Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

Kundera’s aphorism treats flirting as a social contract built on ambiguity: it signals erotic availability and invites desire, yet deliberately withholds commitment. The “promise” is not a pledge to act but a performative suggestion that keeps both parties suspended between possibility and denial. In this view, flirting’s power lies in asymmetry—arousing expectation while preserving deniability—so it can function as play, manipulation, or a test of mutual interest. The line also reflects a recurring Kundera theme: the tension between erotic imagination and lived reality, and how modern relationships often thrive on provisional, reversible gestures rather than binding declarations.