Decoding Love (21 page)
Authors: Andrew Trees
But that is only one weapon in the female arsenal. Beyond eye contact and smiling, what else can women do? Psychologist Monica Moore has spent thousands of hours watching women flirt with men and has cataloged fifty-two nonverbal signals that women use to draw men’s attention. Forthwith, a brief sample of her findings: primping, smiling, nodding, leaning forward, the lip lick, the hair flip, and the object caress. There is also the glance (darting or fixated). The giggle, the skirt hike, and the breast caress. The solitary dance. All the way up to more elaborate techniques, such as the presentation of the neck (a sign of submission in the animal kingdom) and the parade, which is probably self-explanatory. She even ranked them based on how they were used. “Smile at him broadly” was far and away the winner with “throw him a short, darting glance” and “dance alone to the music” tied for a distant second. For those who want the full arsenal, I recommend her article “Nonverbal Courtship Patterns in Women,” which appeared in the July 1985 issue of
Ethology and Sociobiology.
For those women who worry that they are not attractive enough to be successful in these circumstances, there is more good news. The number of signals you send counts for far more than how you look. According to Moore, the women who were approached the most often were not those who were the most attractive but those who signaled most frequently—women who sent out more than thirty-five signals an hour averaged more than four approaches an hour. There is no question that thirty-five times an hour is a lot of signal sending, particularly for the shy among us, but (in what is becoming a familiar refrain)
Decoding Love
has never promised that the mating dance was easy.
Ethology and Sociobiology.
For those women who worry that they are not attractive enough to be successful in these circumstances, there is more good news. The number of signals you send counts for far more than how you look. According to Moore, the women who were approached the most often were not those who were the most attractive but those who signaled most frequently—women who sent out more than thirty-five signals an hour averaged more than four approaches an hour. There is no question that thirty-five times an hour is a lot of signal sending, particularly for the shy among us, but (in what is becoming a familiar refrain)
Decoding Love
has never promised that the mating dance was easy.
Some women are probably reading this and wondering why this burden has been shifted onto them. According to all of our gender stereotypes, men are supposed to be the ones making the move, but it seems that little piece of conventional wisdom is completely wrong. Moore also determined that women’s nonverbal cues were responsible for initiating two-thirds of the encounters between men and women at a bar. Far from being Lotharios, most men are reluctant to initiate contact (so much so that researchers have dubbed them “reluctant males”). This should provide some solace to women who find themselves waiting endlessly for men to approach. Worse, much of the time, men also fail to pick up the signals that women send them. This helps explain why women have to send out so many signals before men respond. In fact, women are usually more aware of the signals they are sending than men are. For those women who read this with a certain amount of distaste for the whole idea of trying to attract male attention, Mae West sagely advises, “It is better to be looked over than overlooked.” By the way, the opposite logic does not hold true. Men reading this should not start indiscriminately signaling. That will backfire and make them appear less attractive.
It’s not much of a stretch to say that women should treat the entire episode as if dealing with a dim-witted child. How dim-witted? Researchers report that even when women initiated the encounter, men later assumed that they took the lead. The sad fact is that most men are more oblivious to nonverbal signals than women are, which isn’t to say that they don’t respond to them or even that they don’t send them. But they do have less conscious awareness of both signals sent and received. Because of men’s obtuseness, even signals of rejection have to be stronger for them since they tend to discount those signals more than a woman would.
If you look at how men and women consciously describe the art of seduction, you can quickly see just how oblivious many men are. In one study by biologist Timothy Perper, men and women were asked to write an essay describing how they would seduce someone. Women proved to be virtual Cleopatras in the art of seduction and had detailed strategies for how to seduce a man. They ranged from suggesting returning to “my place,” complimenting the man physically, offering to give a back rub, putting on soft music, subtly touching, and so on. Men, on the other hand, were maddeningly vague on the subject. One wrote, “I probably would just try to give the impression that if she wants to have sex, then it’s all right with me,” an answer that not only explicitly leaves the burden on the woman but doesn’t even state what he would do to give the impression that he wanted to have sex. Another wrote, “I would more than likely try in some way to seduce this person.” Talk about an answer that begs the question. As one wrote in what could serve as a description for most men, “Seduction is a vague concept for me.” Reading these answers, it seems possible that the species itself might cease to exist if women did not step into the breach—which they are far more willing to do than cultural myths suggest. According to Perper, more than 87 percent of the women said that they would be willing to initiate the encounter. And in my own interviews, most women admitted that they were often the ones to get things started.
However, when it comes to the actual sex, women are the ones who become vague in their answers, while men become much more explicit, discussing everything from sucking earlobes to caressing body parts. What this suggests is that men take control when the seduction turns physical, while women play the key role in the early stages. Perper calls it a “division of romantic effort.”
After doing the research for this chapter, I now realize that my own lack of awareness about signals bordered on imbecility. I still remember the first time I kissed a girl. Despite ample signaling from her, I stood on her doorway desperately making conversation in the vain hope that my next move would magically materialize. Luckily, she finally put us both out of our misery by asking me if I would like to kiss her. By putting it as a question, I suppose she was successfully skirting the prohibition against being too direct. That pretty much set the tone for most of the rest of my romantic career so that I now find myself wondering how I ever went out with anyone at all. My interviews with men showed that this was not an uncommon reaction. After I described some of the research for this chapter, many of the men wanted lessons in how to get better at deciphering nonverbal communication.
