Run Game Conversation

How to bring up attraction comfortably

6 min read

Saying "I'm interested" out loud feels bigger than it is. It's one sentence. The hard part isn't the words, it's that you can't take it back once it's said, and neither can she. That's also why it works: after a plain statement, nobody has to guess.

This post covers how to say it, how to leave the other person a comfortable way to answer, and what to do with each answer. It's about the moment when the conversation is already friendly and you want to move it somewhere.

Why it feels so risky

A hint can be denied. A plain statement can't. Steven Pinker and his co-authors argued in a 2008 PNAS paper that indirect remarks protect both people, because if the other person isn't on the same page, neither of you has to admit what was meant. They also argue that a spoken, explicit statement makes the meaning shared knowledge, so it's harder to ignore. That paper is a theory piece built on a game-theory model. It has no experiments and no sample, so treat it as an explanation, not a measurement.

Read that way, your nerves make sense. You're giving up the deniability. What you get back is clarity, and a plain "I like you" can make it easier for her to answer honestly. Some people would still rather keep things indirect (see hints and indirect signals), and that's a fair preference too.

There's also a pattern in how people misjudge each other. In the liking-gap studies (Boothby and colleagues, 2018, in Psychological Science), people who'd just talked underestimated how much their partner liked them. The pattern held in conversations from 2 to 45 minutes long. The studies were small. Study 1 had 34 students, Study 2 had 84 students, and a workshop study had 100 people. Still, they suggest your private read of "she's probably not that into this" may run colder than hers. That's an average across people, not a prediction for one conversation.

Pick a style that fits you

Jeffrey Hall and colleagues surveyed more than 5,000 adults in a study co-authored by a researcher from the dating site eHarmony and sorted how people express romantic interest into five styles: physical, traditional, polite, sincere and playful. In a news summary of the study, the sincere style is built on emotional connection and honest interest, and both men and women endorsed it. It's a self-report survey, so it shows what people say they do, not proof of what works. But it's a useful reminder that plain, warm honesty is a recognized way to flirt, not a failure to flirt.

If playful isn't you, you don't need to fake it. The flirty questions guide covers the playful end. This post covers the other end.

What to say

Short beats clever. A few options, depending on how far along you are:

Say it once, in a normal voice, with a pause at the end. Don't pile on reasons or qualify it three times. Then stop talking and let her answer. How warm to sound before you've said anything at all is a separate question, one of how much interest to show.

Build in an easy out

A direct request puts the other person on the spot. Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake found in 2008 that people asking strangers for small favors overestimated by about 50 percent how many people they'd need to ask, because they underrated how hard it is to refuse. Vanessa Bohns, whose experiments over about a decade involved requests to more than 14,000 strangers, argues the flip side: refusing feels hard, so people sometimes say yes to things they'd rather decline. Those studies were about favors, like borrowing a phone, not dating. But the second finding is the one to carry over. A yes that came from pressure isn't what you want.

So leave room. Some wording:

Then watch what she does with the room you left. Some people don't say no out loud. A University of Victoria consent guide notes that they might move away, change the subject, go quiet or avoid answering, and that silence is never a yes. If you see that, you have your answer.

What to do with each answer

A yes. Make a plan right then, with a day and a place. "Great. Are you free Thursday evening? There's a place I like on Fifth." Swap numbers if you haven't. See how to ask out a girl you just met for the details.

A maybe. "I'm not sure" or "I'm kind of seeing someone" or "I don't usually do this" are real answers. Reply with something that takes the pressure off: "That's fair. I'll leave it there, and it was nice talking to you." If she wants to pick it up, she knows where you stand. Don't ask again in the same conversation.

A no. "Thanks for telling me. I appreciate you being straight." Then end warmly and leave. A calm exit is easier on both of you than a long recovery. There's a routine for the minutes afterward in handling rejection.

When to say it

There's no clock. A few signs that the moment is reasonable: you've both been talking for a while, she's asking you things back, and neither of you is rushing to leave. Those cues are also easy to over-read. Hall's team found that in 10-to-12-minute conversations between strangers (52 pairs of college students), people were over 80 percent accurate when no flirting happened, but only 36 percent of men and 18 percent of women correctly noticed when they were being flirted with. That's a small student sample in a lab. It does suggest that flirting is hard to read, which is one more reason to say it plainly.

What to do next

  1. Write your plain line in your own words today. Keep it under 15 words.
  2. Add your easy-out line. Say both out loud three times so they stop sounding strange.
  3. Use it once this week in a low-stakes setting, with someone you've already been chatting with.
  4. After she answers, say one sentence back. Yes: a plan. Maybe: "That's fair." No: "Thanks for telling me."
  5. Notice what happened afterward. How long did the nerves last, and was the answer what you'd braced for? Write it down.

If you log your approaches in Run Game, the optional note is a good place to write down what you said and how it went, so you can compare it across a few weeks.

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