If you had to draw up a Venn diagram of sexual preferences, the interests of gay men and straight women would overlap quite a bit, which is why it makes sense to knock at the door of our gay brethren to for some insight into what makes the boys tick.

After all, they have the advantage of understanding both sides of the coin! The Under the Covers team invited a few of our most trusted gay contributors to share their hard-won knowledge about pulling men and here is what we found:

Balanced self-esteem is key

You don’t have to be Beyoncé hot in order to initiate interaction with someone you find attractive. What you do need is enough confidence to know that your worth extends beyond your physical attributes and that ultimately you are more than the sum of your parts. Once you tap into this realisation it becomes much easier to go up to a guy and strike up a conversation – mainly because you know that you are bringing a whole bunch of awesome to the table.

Lingering eye contact does wonders

If you are too shy to just walk over and introduce yourself, you might want to give the old come hither look a try. There’s a little bit of a trick to it – try to catch the eye of your prospect and then maintain eye contact for a second or two longer than you normally would. Do this at least three times (if you only do it once, the guy might think it was a fluke).

Make the conversation work for you

If you think that one conversation is not enough to get something going you are dead wrong. An experiment by Professor Arthur Aron from UC Berkeley has revealed that you can get people to fall in love by generating emotional intimacy with 36 simple questions. We’re not recommending that you try to shoehorn all of these questions into a basic conversation, but it does point towards the fact that making yourself emotionally vulnerable (to a certain extent – don’t reveal all or your scars in one go!) has the potential to pave the way to the bedroom in no time flat.

These are just a few of the ways in which you can enlarge your potential dating pool without breaking a sweat. Keep your eye on the Under the Covers blog for more helpful information to spice up your sex life.