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One of the hardest parts of meeting women is the intial approach. For many men it’s a nerve-wracking enterprise – nobody wants to suffer the indignities of being shot down, especially if it’s in a public space. How’re we even supposed to know if they’re into us or not? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if women would let us know whether or not they were interested in us or whether they like us?
Turns out… they do. It’s just that most men aren’t picking up on it.
It’s amazing just how much we communicate without realizing it. In fact, the vast majority of human communication – up to 80% according to some studies – is non-verbal.
When it comes to dating, much of this can be deliberate. It can be anxiety-inducing, even frightening to try to tell someone you’re interested in them… or that you’re not. Many women prefer to provide subtle signs of interest or disinterest rather than risk the potential of humiliating themselves by being direct. They will try to give off signs through body language, letting people know whether or not they’re interested in being approached.
Being able to read people’s signs is a critical aspect of dating. Knowing how to read people lets you know when someone is interested in you and, critically, when they’re not and you’re better off not approaching them. Being able to read her body language is a great way of being able to gauge just how well an interaction with someone is going as well as how to tell when you’ve fucked up. If you know how to recognize a woman’s signs and body language, you’ll be set to read her like a book.
Watch Her Eyes
A woman’s eyes are more than just a place to look when we’re pretending that we wouldn’t rather be staring at her boobs; they’re a vital means of non-verbal communication.
Eye contact can be incredibly intimate and powerful, which is why we get uncomfortable locking gazes with strangers. And yet, eye contact is a frequently overlooked, yet subtly potent way of communicating interest or disinterest. If you’ve ever played the eye-contact game with someone – you’re looking at them, they catch you looking, you look away quickly and only look back when you think she’s not looking- you may have been missing out on one of the most sure “come here” signals there is.
A woman who is interested in being approached will often use eye contact as a way of signaling her interest in you. If she’s making strong eye contact – holding your gaze for longer than a second or two – she’s likely interested. The longer she keeps contact, the more interested she is.
Many women will use a variation of the eye-contact game; they will make a point of making eye contact, then looking down and away before looking back again. Because we’re instinctively attracted to movement, the act of deliberately breaking eye-contact actually works to catch our attention. Breaking eye contact to look down is a submissive action, designed to look demure and inviting, while looking back up to re-initiate eye contact is a way of checking to see if you noticed and are still looking. The smile that comes with it is all but screaming “Yes, that was intended for you, now why don’t you come over here and talk to me already?”
Some women, especially particularly confident or assertive ones, will give what’s known as the “elevator gaze”; looking up and down your entire length. It’s a blatant “sizing you up” look and getting it is a sign that she likes what she sees.
On the other hand: is she actively avoiding eye-contact? Does she seem to look away as soon as she notices you looking, but doesn’t look back? She doesn’t want to talk to you. The most you can expect from her are polite but curt answers before she either tells you to go away or gets up and leaves herself.
Similarly, if she catches you looking and looks up and away, the intended message is very clear: “Don’t even bother.”
If you’re talking to someone who maintains eye contact or breaks and reinitiates it quickly, you can feel certain that she’s actively interested in what you have to say.
On the other hand, does she seems to be looking around the room every few seconds while you talk? Either she’s incredibly bored or she’s looking for an acceptable way of getting out of the conversation without blatantly violating the social contract. Once you notice that she seems to be looking everywhere but at you, you can be fairly certain that she’s about to see someone she needs to talk to right now – who also happens to be as far away from you as possible.
Check Her Smile
This one seems like it would be obvious on its face: if she’s smiling at you, she’s interested. Nobody smiles at someone they don’t like, right?
Actually, no. Not really.
Smiling is an important means of non-verbal communication that has its origins in our primate ancestry and it can carry a wide variety of meanings. Smiling is often a sign of submission and reassurance; in many cases, by smiling we are sending the signal that hey, we’re not a threat, you don’t have to hurt us. A smile is frequently a way of placating others, especially if they seem as though they’re aggressive or angry. Baring one’s teeth in a smile can also be an implied threat or dominance challenge; Southern women especially learn early on how to deliver withering insults with a faux sweet smile. A smile can also be a disguise, masking the real underlying emotions; because they are socialized to not be rude, women will often smile at people they’re talking to even if they don’t particularly like them. A fake smile can keep up the social illusion that she’s interested in what you have to say, when in reality she desperately wishes that you would be decapitated by a flying toilet seat.
If you want to discern the message behind a smile, you need to be able to tell the difference between a real smile and a fake one.
A genuine smile, one that signals interest, is one that reaches the eyes. Also known as a Duchene smile, a genuine smile engages not just the muscles around the mouth but the eyes as well; a real smile will cause crinkling at the corners of the eyes.
A fake smile, on the other hand, just engages the mouth alone. It’s occasionally known as the “Botox” smile for the way that the rest of the face seems to not react.
A smile that seems plastered on – one that doesn’t reach the eyes – is a sign that she’s not interested in you, and is only continuing the interaction out of politeness.
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