Hi friends. Is it fucked up to flirt with someone with no intention of taking it further? I’m in a long-term monogamous relationship. Sometimes I crave a little validation from strangers. I’m not going to cheat on my partner, but I do have a need to feel desirable to others. I don’t feel like a bit of flirting is a betrayal of my relationship, but I’m less confident about how other people feel. Like, I don’t want to waste someone else’s time, but I guess maybe I am leading people on a bit if I chat with them without mentioning my partner.
Nah I wouldn’t say a lot, but it’s not super rare for it to happen. At one point it was maybe once every 4-6 months or so[1]? But these days I don’t go out much because of the pandemic, so it doesn’t happen as often. It happens a lot more now than it did before I started transitioning, I think partly because I became a lot more friendly and comfortable with complimenting people once I felt more like myself. I’m also non-monogamous, pretty openly sex-positive, and live in an area with a lot of other queer people, so I’m sure that contributes plenty as well.
Definitely more frequently if you include online, but if someone is flirting with me online it’s probably in an online space that is explicitly sexual so I wouldn’t count that for this conversation. ↩︎
that sounds like a lot to me, but i haven’t spoken to anyone outside of a workplace in years
I think the spaces you are in make a big difference for this, yeah. It doesn’t really feel like a lot to me compared to some people I know, but maybe it is above average, I’m not sure. Almost none of that flirting actually went anywhere, for what it’s worth.
I go out a fair amount, usually to one bar for Karaoke and I get hit on and/or flirt with folks pretty often. It definitely depends on the setting and familiarity with those involved.