What Kind of Flirt Are You?

Perhaps the most ambiguous or uncertain part of being in a romantic relationship is understanding signals of attraction. One of the questions I'm asked the most is, “how do I know if someone likes me?” Nonverbal clues that a person is romantically or sexually interested in you can be difficult to parse out from just general friendly behaviors. With that, we can misinterpret those cues as being something more than friendly when the other person didn’t mean for it to be.

A behavior that signals that someone is attracted to you or is interested in you in a sexual way is called flirting. Flirting behaviors are important both in early-stage relationships as well as in more mature relationships such as marriages.

For people not in mature relationships, flirting helps to signal interest in something more from them. You may be interested in starting a sexual relationship with someone or escalating from a friendship to a more serious romantic relationship. You may flirt because it makes you feel good about yourself, or to get someone to do something for you.

In more established relationships, particularly in marriage, flirting can perhaps serve an even greater purpose than in dating relationships. Flirting in long-term relationships helps to maintain interest in the relationship, signal a continued attraction to one another, and improve relationship satisfaction. One study asked married participants about their flirting behaviors with their partners. A consistent theme in the findings of this study was that people stopped seeing flirting as purely a way to show sexual attraction and moved toward other motivations like feeling good about yourself and making their partner feel good about themselves, having fun with their partner, to create intimacy, and to make their partner feel loved and valued.

What are the five flirting styles?

Researchers have identified five flirting styles, or ways to display interest and attraction, that people may prefer or adhere to when attempting to court a potential romantic partner. 

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