Why Flirting Gets Better After Forty and Midnight Snacks Get Worse

Let us begin with the tragedy. At twenty-five I could eat a wedge of brie, half a baguette, and a sleeve of crackers at midnight and wake up looking rested and dewy. At forty-something, one innocent handful of salted almonds and my body files a formal complaint by dawn. The snacks have not changed. The jury has. I now consult my digestion the way other people consult tax lawyers.

Now the miracle. Flirting, meanwhile, has gone the other direction entirely. At twenty-five I flirted like a woman defusing a bomb, all sweat and strategy, watching for reactions with the intensity of a hawk. Now I flirt like someone who has already survived the worst outcome, which is mild embarrassment, and found it perfectly survivable. It is astonishing how much charm lives on the far side of not caring.

I know what I find funny. I know which silences are worth leaving alone. I can hold a gaze for a half second longer than is strictly polite and then glance away at my glass like I have simply remembered something about wine. Youth has stamina, but experience has timing, and timing is ninety percent of the whole game.

There's also the pleasure of saying exactly what I mean, lightly, as though I were commenting on the weather. 'You have a dangerous laugh,' I once told a man at a wedding. He blushed to his ears and I got a second dance out of it. At twenty-five I would have dissolved into the carpet before the sentence finished.

So yes, I trade the late-night cheese board gladly. I will take a yogurt and a wicked eyebrow over invincible digestion any day. If you enjoy watching that kind of confidence in action, there are short romance dramas on TheFriend, like Why Is She The Exception?, where the banter is sharp and the people involved are, delightfully, fictional.

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