely wasn’t thinking about you most of the time,” it’s a coy way of saying, “I’m reluctant to admit to you that I was thinking about you the whole time. I’m being playful about that right now. I’m giving you a compliment, but I’m not at the same time.” And then when I say, “OK bye,” it’s like, “I’m out of here. You’ve had enough. I’ve said too much already. I’m out.” When she does this, she’s taking a regular compliment and adding flavor to it, and it’s that flavor that often makes someone excited and energized. It keeps them wanting more.

Are you sick and tired of situations that never go anywhere? Texts that never become dates, dates that never become relationships, it all just feels exhausting. I have a program called The Momentum Texts that shows you practically how you can take any situation in early dating and progress it so that it actually leads to a relationship. Go check it out at MomentumTexts.com. It’s also $7, so it’s a really easy decision to make and it is the most practical program you will find for early dating. I’ll see you over there and let’s get back to the video.

The idea of showing that we like someone is death to so many people. It’s like swimming with sharks. I’m just going to jump into the water and get eaten. But here’s the problem with that. It shows a misunderstanding of what flirting actually is because flirting isn’t just running up to somebody and saying, “Hey, I like you. We should be together.” That’s not what flirting is.

Flirting is much more subtle than that. Flirting is nuanced. Flirting is like putting a little bit of bait on the tackle and throwing it out there on the line to see who grabs at it.

Let me give you an example of this. Let’s say that you like a guy at work. I’m not endorsing you going into work right now and ruining your work life, by the way, by making it awkward, but let’s just run through this example.

Throwing yourself headfirst is doing this: You walk into the office one day and you see him over there, Dan, his name is, you see him by the coffee machine. He’s making himself a lovely little espresso. You look over at Dan and you think, this is my moment and all of my friends have told me honesty is the best policy. I just need to show him that I like him and let him know.

So you walk over there to Dan and you say, “Dan, emm. . . . I’ve been developing feelings for you over the last few weeks and well, I guess I like you a lot and I think we should go out sometime.”

Dan looks at you and it’s tricky for Dan right now because he either has to say yes to the date to be polite or he has to be like, “No, I’m good. I’m going to go do some accounting now at my desk.”

Now let’s look at the second example where you just throw out a little bit of bait. Dan’s over at the espresso machine. You walk over there and maybe you even start with something flirtatious where you say, “Why are you always hogging the coffee machine when I come to make myself a coffee?” And Dan says something flirtatious back because he’s a bit of a smoothie and he’s like, “Well, maybe you are the one following me to the coffee machine. Had you ever considered that?”

And you’re like, “I’m not following you. Just get out of the way so I can make my coffee.”

Lovely little flirtation right now, by the way. This isn’t even my main line, but that’s a nice little bit of flirtation right off the bat, and you created it when you went over there and said, “You are hogging the coffee machine.” Then as you’re walking away you say, “You know what? It’s a good thing me and you are colleagues, we would be so much trouble for each other,” and then you leave. Now, this is a beautiful little flirtatious line. This is the bait in the water because, firstly, you’re disqualifying Dan. You’re saying, “Listen, you and I can’t be together because, you know, we’re colleagues and that’s a problem, so we can’t have any funny business.” But you’re also saying, “But if we did, we’d be trouble.”

Dan, in his male brain, all he hears is, “Trouble, you say,” because men love trouble. When you throw out this bait, it’s really low effort, low risk for you because you can sit back and drink a beer on the side of the riverbank and just throw out your line and just wait. That’s what flirting is. That’s why when people get so scared to flirt, they’re forgetting that although flirting is a vulnerable act, it’s not jumping in with the sharks because you can throw out just a little bit of bait and see if someone bites. If they don’t bite, that’s fine. You throw out another bit of bait either for that person or for somebody else.

OK, let’s just get down to business. Five ways to make him want to kiss you.

Number one, touch him. Now, I don’t mean his groinal region, I just mean touch him somewhere, even innocently on the arm, “That actually looks good what that guy has over there.”

Because on a date when two people haven’t even touched, made physical contact for the entire date and then all of a sudden, one of them has got to think about leaning in and kissing the other one. That feels like going from zero to 60 miles an hour, but if you’ve been introducing light and carefree touch throughout the date, kissing is a much more natural progression.

Number two, take a sip. When you take a sip of your drink, it engages your lips so it draws attention to them, but at the same time, if you look away, it has the added benefit of giving him a moment to look at you and take you in without you staring right back at him. “That is too funny, monkey.”

That is something that we actually don’t get to do that frequently on a date and when someone is looking at us, that’s when they get a chance to really get attracted.

Number three, glance at his lips. Now, the more slowly you do this, the more seductive it’s going to be, but if you take a moment to look into his eyes and then look down at his lips and then back up at his eyes, that moment becomes a very seductive moment. Even if it’s unconscious, even if he doesn’t know that you are actually looking at his lips, he registers that you’re taking him in a different way.

“So what part of the jungle were you in when that happened?”

Number four, when he looks at you in a certain sexy way, maybe he smiles with it. I want you to say to him, “You can’t look at me like that.”

The words, “You can’t,” followed by looking away creates this real tension in the moment you’re telling him something he can’t do. Always very sexy when done playfully, and in that moment when you look away, there’s that vulnerability to it too. It’s like he’s doing something to you that he shouldn’t be. “Monkey, you can’t look at me like that.”

Number five, do the cute act. Choose a moment when he’s teasing you to give him a serious face, when he thinks you should be laughing and say, “Don’t be mean to me.”

