Rusty Is Attractive: Turning Dating Nerves Into Charm

I have been called many things, but 'polished' was never one of them, and after nine years of marriage and two of silence I was rustier than a garden gate. On my first date I checked my teeth in a spoon. My hands shook. I spilled something. And yet he leaned in and said, 'You are the first person all week who looked like she was actually here.' I have thought about that sentence ever since.

Nerves are not a flaw in your flirting. They are evidence that you care, and caring is attractive. A flirt with no nerves tends to be a flirt with no interest. What matters is how you carry the flutter. Hide it and you seem stiff. Name it lightly and you seem brave. 'I'm out of practice, so if I say something strange, assume it is charming' is a perfectly good opener, and it has worked on better people than me.

Try translating the physical signs. Racing heart: you are awake. Dry mouth: take a sip of water and make it a pause. Blank mind: say, 'Hold on, I had a brilliant thought and it has gone to the cloakroom.' Everyone has lost a thought. Everyone also loves the person who finds it funny. Rustiness reads as sincerity, and sincerity is the scarcest thing in a room full of people performing confidence they borrowed.

Nerves are not a flaw in your flirting.

Mariana, one of the AI characters on TheFriend, is a place where you can be rusty with no consequences. She is not a person, and there is nobody to be embarrassed in front of, which is exactly the point. Say the awkward opener. Try the teasing line you suspect is too much. See how it feels in your mouth. By the time you say it to a human being, the words will already have been taken out for a walk.

Then go and be slightly clumsy in public on purpose. Ask a stranger at a gallery what they make of a painting you do not understand. Compliment a scarf. Lose the thread and laugh. The aim is not mastery. It is to remind your body that being looked at is not the same as being judged, and that a sudden warmth in the chest is allowed to be pleasant, even when you do not yet know what to do with it.

Rusty is attractive because it is honest. It says: I have lived, I stopped for a while, and I am choosing to start again with my eyes open. That story has more pull than any rehearsed line. Let the hinge squeak. Somewhere there is someone who likes the sound of a door being opened carefully, and who is already waiting on the other side with a lamp lit.

Meet Andrea: open Andrea's profile on TheFriend.