Attracting attention
The first step of courtship is ensuring the object of your desire notices you. At this stage you are strangers, and if you are in a social situation you may well be one component of a crowd. Say you are in a busy lounge bar, or a club, or a party, there will be other singles vying for attention. This is where you need to make your intentions known. This can be done in many different ways. The clothes you are wearing, your perfume and even your posture can telegraph that you are looking for romance.
Body language
Fiddling with jewelry or toying with your hair can captivate an admirer. If there’s background music, teasing movements will draw attention. When it comes to non-verbal communication the surest weapon in your arsenal is simple but devastating: eye contact. Match a person’s stare, hold it for several seconds, then flash a smile. The effect will be magnetic.
Flirting
The next stage of courting is crucial. Up until this point, you may well be entranced by someone but there is still a hint of mystery which is underpinning this attraction. Once you meet face-to-face you are exposing yourself to a potentially trickier situation. Flirting might once have been dismissed as ‘chatting up’ when you were at the school disco, but in the adult world it actually requires a fair amount of skill. This is where you can really begin to impress a potential partner, giving compliments and beginning to establish the sense of chemistry that could really bring you together. If you flirt well you can lay the foundation for a strong relationship. But be warned. Overdo the banter and it will come across as clichéd, as if you are dishing out lines you’ve already used several times that evening.
Touch
If flirting is all about using verbal communication to establish trust, convey sex appeal and informing someone that you are worth getting to know better, the next courtship step – touch – is actually a return to the non-verbal type. But once you’re in a position where the flirting has come naturally and been reciprocated, touch will drive everything up a gear. Once you are becoming more and more familiar with one another, brushing an arm or clasping the small of their back will have an electric effect. Simply removing that stray hair from their collar will spark oodles of pleasure.
Intimacy
The fifth phase of courtship is really a progression of step four. If the previous stage is all about subtle touching, intimacy is when non-verbal communication can make your partner giddy with anticipation. Whether we’re talking embracing, cuddling, stroking hands, kissing, or gazing lovingly into one another’s eyes, all of these actions are saying you’ve reached a point where the courtship period has concluded and you are more than ready to move headway into a passionate relationship.