The key ideas

The Flirting Bible: Your Ultimate Photo Guide to Reading Body Language, Getting Noticed, and Meeting More People Than You Ever Thought Possible

Fran Greene, 2010

Why do some people get noticed in any room while others spend the whole evening standing by the wall? Fran Greene spent twenty years teaching people to flirt and became convinced that it is not about looks: the body speaks before words do. The book explains how to use eye contact, posture and a first line to show that you are approachable, how to notice other people's signals, and how to get through rejection without losing confidence.

Who it is for

For anyone who freezes around someone they like, waits for things to happen on their own, and wants to learn to show interest easily and without fear.

It is better to be interested than interesting!

The lunch where she sat next to him

One day, after a long meeting, Fran Greene went to lunch with her colleagues. There were eight of them: seven women and one man. He was Jim from a sister office, and they had met earlier that same day. Fran sat down next to him and tried everything she had learned in her years of practice. She joked, paid compliments, smiled, looked him in the eye and leaned toward him when he spoke. That time, it all ended with lunch.

Three months later Jim came to their office again, and Fran offered him a ride to the airport. He said yes, on the condition that they have dinner together first. Three years later they were married.

Greene worked as the “director of flirting” at the dating site Match.com and spent twenty years teaching single, divorced and widowed people to flirt. To her, flirting is neither an inborn gift nor a trick. It is the things a person does, with words and without them, to show interest in someone else. You can learn it the way you learn tennis: by practicing.

Seven steps lie ahead: eye contact, distance, posture, other people's signals, touch, the first line, and a rejection that stops being frightening. Let's start with what can be seen from across the room.

Three seconds of eye contact

Joel had long wanted to meet Marie, and his roommate set up a meeting for them at a pub. But all evening he never once looked her in the eye and seemed to be focused on everything but her. After an hour he asked Marie for her phone number, and she declined. Later the roommate explained: Marie didn't think he was interested, because he never even looked at her.

Greene calls eye contact the soul of flirtation. By her rule, eye contact should last two to four seconds. Any longer feels uncomfortable, and a fixed stare feels like an intrusion. Good eye contact is like a handshake with your eyes: make contact, then let go.

A smile works together with eye contact. A quick smile that fades right away looks fake. A calm, warm one says without words: I like you, I won't hurt you. Josh, one of Greene's students, never smiled and never realized how it came across. As soon as he started smiling, people started noticing him.

The practice is simple. Look at a stranger for two to four seconds, smile, look away and go on your way, with no conversation at all. If looking straight into someone's eyes is hard, Greene suggests looking at the forehead or the chin: from a distance it reads as eye contact.

Read in Livria

About the author

Fran Greene is an American relationship expert and licensed clinical social worker, and the former “director of flirting” at the dating site Match.com. She has a private practice in the New York area and runs workshops where she teaches single people how to meet others.

All books by this author: Fran Greene

Terms from the book

  • Match.com
  • Jim
  • Aaron
  • Don
  • Marie
  • personal space
  • Jill
  • Jamie
  • mirroring
  • Barbara
  • Joel: A thirty-three-year-old man from a story in the book who never once looked a woman in the eye at a meeting he had long hoped for.
  • Josh: A student of Fran Greene's, a man in his late twenties who had never smiled before.
  • Gina: A nurse in her forties who came to Fran Greene's workshops. She met her boyfriend thanks to a handshake from the book.
  • Linda: A divorced woman in her forties, a client of Fran Greene's, whom no one approached at singles events.
  • body language: Everything a person communicates without words: through posture, gestures, eye contact, facial expression and the distance they keep from the other person.
  • Betsy: A forty-two-year-old woman from a story in the book who walked up to a man herself after noticing his signals.
  • Dillon: The man Betsy walked up to. He was giving off signals of interest without realizing it.
  • preen: To preen is to put the finishing touches on your appearance: fixing your hair, your clothes, your tie. In the book it is one of the signals of interest.
  • Lisa: A woman in her forties from a story in the book. She later told Fran Greene how she and Don ended up in sync.
  • Alyssa: A woman from a story in the book who talked about herself for ten minutes and never asked the other person a single question.
  • Mitch: A twenty-nine-year-old man from a story in the book who gave up for the whole evening after two rejections in a row.

All terms

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