Having spent much of my time recently putting together the new ’10 Steps to Naturally Attracting Women Course’ I was interested to hear about one dating adventure in my family history.
The Railroaded Romance
My aunt could be cruel when she was young. It was a blind date. She was to meet him at the train station. She travelled to this romantic assignation by train and, as she pulled into the station, she saw him standing there – and that was enough. She wasn’t interested, simple as. In a heartless instant she decided to forgo the date and ducked down so he didn’t see her. The train pulled out of the station and she pulled out of his life or so she thought.
He was left standing there, his roses, like his pride, rapidly wilting.
Where was she?
An hour later she returns home. Her mother (my grandmother) opens the door looking worried. Embarrassment hangs in the air. Her sister (my mother) smirks. Behind her stands…the date she’s stood up. Worried for her safety he’d gone straight to her house to inform her mum she’d “gone missing.”
Forced into it my aunt goes out with him for one date. He’s keen, she’s not. Talking about this time decades later I asked her what was so bad about his appearance that she hadn’t even got off the train.
“Was he ugly?”
“No, actually he was quite good looking.”
“Then why didn’t you get off the train?”
“Because of the way he was standing.”
“What?”
“He looked dejected, slumped, kind of defeated by everything. The way he stood put me off.”
Enough said about that. In researching the course I have read and heard about all kinds of dating experiences, relationship start ups and reams of research into what makes women like (and dislike) men. And by “like” I mean ‘attracted to’ because, off course, a woman can dislike a man but still find him attractive, or like him “as a friend” but find him as sexy as stale milk. So was my aunt’s experience typical?
His posture just didn’t cut it
My Auntie wasn’t attracted to this guy (even though she found him good looking) because of the way he was standing! This seems really harsh; a woefully premature assessment. But, think about it, is it more or less harsh than being repelled just by his looks? After all he can change the way he stands. I asked her:
“If he hadn’t been that good looking but was standing differently would you have gone on the date?”
“Yes possibly…and don’t slouch!”
She also said that she likes some “challenge” to a man and the way he stood made him look about as challenging as a sleepy Easter bunny.
The fact is women are attracted and repelled by many non-fixed physical attributes. This is why creating the course was possible – because male behaviors can seal the deal for women, making physical attributes fade, if not into complete insignificance, at least into the background. It really is a mistake made by bitter men everywhere that “all women care about are looks, status or money.”
And sometimes some women are less superficial than they believe themselves to be when selecting a man. They might assume they go for looks more than they really do and not be consciously aware of the other attractors at play.
But for us men it can seem a mystery as to why women are attracted to certain men who, after all, don’t seem as if they should be all that attractive.
What do women want?
As he lay dying Sigmund Freud famously whispered the question “What do women want?” (The real mystery here is why he was thinking about this at all while he was dying but anyway…) Mel Gibson helpfully tried to answer him over sixty years later in the 2000 movie “What women want.” But I digress. So what do they want?
Different women want different things – up to a point
Sometimes it seems women want the assertive, windswept, masterful Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice type, all muscle and brooding eyebrows, tight breeches and interesting pasts, involving huge amounts of cash. Sometimes they seem to like the dangerous “bad guy” – the confident rogue with a hint of Beelzebub in his eyes and unpredictability in his soul.
Or do they like the nerdy chap, with glasses and PhDs with impeccably organic green credentials busily knitting his own sandals whilst discussing Third World debt? Some women seem to go for the “lame dog”, the needy types who perhaps serve as child substitutes until the real thing comes along.
Or is it the joker, the man who can laugh them into bed with a mere flick of his seductive wit?
It almost goes without saying that different women are attracted to different things. And the same women can be attracted to different kinds of men at different times in her life. The edgy “exciting” guy she’s drawn to when she’s twenty may seem the waste of space unreliable jerk when she’s forty. There are lots of variables.
But it also bears saying that there are general patterns of attractive behaviours and attitudes in men regardless of these individual preferences which women tend to find attractive.
Bridging the gap
This is good news for shorter, fiscally challenged men everywhere. All the research points to the truth that there are certain behaviors, attitudes and feelings that men can acquire that will greatly improve their chances of getting that date.
Men have more scope than they know
Actually men have a lot of scope when it comes to attracting women. Much more scope then many men realise.
The mystery of why some men who are successful with women aren’t god-gifted lookers or packing city trader bank accounts has to do with what they are like, how they behave and how they relate to women. And you can change the way you relate to anyone.
So behaviors and attitudes can be acquired. Men can become more attractive to women by adopting these certain behaviours.
Interestingly research has confirmed my aunt’s experience. Research I use in the 10 steps course show just why a woman is attracted to a man’s posture as part of the overall package. The way a man stands, even where he stands can be an attractor as far as a woman is concerned. Whether she is aware of that particular influence or not (1). It’s not necessarily a huge influence but it is an influence.
Subliminal attractors
The power of subliminal influence means that what women and men say and believe they are attracted to and what they are actually attracted to can be totally at odds. For example in a survey (2) of 1,000 American women, it was found that faithfulness was the number one “hot” character trait for a man. And I have no doubt that consciously it is.
But other research which didn’t rely on directly questioning women but rather on observing their behavior found that indicators of bravery were the most attractive qualities in men (3), not just for women but for other men too when it came to establishing male friendships.
I suspect that what attracts initially isn’t always what women value once they are in a relationship although many women will be looking for signs of faithfulness and dependability on first meeting a man. The trouble is that if a man acts as though he is going to be undyingly faithful to you when you first meet him, you the woman, will likely tag him as a needy obsessive and possibly a stalker in waiting.
Men playing to their strengths
By the law of averages some men will be more widely attractive to women. The dice rolled and they got lucky, but it’s not all down to luck. What I really learnt from looking at the research was that all men need to play to their strengths when attracting women and sometimes in order to play to your strengths you need to build them.
Actually, attracting women should be a by product of being a certain way rather than a strategic end in itself. Although a bit of strategy for both men and women in the dating game is of course natural. The 10 Steps Course is not about using “tricks” but it is about understanding the psychology of attraction. The irony is that trying to be attractive is not attractive and neither is being too concerned with what women think of you.
What I most proud of in creating this course is that it uses research and will help men feel more confident and better about themselves outside of the dating world as well as within it. And regardless of what type a woman normally goes for, the mind set and tips within the course will help a man develop as a man, and women instinctively recognise the kinds of qualities enhanced by the course.
In my next blog I’ll suggest the real reason my aunt may have ducked out of her blind date all those years ago.
And here’s that course I keep going on about.
- As described on Step 5 of the ‘How to Be Naturally Attractive to Women Course.’
- The survey of the two polls was carried out by menshealth.com. The original polls were conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, based in Princeton, New Jersey, and BestLifeOnline.com
- As described on Step 2 of the 10 ‘How to Be Naturally Attractive to Women Course.’
