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"  Photo: Jordin Althaus / \u00A9 Fox / Courtesy: Everett Collection My roommate and I have a game that we often play when we get on the subway. On our respective commutes, we scope out the guy situation on our train car and attempt to make flirtatious eye contact with one object of our hypothetical affection. The ultimate goal: to get a date. (Or, at the very least, a hilarious Craigslist missed connection). Silly? Sure, but you never know when you&amp;#039;re going to meet your soul mate on the G train. Related: Flirting On Instagram: Deep Thoughts On Deep Liking But here&amp;#039;s the thing: My friend has some kind of flirtatious magnetic power. She&amp;#039;s managed to get multiple offers for dates through this strategy. Meanwhile, thanks to my status as a supremely awkward individual, my &amp;quot;flirting&amp;quot; reads more like uncomfortable gawking than coquettish glancing. &amp;quot;You have to bump it up and start a conversation,&amp;quot; NYC &amp;quot;dateologist&amp;quot; Tracey Steinberg informed me when I explained that I actually couldn&amp;#039;t find love in a hopeless place. &amp;quot;So, hypothetically,&amp;quot; I said pseudo-casually, &amp;quot;If, say, one of our readers is shy, what advice would you have?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;If you want to meet someone, you don&amp;#039;t have the luxury of being shy,&amp;quot; she responded. Ouch. When I called on Steinberg, I was hoping that she would give me her secrets to expert eye-flirting and I&amp;#039;d be batting my eyelashes to a date in no time. What I quickly learned from our conversation, however, is that just looking wasn&amp;#039;t going to fly. Pitfalls be damned, Steinberg gave me the following guidelines to all but guarantee that I had a date by the time I emerged from my evening commute: Start the conversation. &amp;quot;I would start by asking him a question about anything in your environment\u2014anything you see, hear, taste, touch, or smell,&amp;quot; suggest Steinberg. &amp;quot;So, if you&amp;#039;re waiting for the subway, you might say, &amp;#039;Is that the A train that just went by?&amp;#039; Or if you can&amp;#039;t think of anything to ask at all, you can just ask, &amp;#039;Do you know what the weather is going to be like later?&amp;#039; Anything that&amp;#039;s really easy to start a conversation is how you do it.&amp;quot; Body language matters. &amp;quot;When you [talk to him], you want to do it with the right energy: You want to be smiling and looking into his eyes in a soft way; you just want to make yourself really approachable and friendly,&amp;quot; says Steinberg. &amp;quot;You want to be focusing on his positives, and enjoying yourself and him. When you do that, you&amp;#039;ll naturally have a more open, friendly body language. Some of my clients who are very uncomfortable talking to men will naturally cross their arms; turn away. That gives him the message that she&amp;#039;s not interested in him, so he&amp;#039;ll become less interested in her.&amp;quot; Are you at opposite ends of the car? No problem. Crowded trains are also not an excuse. &amp;quot;I would do a little wave, like, &amp;#039;Hi!&amp;#039;&amp;quot;, says Steinberg. &amp;quot;Definitely smile\u2014you just really want to give him the message that you&amp;#039;re interested, available, and would like to get to know him a little bit.&amp;quot; Subtlety is power, and learn how to take a hint. &amp;quot;My advice for men is different than my advice for women. Women have a lot more flexibility, because men in general aren&amp;#039;t really afraid of us,&amp;quot; Steinberg says. &amp;quot;Smiling, eye contact\u2026you want to respect his boundaries. If he doesn&amp;#039;t respond or he turns away, you don&amp;#039;t want to get in his face. As long as you&amp;#039;re giving off a friendly, approachable, available, light and breezy type of energy, then you should be okay.&amp;quot; So what do you do if he turns out to be not so great in conversation, creepy, or you have a terrible first date and are now subjected to seeing him every day on your shared commute? (Or all of the above.) &amp;quot;That kind of scenario happens to everyone at some point in their lives\u2014whether it&amp;#039;s a co-worker, a friend of a friend, it&amp;#039;s just a common scenario that one person is more interested in the other, etc.,&amp;quot; agrees Steinberg. &amp;quot;As long as you see him, smile, and just continue reading your book or go about your business, just to give him the message...Most people, if you acknowledge but then don&amp;#039;t pay attention to them, will move on.&amp;quot; With this insider advice in my arsenal, I was ready to suck it up, nip my awkwardness in the bud, and waltz onto that train platform with guns blazing. And a couple of days after our conversation, I got my opportunity. On the way to work, my train was laughably crowded\u2014so much so that we were at a standstill at a Brooklyn station as the doors cartoonishly opened and closed for five minutes straight. Most of my fellow commuters were unamused, but I caught the eye of the extremely attractive guy standing next to me (man bun and a scruffy beard...swoon), and we burst out laughing. It wasn&amp;#039;t awkward, because I didn&amp;#039;t make it awkward; I uncrossed my perpetually crossed arms and talked comfortably with him for the rest of the ride. And\u2014thank you, fate\u2014when we happened to get off at the same stop, he asked for my number. The lesson? I&amp;#039;d hypothesize that 80% of missed connections are missed because someone was just relying on catching the other person&amp;#039;s eye. I, for one, will be using Steinberg&amp;#039;s advice from now on. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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