Although I’ve jokingly used the term mating dance, it is entirely appropriate. The barroom encounter between men and women is choreographed as closely as any ballroom dance. So, let us examine the pas de deux. A number of researchers—people like David Givens and Timothy Perper—have spent inordinate amounts of time in bars mapping all of this out so that we don’t have to. They have reduced the mating dance to a science—or, at least, a well-choreographed dance with precise steps that must occur for courtship success. According to Perper in his excellent book
Sex Signals
, there are five stages:
Sex Signals
, there are five stages:
1. Approach;
2. Talk;
3. Turn—what Perper is referring to is how a couple will gradually turn so that their bodies are facing each other;
4. Touch—usually initiated by the woman, so, yes, ladies, you are still in charge;
5. Synchronize—this refers to our tendency to mirror each other’s physical movements when we are feeling a connection (recent studies have shown that this can take a number of forms beyond physical mirroring, including voice cadence and length of eye contact).
(Givens has also broken down courtship into five basic phases that are broader but still roughly analogous to Perper: attracting attention, recognition, conversation, touching, and making love.)
This sequence can take anywhere from a few minutes to hours, but there are certain rules the encounter must follow if it is to progress, according to Perper. Each stage is what he calls an escalation point, and each person’s response to each escalation is crucial to the outcome. If one person touches the other, but the other never reciprocates, that will derail the encounter, and it will stop escalating. Also, the signals that the two people send to each other must go from less intense to more intense for the couple to move through the five stages. A quick example will show why. If a man expresses strong admiration of the woman in conversation by saying something like, “You are very beautiful” (a strong signal), but she responds tepidly (“Hmmm, well, it’s very dark in here”), the man will adjust his enthusiasm level to her own, and the encounter will begin to de-escalate. Perper also found that women are usually the ones to escalate.
Before you run off to the nearest bar and try this out, I do have one warning: all of this usually occurs subconsciously. Attempting to manipulate the process runs a very high risk. If the other person catches you doing it, you can kiss your chances good-bye. So, how should you go about mirroring someone? Studies show that it is best to do it imperfectly and to allow a time lag of a few seconds before you do mirror a movement. My own advice would be to let the mating dance take its natural course and simply use these “rules” as a way to judge whether you and your partner are both feeling the same way about each other.
One final thought for those men and women who are desperate to meet someone when they hit the bars: stay until the end. A group of researchers went to a college bar and asked a number of individuals to rate the attractiveness of the opposite sex at the bar that night. They repeated this three times: at 9 p.m., 10:30 p.m., and midnight. What they found was that both men and women raised their ratings as the time grew later. This effect was even more pronounced for men than for women. Although tempting to dismiss this as a classic case of beer goggles, the researchers determined that the rating’s boost was not related to alcohol consumption, which means the goggles were entirely self-induced. So, if you can wait until last call, you just might get lucky.
Which brings us once again to sex. Not to beat a dead horse, but I am going to repeat my advice to women: be very careful about whom you sleep with and how quickly you sleep with him. It’s clear from a number of studies that some women use sex as one way to lure a man into a long-term relationship, but that is, at best, a risky strategy. In all likelihood, women will fall prey to what some researchers have dubbed an “affective shift.” According to one study, men’s and women’s feelings about their partners change after the first sexual encounter, and the results should give pause to any woman interested in a long-term relationship. For women, there is a distinctly positive shift after first-time sex. In other words, they care more about a man after they have slept with him. There are obvious evolutionary reasons for this: women need to be concerned about finding someone to help raise the children, so they are biologically designed to try to push relationships in the direction of a long-term commitment. This is yet another reason women need to be careful about choosing their sexual partners. Although a woman may think she just wants a fling, she could wake up the next morning and find that she has developed a much stronger attachment to the man than she expected.
Men react in an entirely different fashion to that first encounter—or at least some men do. For a man who has a lot of sexual partners, having sex for the first time with a women leads to a decrease in his physical and sexual attraction for the woman. Again, this makes evolutionary sense. Having successfully seduced the woman, he can now look for a new partner to seduce to increase his chances of genetic success. On the other hand, men who have not slept with a lot of women do not show the same decrease in sexual attraction. This also makes a certain amount of sense. Not having as much success with seduction, these men maximize their chances of genetic success by willingly investing their energy in one woman. Women do not exhibit the same split. Those who have had numerous sexual partners reacted in the same way to a first-time sexual encounter as those who have had only a few, revealing a woman’s consistent bias for a long-term relationship. So, women who use sex to try to lure men into a long-term relationship are likely to find themselves getting less than they hoped for and giving more than they anticipated.
Of course, that is only helpful once you know whom you are trying to attract. Can science take us a step closer to cracking the romantic code and identify not just how we should pursue someone but whom we should pursue? The answer is a very limited yes, and the surprising twist is that although much of this book has emphasized how different men and women are, the two sexes are surprisingly similar when it comes to what both are looking for in a long-term relationship. This is not as shocking as it may at first sound. Much of the conflict between men and women arises because of differences in short-term and long-term strategies. When it comes to your marital partner, though, the qualities that make a good husband are not all that different from the qualities that make a good wife.
What is it that we are looking for in a person beyond their physical appearance? We all want a person who loves us, is dependable, and has a pleasant disposition. Of course, what men and women look for is hardly set in stone. According to a 2001 article in the
Journal of Marriage and Family
comparing studies from the 1930s to the 1990s, there has been both change and constancy. Mutual love and attraction have become more important for both men and women, testifying to the increasing dominance of the romantic story line. Men care much less about domestic skills than they once did. And good financial prospects have become increasingly important. Overall, though, there has been a convergence in the qualities that men and women want in a partner.
Journal of Marriage and Family
comparing studies from the 1930s to the 1990s, there has been both change and constancy. Mutual love and attraction have become more important for both men and women, testifying to the increasing dominance of the romantic story line. Men care much less about domestic skills than they once did. And good financial prospects have become increasingly important. Overall, though, there has been a convergence in the qualities that men and women want in a partner.
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