This pithy line is the distillation of all that I have learnt when it comes to flirting.

Notice yourself and attend to her.

Looking back on my early dating interactions, I realize I used to be afraid of putting the fullness of my attention on a woman I was drawn to because Eros would start emerging in the space in-between. I had limited capacity to hold Eros in my body, so I’d instinctively pull my attention back into myself. As a result, I would start chattering about happenings and going-ons without paying much attention to whether it was reaching her and what it was evoking in her.

As I increased my body’s capacity for holding erotic charge, essentially through the cupping practice, I felt spacious. I found more capacity to put my attention on her and breathe up the charge as it emerged.

For many men, erotic charge starts and gets trapped in the loins. It is quite uncomfortable honestly, but most men live in denial of its discomfort because chasing it to a release can feel so good.

The cupping practice leverages more of your body via breath in holding erotic charge. Eros can (and loves to) move fluidly inside your body, if you’ll allow it.

As my capacity for moving Eros increased, I learnt how lovely it is to simply put my attention on a woman I’m drawn to, as an experience by itself. So relaxing and nourishing. A woman who is softened in the presence of my attention is a treat to behold. And the nourishment becomes mutual.

The more I settled in this simple nourishment, opportunities for playful conversational fun revealed themselves. They’d just start popping up in my head, like you may have experienced towards the end of your first or second Improv course.

It is so fun to playfully tease, and be teased back. Such a joy to enjoy humor come alive in a connection where there is attractive charge. The shivers of the laughter easing any final tendencies in the fascia to seize up in a freeze.

I have found this possible only in situations where I feel the capacity to hold steady attention on a woman purely for the sake of how joyous it is to hold that attention. Not with any ulterior goals or expectations. I have found that I can do that only when I’m true to my desire for a woman and the extent to which it exists and honor it when the desire passes through, which requires a certain amount of work in acknowledging endings and setting boundaries.

Desire can be very well present, without becoming an ulterior motive. Isn’t that the point of most spiritual modalities? Notice desires without expecting fulfillment?

In the right setting, when the time is ripe, it can open up spaciousness for revealing those desires. Either verbally or with light touch.

There is a gentle, tender art to revealing erotic desire. In such a softened space of connection, it is important to recognize the physical delicateness of the woman in front of you. For women, it is essential to recognize and honor the emotional delicateness of the man in front of you.

I learnt this lesson the hard way, but I’ve found now that such a tender, delicate spot of exploration can be found when two humans match in their capacity for being tender in their heart space together.

Don’t scare away the song bird. Bring lightness to your movement. Simplicity in your verbal revealing or in your touch. Notice yourself and attend to her.

The more I noticed myself and attended to her, I noticed that it brought me out of this apologetic manner of being which I carried for so long. Explaining why I’m doing what I’m doing when the other did not want the explanation, but because I didn’t realize how afraid I was of doing it. The more I attend to her while noticing myself, the less I take actions that are misattuned to the moment where the connection is at.

Misattuned actions require apologies.

The more I noticed myself and attended to her while breathing up erotic charge, the more I have been clued into just how much erotic desire women carry. My sexual shame conditioning had established this firm story in my head for most of my life that women don’t want to have sex, especially with me. So whenever erotic charge would emerge, I’d balk at it and run off into the safety of my head.

The shame continued because of the lack of my capacity for breathing the erotic charge and creating comfort with it. Instead, I was only exploring it in the safety of my room with a pornographic website on a blue screen.

The lack of capacity for holding erotic charge would lead to an urgency. I did not know back then how joyful it is to simply hold desire. So I was caught up in a cycle of bumbling misattuned mistakes and apologies. Perhaps you are too? Or perhaps you are caught up in a cycle of bumbling misattuned mistakes and prideful lack of apology?

Either ways, that’s not really the strategy for mutually nourishing erotic connections.

All of us deserve mutually nourishing erotic connections and at least, in a traditionally polar setting, men hold the structure for that.

I have learnt that the erotic desire of women is often hidden in subtle ways. The best strategy I have found to tune into that subtlety is to connect with my own body in nurturing sensual ways.

