Ruby,
In my previous three installments of how I met your mother (part 1, part 2, part 3), I described my previous failed attempts at romantic relationships, and how nothing ever worked out. I would put the work in but never quite enough to expose my vulnerable underbelly.
But it didn’t work out.
But in 2009 things started to change.
It was in 2009 that I first started to learn about how to read body language. You can go back in this blog to that year and find posts that goes through that sort of thing. I specialized in reading body language especially (which is easy) and decoding facial signals (which are harder but with practice are straight forward to decode most of the time).
I read about how people who expose their rib cage like when they raise their arms (such as cheering when a goal is scored in hockey) are displaying confidence. People who rub their necks are universally showing uncertainty and are pacifying themselves. I learned about how our feet are the most honest part of our bodies. I also learned that I could appear confident by emulating these behaviors, even if I didn’t feel confident.
I could do this by copying the behaviors that show poise and limit the ones signal unease and nervousness.
You may be thinking to yourself “Well, gee, that’s all so obvious.” Is it, now? We may be able to recognize these signals in others, but it is very difficult to recognize it in ourselves and react accordingly because these behaviors are not conscious. They are hard wired into our brains.
This would be a recurring theme in my personal research of everything – there are things that are wired into our brains that don’t make sense when examined from a distance, but we still do them at the time. For example, we all know junk food is bad for us and we should cut back on it. Yet nearly all of us each too much of it.
It was during this time that I had a magic performance at a church campout where I performed a trick where a thought-of word from a book by a spectator appears on someone else’s arm.
But during this performance, I modified my style. Whereas I am typically reserved in real life, during the show I was hyperactive and very energetic and showed all types of confident displays. Observe the picture below:
There’s any number of ways I could have pointed to my volunteer with my right hand. But notice two things:
- My arm is completely up, showing my rib cage. That shows I am very confident.
- My thumb is pointing up. Thumbs-up are another sign of self-assurance.
Right before the big finish, look at this picture:
I am invading my other volunteer’s personal space with my left hand, and my palm is facing down. Both of these are signs of someone who is well at ease in their surroundings.
Before learning about body language, I wouldn’t have done either of these motions (probably).
I bring this up because during the summer of 2009, I practiced these when I went dancing. You see, one evening my friend Hobbes and I went dancing in downtown Seattle. I can’t remember what it was, it may have been salsa or swing dancing.
It doesn’t matter.
As I had been dancing for a year and a half prior, I had some skills. By no means was I a great dancer, but I was confident enough in my skills to classify myself as adequate.
While at the dance there was a lesson, and I would introduce myself and show the signs of confidence. I would walk up to the other follows (ladies) and make sure my hands weren’t in my pockets, face them square on, and so forth. And then while dancing I’d talk about random stuff. At one point, I asked another girl to go and dance with Hobbes since he had been “wall-flowering” earlier in the evening.
Near the end of the night, with maybe 30 minutes to go, one of the other girls who I had been chatting with for parts of the evening walked over to me and gave me her and her friend’s contact information (I had told them that Hobbes and I visit another dance studio on the east side and they should check it out (this was from my random chatting). They informed me that they’d like be kept up-to-date about what was going on over there.
I had not asked for this information, nor even hinted it. It was completely out of the blue.
(Note: nothing ever came of this, but it doesn’t matter)
This marked a turning point for me in relationships. I started to learn what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t.
I often read feel-good advice on the Internet and in books when it comes to attraction: just be yourself, be a nice person, be a good friend, etc.
Personally, I have not found this advice to be at all helpful.
When it comes to attraction, there are things that work and others that don’t. We often talk about how “love is blind,” but it’s only true when you’re already in a relationship. If you’re not yet in a relationship, “love” is very selfish and looks for specific things.
For instance, did you ever notice that most of the time, women are shorter than their (male) significant other? You may say “Well, that’s because men are taller, on average.” Yes, that’s true. But it doesn’t account for all of it. Because of genetic variability, there are many women (20-25%) that are taller than men. But 25% of women are not in relationships with shorter men. Even tall women tend to go for even taller men. The proportion of relationships where men are taller is 90% or more.
In my experience, being a nice guy is not enough if you don’t project confidence. Indeed, I had (have) far more success when I project confidence than when I was just a nice guy. That doesn’t mean you should be a jerk, but it does explain why jerks have more romantic success – because they project strength which is attractive (to women, but all of us want to follow strong leaders; just think about sports, politics and business).
It isn’t logical (jerks may simply be ignorant and unaware of their buffoonery) but those are the breaks. They are the leftovers of our evolving brains that developed for a world far different than our own.
Once I figured this out, I decided that I could tip the odds in my favor. This is important because it would go a long way towards producing success in my final relationship.
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