And for those of you thinking that this plays into some sort of weird gender stereotype, the cute act is available to anyone. I do it all the time, “Don’t be mean to me.” And when someone’s being cute and adorable, you just want to grab them and kiss them. That’s the effect we’re going for.

Pace is a very important thing on a date. I’m not just talking about eye contact here. I’m talking about how slowly you speak at certain times, how slowly you move at certain times. When you think of someone confident and sexy, there’s a pace to that that slows down. When I go beyond confident and I say seductive, it starts to get even more slow, doesn’t it? Well, you can mimic that on a date in certain moments. The way you look at someone when you take a sip of your drink or when they take a sip of theirs, when someone is telling you a story passionately and you have that little . . . You ever have that moment where someone gets really passionate about something and you see that their eyes light up, you see that glint in them, and all of a sudden you get that little hit of, oh, this person’s attractive. In that moment, slow down.

Look at them a little more slowly. You can even look from their eyes to their mouth and back to their eyes. These things start to create that element of seduction. If you are constantly making points and moving around a lot and gesturing a lot and in that kind of jittery mode and everything you say is really fast sentences and so on, there’s no seduction to that pace. Slow it down. Did you slow it down?

Test number three, did you give him a desire-based compliment? There’s platonic language and there’s desire language. There’s also a platonic tone and a desire tone. You can use either. Platonic language would be, “That looks nice.” Desire language would be, “That looks hot.” Platonic tone would be, “You look good in that jacket.” Desire tone would be, “You look good in that jacket.” Subtle differences, but one of them says, “We are going to be friends,” and the other one says, “We are not going to be friends.”

Number four, did you hug them like you liked them? There’s a big difference in hugging someone as if they’re a friend and the way we hug someone when we feel comfortable with them and we like them, we let it linger for just a half second longer. We almost become a bit more vulnerable. You ever hugged someone where it felt like, just for a brief moment, they were sort of melting into you? Didn’t it feel amazing? Didn’t it make you feel connected to that person? Didn’t it make you feel more comfortable with that person? Didn’t it create the moment of electricity? Are you creating that with other people or are you leaning over and giving them your shoulder and the rest of your body retreats and it feels like they’re hugging a coat hanger? Allow that hug to be a little more vulnerable and to last just a little longer than you would if you were trying to get away.

Number five, did you give them a couple of opportunities to just observe you? You know that moment where someone leaves the date or leaves the table and goes to the bathroom and it’s the one moment you’ve had to just watch them, you catch a different angle than you’ve had so far, you can look at them without worrying that they’re looking back at you, looking at them and you can just take them in. This is a moment where you get to showcase yourself, walking a little sexy, having a little strutt, having a nice little moment with your hair. Looking at the menu, you are deep in the menu so they can look at you. Or going to the restroom or just being over here, checking something out, which allows them to check you out. People need moments where they can take you in without feeling like you are watching them.

Number six, did you tease them in a playful manner? Playfully teasing someone could be that you think your order was better than his, and then you look at that person and you go, “I won. I have the best order.” Or it might be that they say that your food doesn’t look as good as theirs and you can go, “Rude.” Got like a little flirtatious vibe to it.

Tension is often born out of a playful friction, right? Playful friction allows you both to step into a role play where you’re having a little thing, you’re odds over something and that creates a spark. It could be that there’s a pool table over there and you go, “We can’t play pool. I can’t have us fighting on our first date.” That creates this little mini arrgh, this mini competition like, oh, it’s not so friendly anymore. There’s a frisson to it.

Number seven, did you make use of the post-date, sexy, subtle subtext text? If you just send someone a message that says, “I had a really nice time tonight. I hope you didn’t have to wait too long for your Uber.” That’s a nice text, but it’s so literal. There’s no subtext whatsoever, but what if you just said this, “Tonight was really fun…” And then maybe you throw in a little blushing emoji. Firstly, it’s not many words. I like it for that reason. I’m not saying you have to send few words, but something about this message really works because it’s few words. It’s not overly thought out. The ellipsis is what says there’s things I’m not saying right now and the word fun, that’s desire language that says, “We could have more fun together.” The emoji is both a signal of warmth at the end of this message, but there’s also a little suggestiveness to that too, right?

It’s the ability to blush. It’s the ability to be made to feel something. There’s a vulnerability about that. It’s like you’re thinking about how fun the night was and maybe you’re even thinking about other things and you’re blushing as a result. This is a message that immediately when someone receives it after a date, they say, “Oh, there’s something there. This person is attracted to me. This person didn’t just have a nice time.” And the great irony is that when we feel someone is slightly attracted to us, even if it’s just in what they don’t say, not even what they do say, we are more likely to be attracted to them because we take our mind out of the friend zone and into the desire zone. Now I know what you’re thinking. “Fine, I’ll do those seven things. Then what?” Well, I have the answer for you.

I have a program. It’s called The Momentum Texts. In this program are 67 specific text messages that you can use to take it from a very early stage all the way to some serious investments so that your dating life doesn’t keep drifting into a state of limbo. It actually goes somewhere with someone. I don’t think we’ve ever released a more nuts and bolts practical program of things that you can literally just grab and send. It’s really good. It took us ages to make. It’ll take you seconds to use. How much were we offering this for before, Jameson?

Jameson:

$7.

Matthew:

Seven. We adjusted the price, didn’t we?

Jameson:

No. $7.

Matthew:

What about inflation? Surely it should be about $1,000 by now. Have you seen gas?

Jameson:

We’re sticking to seven.

Matthew:

You can’t even get a pumpkin spice latte for that. I couldn’t even get a pumpkin spice latte for that. That’s mental. Check it out. I’ll see you over there. MomentumTexts.com.