Did you know that you could stroke other parts of your body than your phallus? That’s what massage is really. Masturbation is a focussed massage. But you could bring that same attention to the entirety of your body. It is quite the delight to see how your body responds to your own touch in different ways. That same delightful sense of adventure carries with you when your woman undresses and lies next to you. Our bodies are not that different from each other.

The more I tuned in to my own body, the more I got clued in to the subtle shifts in a woman’s erotic desire as expressed by her body.

At the opportune moment, you may broach the gap between your bodies with the subtlest of physical touch.

Women wear jewelry. Women wear tattoos. They are walking art pieces. Admire the art that they are. Hold her hand and ask her about the rings she is wearing. Admire the daintiness of her fingers as you do so. Caress the soft gaps between them.

It’s okay in those moments to not remember every detail of the story she is sharing with you about the ring. It’s okay to even reveal that you are more interested in the texture of her fingers than you are in the prettiness of the ring.

Before I learned to hold erotic charge spaciously, I’d be afraid that I won’t remember everything that she shared and then she’d be upset with me at some point in the future for not remembering. Honestly, I have learnt now that it doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did and I can always graciously ask to be reminded again because, Honey, I love hearing the sound of your voice telling me stories. Don’t pursue a woman if you don’t love the sound of her voice telling you stories.

If you do find yourself in a spot where she is upset with you for not remembering something, hold the possibility that the disconnect between you two happened way before the incident where you forgot that thing, whatever that thing was. She only found the courage to surface the disconnect, when that incident happened.

Let’s say you were at a job and things were not going that well. Then your co-worker did something that annoyed you, and you decided to quit. Did you really quit because of that incident or was there a build-up of frustration? It is a bit like that. Differentiate between triggers and causes.

The more I tuned in to my own body, the more I got clued in to the subtle shifts in a woman’s erotic desire as expressed by her body.

At the opportune moment, there is great joy to be had in playing with those subtle shifts verbally.

Women love the verbalization of erotic desires arising in the connection. When they don’t get enough of it from the men they are with, they turn to erotica audiobooks.

In the past, I responded to being aware of the large market for erotica by naming my erotic fantasies to a woman without having any clue of whether it was a shared fantasy. Imposing my porn-conditioned mind onto her.

But when I have built a level of attunement that I’m talking about in this essay, I was able to tap into the true fantasies arising in the moment in the connection between us.

Not because I watched a porno two days ago and want to replicate it.
Not because she visually reminds me of the porno I watched a week ago.

But because very specific erotic ideas are coming to my mind in connection with her and I feel quite unattached to their fulfillment.

The Masculine is the Witness.

Perhaps you have experienced how relieving it feels to sit with your legs crossed and witnessing your breath, naming the different emotions and thoughts that are arising practicing a lack of attachment. Allowing them to arise, be labelled and pass by.

Women seem to, similarly, experience waves of relief and adventure when they are witnessed and the variety of erotic desires arising in a charged connection are named, without a sense of attachment.

When sufficiently attuned, you could look at a woman, maintain eye contact, hold her hand and softly ask her if she would enjoy your cock gushing deep inside her throat.

It’s quite heartbreaking when darkly hot impulses emerge in a connection, but shame paints this false story that the desire only belongs to you and won’t be received by the other, thereby preventing the alchemy of what the heart-rooted love of a connection could alchemize.

To get to a place where such a blatant desire is true, I find it important to practice letting go of early erotic impulses, in service of fostering a heart connection. If you learn how to cup yourself, you’ll gain mastery over the early erotic impulses and no longer be driven by them. So that, you may find yourself in a place where it is true that your connection with a beautiful woman desires the physical manifestation of the darkest virtual fantasies you have perused.

When you cup yourself, you learn that there is another way to move the energy than stroking it. Having rooted into this practice now for a couple of years, it has created spaciousness in my life for my cock to be solely stroked by the delicious, moisturous warmth of a throbbing pussy, which is leagues higher, in quality, to lubed up hands.

Why wouldn’t you want that for your cock? Don’t settle for lubed up hands.

Learn how to notice yourself and attend to the woman you are attracted to.