this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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At what point is flirting so obvious that it's dangling in front of you but is also at the same time "plausibly deniable?"
a successful run goes something like
opening move -> reciprocity -> escalation -> escalation -> escalation -> etc -> romantic and/or sexual entanglement
so i'd say 3 is where you have the opportunity to say thanks and move on having had an exchange of compliments rather than necessarily flirting, and if you stick around for the second round of escalation then you're indicating you're potentially down for something and somebody like OP would be there in bad faith.
and again this is about the case where OP is deliberately being a vampire, if you're flirting with somebody for a while and decide not to continue for whatever reason that's fine, but you shouldn't start the process if you're completely closed off to begin with.
I suppose the framing of flirtation in the OP is necessarily different than something you may not even realize was happening until 2 weeks later because of the intention.
I don't really understand the flowchart but i see what you're saying. There's a point where both parties are aware that explicit flirting is happening and if that wasnt where OP wanted to take it there wouldn't be a question.
The amount of times I've had someone tell me I've been flirted with or thought about an interaction weeks later where "...wait were they flirting or just being nice?" Made me think OP was gonna go around complimenting people and seeing if they got a nice response...