SEXY

Within 10 minutes of talking to this new female friend, I could see it written all over her forehead.

"Professional Heart-Breaker", it said.

And as one expert to another, I had to salute her. Her mastery of the art was impressive for a Padawan so young.

Before you get it wrong, she wasn’t trying to charm me. Quite the opposite, in fact. She was trying her best to be warm and friendly, yet indicated very clearly at the same time that she wasn’t interested in anything else. That way, she could be bubbly and spirited and endearing, without causing any complications.

It was in the choice of her words, the tact she employed, her body language… Everything about it screamed ‘control’. This clearly was someone who had played the game extensively, not a social butterfly that flits around unaware of the consequences of its flutterings, but a hawk of sorts, talons sheathed and at the ready.

See, once you know SEXY, then everything’s at your control. SEXY stands for Secrets, Electronic-media, eXchange-your-days, and boundarY-markers. Hee. I know it's stretching it, but still it’s a great abbreviation.

Every once in a while, I find friends in sticky situations of their own doing. Either they liked someone and didn’t know how to get it across, or they were on the receiving end of unwanted affection. The stakes certainly are high, for these things have a tendency of complicating perfectly happy friendships.

When you consider too that you often interact with the better halves of your guy / girl friends, all the more do you want to be sure you’re sending the right messages across.

And since we started this post with the anecdote of that new-found friend, we shall continue and explain SEXY from the perspective of someone who doesn’t want attention.

Secrets

Simply, be careful with the stories you trade. It’s all well and good to revisit old stories with a friend, but you cross the line when you start sharing stories out of the public domain.

For example, you can freely share funny stories about your schoolmates, but start telling stories about recent crushes you’ve had, or detailed accounts of past relationships…

The worst is dredging up secrets that ‘really, no one else knows about’. You see, secrets create confidences, little exclusive pockets to your friendship that the world is not privy to.

Once secrets are traded, the two of you start walking around sharing a little special thing with the other. You two laugh when cryptic references are made to it, and you feel special that someone else confided this to you.

Hence, watch the stories you share. Carefully weigh the urge to reciprocate when someone does share a secret with you, especially if you aren’t interested. Be well aware, this applies even to small groups of friends!

Electronic-media

Let’s not kid ourselves. In this day and age, we’re using electronic communication technologies that our parents never had to contend with at our age. But with this comes new sets of protocol, new rules.

Clearly, for MSN / SMSes, the frequency and speed of your replies say a lot more about you than you think. Even the effort to continue electronic conversation may be misconstrued as interest on your part!

Don’t ever be lulled into thinking the emotional distance afforded by MSN / SMSes allows you to flirt wantonly, or that it doesn’t mean anything if you’re in constant contact with someone online. This is our generation’s equivalent of note-writing, after all.

eXchange-your-days

Every day, our heads fill up with thousands of private observations of the world.

Whether you’re on your way to school, or watching TV, or going for a run, you’re still generating random thoughts. You’re thinking about how that cloud in the sky looked funny, or how you met an old friend in town, or how you wish it weren’t as stormy recently.

This is the stuff of which full-blown relationships are built of. This is exactly the sort of luxury couples are afforded, to share their little perspectives on life with each other without fear of reprisal or judgment.

And it is exactly when you begin sharing the smaller details of your days, that you no longer appear 2D to your friend. You blossom into this fully rendered 3D model in their minds, a real person who is alive every minute of the day, someone with whom they can develop an affection for.

Don’t believe me? Examine your relationship with your closest buddies, friends. You’ll find that no matter how close you are, how long you’ve known each other, how many idiosyncrasies are already revealed, you still don’t share the minutiae of each day with each other.

Seriously, there’s a difference.

boundarY-markers

And here we arrive, at the catch-all category.

Verbal markers are easier to conceptualize. Here, all you need to do is to reinforce certain key ideas by making constant reference to them, subtly of course. Doing it right means that you manage to project a certain image of yourself. For example:

“Oh, I don’t know, it depends whether the bf/gf is free I guess”
“Yea the bf/gf says that movie is good too”
“How many children do I want? I’ve not even earned my first million!”
“Nah, I don’t think much of my ex nowadays, the days are so packed!”

And so on. As simple as this sounds, listen very very carefully to what people are saying. If you know a certain someone is attached, yet never ever makes reference to their partner at all, you know something is not too right already. It’s a very powerful indication, verbal markers.

Physical markers are ironically harder to exert control over. You would think that with language your mind would be in a tangle trying to work out all the nuances, but it is in body language that we reveal the most.

Perhaps the first and most important thing to remember here is, it doesn’t matter what your intentions are in doing something. It’s how the other person is likely to perceive it.

A simple example suffices. Say you appreciate a friend’s company because she is particularly good at something, like appreciating plays or playing basketball. And you always engage in that activity with her because you want to enjoy plays with someone who can understand them, or because you want to learn a thing or two about scoring baskets.

If it continues long enough, it gets really messy, yes? How would she know what you really want her company for?

Conclusion

The above may be trite knowledge to you, but you’ll be surprised at how difficult it is to master SEXY. It’s really about being on your toes all the time, understanding the image you are projecting, overcoming tugs of the heartstrings to do what you believe is best for yourself.

Life really is complicated enough as it is.