Cypocalypse, an excerpt i thought you might find interesting. every time i read it, it strikes me that i'm very much the same, as an INTP female. only difference is, i'm quite strongly inclined towards the provocative, so i end up enjoying the 'went too far' aspects, but in such a naive/pragmatic/unabashed way that men generally end up finding me intruiging and mysterious, or scary (ha), rather than malicious (this is based on feedback, i hope indeed that it's a general rule). i think in this sense, i end up escaping my own seriousness, but it can't be denied that if i only find lightness in flirtation through a penchant for the provocative, it's probably a bad thing. alas. at times when the provocative isn't playing a strong role in my life, i end up doing precisely the same things as theresa. i wonder if many INTP ladies share this experience.
from kundera's 'the unbearable lightness of being' part IV, 8:
What is flirtation? One might say that it is behavior leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while pre*venting that possibility from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guar*antee.
When Tereza stood behind the bar, the men whose drinks she poured flirted with her. Was she annoyed by the unending ebb and flow of flattery, double entendres, off-color stories, propositions, smiles, and glances? Not in the least. She had an irresistible desire to expose her body (that alien body she want*ed to expel into the big wide world) to the undertow.
Tomas kept trying to convince her that love and lovemaking were two different things. She refused to understand. Now she was surrounded by men she did not care for in the slightest. What would making love with them be like? She yearned to try it, if only in the form of that no-guarantee promise called flirt*ing.
Let there be no mistake: Tereza did not wish to take revenge on Tomas; she merely wished to find a way out of the maze. She knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of phys*ical love. How she wished she could learn lightness! She yearned for someone to help her out of her anachronistic shell.
If for some women flirting is second nature, insignificant, routine, for Tereza it had developed into an important field of research with the goal of teaching her who she was and what she was capable of. But by making it important and serious, she deprived it of its lightness, and it became forced, labored, over*done. She disturbed the balance between promise and lack of guarantee (which, when maintained, is a sign of flirtistic virtu*osity); she promised too ardently, and without making it clear that the promise involved no guarantee on her part. Which is another way of saying that she gave everyone the impression of being there for the taking. But when men responded by asking for what they felt they had been promised, they met with strong resistance, and their only explanation for it was that she was deceitful and malicious.
