Putting yourself out there and flirting with an attractive person can be scary. What if you make a fool of yourself? What if they reject you? What if they come to the bar with their significant other? What if you start talking and run out of things to say? For those who are shy or introverted, these situations are even worse.

To complicate matters, people have difficulty determining if someone is flirting with them. A study found that people are good at telling when someone is flirtatious but terrible at realizing they are being flirted with. While people are 80% accurate at determining that someone isn’t flirting with them, only 36% of men and 18% of women can correctly tell if someone is being flirtatious.

To add to the awkwardness, in a world where a lot of communication is done online, people are finding it harder to flirt with a stranger in public.

So, what can we do? The good thing is that people who say they are experts in flirting have been kind enough to share their advice for shy people. Here are 15 of the best pieces of advice we culled from an AskReddit forum question:

“Experienced flirts of Reddit, what advice can you give for shy people on how to flirt?”

The big takeaway is to have fun, eliminate expectations, and make the other person laugh. Sounds easy, right?

15 tips from Reddit’s flirting experts

Experienced flirts of Reddit, what advice can you give for shy people on how to flirt? byu/shouldi918282 inAskReddit

1. Don’t be afraid to fail

“People don’t care that much if you say something embarrassing or weird, so you shouldn’t care either. From what I’ve learned, most girls actually like it when you’re just talking about whatever you feel like, even if it’s kinda goofy or weird because it brings up a genuinely good conversation that isn’t the boring stuff they always talk about with guys trying to flirt with them.”

“Eye contact says more than you will ever know. Subtle of course.”

But what if you have a problem making eye contact?

“Look at the spot between their eyes. Break away every few seconds if it gets overwhelming but only horizontally and only for around a second. If you’re trying to flirt you can use the breakaway to look at their lips briefly. Don’t do that every single time lol.”

3. Pretend you’re disinterested

“Decide you are not actually interested in them and are just trying to be nice to them before beginning your attempt to flirt.”

4. Fake it ’til you make it

“Literally, and I can not stress this enough, if you lack confidence just fake it. It’s the #1 thing when it comes to........

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