What do you mean by "confronting"?
Acknowledging it, talking about it.
This sounds a little weird. By social skills, do you mean "updates what it takes to fit in" and/or "stays in touch with power politics"?
I say "weird" because if you're in a relationship with someone, you don't want that person to keep perusing the field...
...unless you expect your partner to be a competitive pick on your part...
...but then there wouldn't be any problem with going all out.
I feel like you're suggesting semi-commitment is normal and expected. This can be highly problematic for reserved people looking for certainty.
Any time you make a racy joke, it could potentially be seen as flirting, depending on the party. Any time you act real nice to someone, it could potentially be seen as flirting.
Sometimes, there is a very fine line between good networking, and flirting, when you're doing it with your prefered sex. Being very friendly, open, perhaps making it clear you're available to talk later. All the same skills that come in handy for networking are also part of the flirting arsenal, and they can look very similar to each other. This is sort of what I meant.
As other posters have said, it's difficult to qualify exactly what and how something is casual flirting and what is more dedicated flirting; but you sort of know it when you see it, and if it's pointed out to them, people know it when they're doing it.
I don't think this threatens certainty in the least. But that's me, and I'm not especially clingy. I'm quite able to be serious in serious relationships, but I don't find that threatening to the seriousness of a relationship.
Are you saying it's impossible to build a relationship based on facial expressions?
You know, some people take asking questions as a sign of lacking intuition.
Good for them. They can go ahead and make stupid mistakes because they were too caught up in their impression to ask a simple question. And I see people do this ALL the time - apparently quite a lot of people have issues with intuition. A basic conversation could have prevented them from blowing up their relationship.
Sometimes in these discussions, if it's something important, I ask a question even when I'm pretty sure I already know the answer; I have excellent intuition. Usually I didn't need to ask.
But is assuming I'm right worth risking damaging the relationship? Reading people happens to be one of my strongest skills, but I'm still wrong once in a while. So I make sure to minimize the damage my occassional error might do. And guess what? My love life is distinctly lacking in drama, and has been for most of my dating history.
Oh, I definitely agree.
The problem is some nonserious people will play word games indefinitely on disclosure.
People like that aren't even worth being
friends with. If they can't just say what they want and everything has to be a game, then they can go play games with their hand.