Learning How To Flirt — Remember AEIOU, Ladies!

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London women are taking flirting lessons — using the vowels AEIOU to help them remember what to do:

Sue Ostler, a flirt coach and the author of four relationship manuals, has started a weekly learn-on-the-job flirting tour of the heaving bars of London’s West End.

During our briefing, we are warned of our male rivals who operate in the same territory. The so-called Pick-Up Artists crawl Friday night bars in small tuition groups with a guide to talk them through pulling tactics. The phenomenon caught on in the UK after the success of Neil Strauss’s memoir, The Game.

“You can smell them when you enter a bar,” Ostler says. “They home in on anyone without a male by their side and come up with cringeworthy lines. We won’t do that. We are focusing on our personalities and developing a sense of warmth and likeability.”

Her guide to flirting well is so complicated I couldn’t possibly remember it without writing it — Palinesque-ly — on my sweaty little palm:

Ostler has a formula for the conversation stage: A-E-I-O-U. A is for ask lots of questions. E is for ears to listen, rather than talk. I is for the essence of ‘I’ – making sure your personality oozes out. O is for Oh my God – showing some animation and a human side. U is for you – the person you are talking to – making them the focus of conversation.

If you need to be taught to “show some animation and a human side,” good luck to you, darlin’. To be fair, though, British culture (which many Canadians imbibe culturally) is considerably more buttoned-up than American. If you say “Hey!” to a Londoner, a pretty standard, friendly, all-purpose American greeting, he might wonder where your horse is; I’d never heard it, or used it, before I moved to the U.S.

Although I’m off the market, so to speak, I still love to flirt. At its best, it’s fun and friendly. But I find that few men, or women, do it well and easily. I think the key ingredient is a playful confidence.

Do you like to flirt? Be flirted with? What works for you?