What do you do if you don’t happen to be part of a huge social network of friends and meddling family members? Or you’ve already cut a swath through your entire social circle? Or you just moved to a new city?

Well, open your eyes and look around. Half the country is single (49.6 percent of all households, according to an August 2004 census report), so you can pretty much figure that at least half of the people around you are too. Unfortunately, the first thing most of us do when we spot someone we’d like to meet is walk right up and . . . avoid them.them. After all, they’re probably seeing someone. Or they’re married. With a couple of kids. And a huge drinking problem. And debt—lots and lots of debt.

• Share a story of how an attempt at flirting worked--or didn't work!

Excuses, Excuses

“Instead of making an attempt to flirt with people they’re attracted to, most people will just make a list of excuses,” says David Wygant, author of Always Talk to Strangers (2005). “A woman will be in line at a Starbucks and she’ll spot a good-looking guy, but instead of talking to him, she’ll say, ‘Oh, he looks busy, he’s probably married, he may be unstable.’ People will look for every possible excuse just to make themselves feel better for not taking a chance.”

Why? Because we’re wimps.

“Everybody suffers from the same disease,” says Wygant. “Everybody has this fear of strangers. But strangers are the ones who hold the key to your dating future.”

Rather than freezing people out, Wygant suggests finding some small way to flirt with them instead. In fact, he promotes flirting with everyone and everything we come in contact with—men, women, children, even pets. Does that mean we all have to go out there and start doing the Legally Blonde “bend and snap”? Or turn into relentless mate-hunting machines?

Not at all. It just means we need to pull that antisocial stick out of our ass—at least partway.

Practice, Practice!

“People need to lighten up, start smiling at each other,” says Wygant. “They need to go out there and do some verbal batting practice.”

When and where should we be doing all this practice? Everywhere. Everywhen.

Interesting people are all over. They’re at the coffee shop in the morning, the dry cleaner’s in the afternoon. They’re sitting one booth over at our favorite Thai place, or waiting for us to finish our biceps curls at the gym. They’re pumping gas next to us, buying toilet paper behind us. They may even be checking out your ass as you read this page.
:
What do you have to do to meet one of these people? Try acknowledging their presence, for starters. Make eye contact. Smile and say hello. Ask them what time it is. If they think it’s going to rain. If they know if the food at the new Italian place down the street is any good. If their dog bites. You don’t need to sacrifice your dignity or employ vast amounts of subterfuge; just drop some form of metaphorical hankie (along with that ubiquitous antisocial stance). Engage with them in a nonthreatening and—if you can pull it off—charming manner. If all else fails, just do what this woman did to meet Kent, a fortysomething single from Seattle.

Bus Stop
"Every day I ride a train, take a bus, and then walk through downtown to get to work. And rarely does anyone make any effort to just chat. Something just seems to keep people from connecting. But one day, this girl waved at me on a bus. So I went up to her and asked “Do you always wave to strange men on the bus?” she said she’d noticed me a couple of times and was new in town (she’d just moved to Seattle from Reno), and that was that. We struck up a conversation and it turned out we had a lot of similar interests, so we started dating. And we’re still dating today."