On a Recent Night Out With My Single Friends, I Realized They All Have a Skill I Don’t. I’m Doomed.

Unhinged They make it look so easy. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Kristina Yu/Adobe Stock, mediaphotos/Getty Images Plus, Pressmaster/Getty Images Plus, and klyaksun/Adobe Stock. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Unhinged is Slate’s advice column on the wild world of modern dating. Have a dating question of your own? Send it to Steffi here. It’s anonymous! Dear Unhinged, I’m a bisexual woman in my late 20s living in a city, and I’ve just started to notice a major discrepancy between me and my friends. On a recent night out with some single friends, I got to see a look into my friends’ “game” and had the slightly horrifying realization that I am probably light-years behind. In a group conversation with strangers, I saw just how good my friends were at flirting. They were so smooth, effortlessly complimenting the new people we’d just met and coming up with funny bits they’d bounce off each other. I felt like the odd one out. Whenever a stranger tries to strike up a conversation with me at a bar, it always fizzles out because I feel too awkward to let my real personality shine through (which is normally fun and goofy, I swear!). At the risk of veering into the territory of the movie Hitch, is there a way I can actually … get better at this? Or was I just born without this particular skill that everyone around me has seemingly mastered while I was off doing who knows what? I know this is probably not entirely why I’m still single, but at the very least, it looks as if my friends are having fun. Even if this skill is not leading them to the loves of their lives, it’s at the very least facilitating a good night for them, while I’m just awkwardly stumbling through conversations, wishing there were someone to swoop in and save me. Am I doomed? —Out Sick During the Flirting Lecture Dear Out Sick During the Flirting Lecture, There’s been a whole lot of hand-wringing about how us Gen Zers are socially awkward and have no game. I, for many years, thought I was similarly rizzless. I used to pick at the sleeves of my shirt in the club and think, Ugh, I’m so awkward! I’m so bad at reading signals! Oh no! The vibe I give off in the dating pool is far less come-hither and far more like those dancing cartoon British dogs in roller skates from Madagascar 3: unserious and aggressive. But may I posit an alternative train of thought? Someone out there is probably into that. I’m not just saying that to make you feel better. To prove my point, I called in data from the dating apps. In an email statement, a spokesperson for Hinge told me that according to a survey the company conducted this year, 65 percent of its U.S.-based Gen Z users would prefer someone to be kind of awkward and obvious about their romantic intentions, rather than super smooth and mysterious. A spokesperson for Bumble also told me that according to user responses, 76 percent of women said they were more likely to match with someone who asked a question in response to one of their profile prompts because it makes starting a conversation easier. That’s pretty much all flirting is: being yourself and being curious about other people, and seeing whether there’s chemistry. You don’t need to complicate it. Get out of your own head! The stakes are nonexistent. Your efforts might lead to having sex or falling in love. Or they could just turn out to be totally inane conversations you’ll look back on as pebbles of experience in the river of your life. That’s the fun of flirting. You’re not being graded or assessed. You’re not applying for a loan or interviewing for a job. If someone finds your advances cringeworthy it doesn’t matter, because someone else will find you charming. Even if someone doesn’t get your jokes, someone else will laugh. What matters here is you. What do you want to know about these people you’re meeting? What would you find funny, interesting, or exciting to talk about? These are probably the parameters that all your friends are operating under: None of this matters at all, and the potential for fun is boundless. This kind of zest for life is something that can be learned only through practice and constantly rebuilding confidence within yourself. I was thinking about your question when I went on a three-day press trip alone to Maui, Hawaii, with Turo. It was a pretty autonomous trip—they basically handed us a car for three days and told us to take off. So I went to places I’d never been before completely by myself, often finding myself in dead zones without a signal, with no plan but to explore. So I met people on the plane, out surfing, on mountain trails, in restaurants. I was just bored and wanted to talk to people. What did you order? How did you do that trick on the board? Which way gets me out of here? Asking questions like these was how I met someone I later went out on a date with. I tried to remember the end of our conversation that led to the date, in case you wanted actionable dialogue to follow. It went something like this: Me: “So how late are you working?”Date: “I’ll probably head home soon.”Me: “Cool. Would you want to hang out after?”Date: “Yeah, we can get a drink or something. Can I get your number?”Me: “Sure. Also, what’s your name?” It can be that easy. At the end of the night, he told me he was glad I said something, because he sometimes isn’t sure when to make a move. Did he think he was bad at flirting? I asked. He said yeah, sort of. Aha! A lot of us, including me, really think we’re bad at flirting! But this hot and interesting stranger was still into my Madagascar 3 circus-clown vibe. The ability to follow this instinct for romantic adventure is a skill I am still rebuilding. But being alone, in a place totally new and unfamiliar to me, was a great push to let go of any expectations. It seems as if you need to start building the trust within yourself that you will always do your best to make things fun. So here’s my assignment for you: Start going out alone. I mean really alone. No friend waiting at the bar, no familiar bartender to give you a knowing look, no phone tucked conveniently in your pocket for easy scrolling. Go to a new place, put your phone on Do Not Disturb, leave the emotional support book at home. You have to remove all hope that someone is going to save you, and see what happens after you let go. Then you have to do it again. And again. Until you realize that, actually, there’s nothing you need saving from. That’s when the real fun will begin. Advice Dating and Relationships