When I flirt, I just want to make her laugh a little. I also want to enjoy the cleverness of both of us. A little teasing, but it’s all for pretend and soon enough it winds down, especially if someone gets annoyed by it, and there are often humorless types around who hate the flirting. I don’t know what that’s all about. Maybe they feel there is a club and they aren’t part of it.
There’s a few people here who really enjoy puns, and when they get going, they are quite good. You can just see people’s eyes twinkling and the body postures. The imagination is a wonderful thing.
Of course, imagination applies to the more serious interactions as well, but it goes so much further. Somehow I see that as being a darker environment than flirting. Dark as in hidden corners to hide in, not dark as in evil. I suspect a lot of it goes on privately, out of view, where people can do much more….. in depth things, so to speak.
I guess that’s an important difference for me. Flirting is done in public. You can do it in front of everyone else because we all know it isn’t going anywhere. Once we get serious, all the interesting stuff goes private, and there is no more public flirting lest anyone catch on that you know too much about the other person; that there are too many inside jokes. I think it would be very difficult to carry on a serious private “flirtation” together with a public flirtation at the same time. That’s James Bond stuff.