Flirting is dangerous

Q: What if you flirt just to have sex? A: If you flirt just to have sex, you're flirting to achieve sexual pleasure. You can call that selfish if you like, but as long as the sex is safe and consensual there is nothing wrong with it. I argue that long-term, committed relationships (monogamous or polygamous, it's your preference) are not rooted in flirtation. The types of relationships, if you can call them that, rooted in flirtation with no basis of preliminary friendship are one night stands. However, even one night stands are not an entire waste of time, if you achieve your goal of sexual pleasure for a night. Of course with one night stands or casual sex comes the risk of STDs, but a better way to prevent STDs from casual sex is to educate people on birth control methods and the STDs themselves. Your marriage argument is a bit misguided because marriage is not an institution of love in the United States. The divorce rates for first, second, and third marriages are 50%, 67%, and 75% respectively. Of course friendship and honesty are the foundations of any good relationship, but this does not make flirting dangerous. Flirting is a necessary phase of any relationship because if you cannot find a way to express your interest in someone through flattery and genuine compliments the relationship will not progress past that initial friendship. Genuine compliments and flirting are not mutually exclusive. Someone can give you a genuine compliment with flirtatious connotation. Someone can give you a genuine compliment without flirtatious connotation. Likewise, someone can give you a deceitful compliment with flirtatious connotation and someone can give you a deceitful compliment without flirtatious connotation. The danger isn't in flirting, it's in putting your trust in someone who you have a one night stand with or have casual sex with. It's upon the individual to place a certain amount of trust in someone else. To put all of your trust in someone who you are not committed to is foolish in itself. Additionally, no one is entitled to having their trust in an individual kept in tact by that individual. Flirtation is not dangerous, but the people you choose to flirt with and pursue sexually can be dangerous. "2 friends are better off building that emotional connection and finding out their qualities over a long period of time and then deciding to go further vs. 2 people who just met, flirted, and got into a relationship after 2 weeks." ---I completely agree, but this does not support the idea that flirtation is dangerous. It supports the idea that getting into premature relationships designed to fail is dangerous. Signals can be very upfront. For example, asking for a phone number is a very upfront signal that you wish to court someone. You can deflect these signals to hide your true feelings, but then you are not flirting. If you're championing the flirtation is bad, it's rather hypocritical that you made relationship decisions based on flirtation with any particular woman (unless this is a new opinion of you formulated after these failures). That being said, premature infatuation is the result of your problems. This can result from misinterpreted flirtation, of course, but it can also result from misinterpreted friendships. The commonality is misinterpretation. It is upon the individual to make the correct assessment of the individual they desire. Flirting is a method of getting to know someone's personal qualities, mainly their wit, articulation, intelligence, and charisma. Likes and dislikes can also be derived from flirtation, it really just depends on the content of your conversation. In summary: 1. I hope by "Maybe that is true, but based on observations, the most successful relationships aren't based on flirting, they're based on a solid friendship (my sister is an example.)" you are not stating you're having a physically intimate relationship with your sister. I don't believe you did, but your sentence structure is suspect. 2. It is upon the individual to assess the person they desire. Flirtation is a method of doing this. Misinterpretations exist in all forms of communication, but you are only acknowledging misinterpretation in regards to flirting and are rather adamant that most flirtation will result in misinterpretation of relationship. However, flirtation is a necessary stage in all relationships where an individual can evaluate another individual in order to determine whether or not they want to pursue a physically and emotionally intimate relationship.