Can you flirt without that energy that says you really mean it?

A lot of people flirt but say they are just doing it for fun and they don’t really mean anything by it. I was thinking about that and wondering how that worked. I enjoy flirting and, these days, I don’t want it to go anywhere other than to be fun and entertaining and give me a spark of that feeling of being interesting or attractive or something.

However, it seems to me that in order to flirt properly, I have to actually mean it, or at least put out the energy that I mean it. Otherwise it’s kind of flat—no spirit behind it. So even though I don’t mean it, I have to mean it, or else it isn’t flirting.

Can you flirt without really meaning it? Or does that take the life out of it for you? If you need that energy, can you just turn it on or off at will? Or does it influence you somehow, so that you might start flirting just to play, but at some point it gets away from you and you are doing something real?

And looking at it through other eyes—if you see your spouse flirting, can you truly believe they are doing it just for fun with no meaning behind it?