The Body Language Project: Dating, Attraction and Sexual ... - Wuala

women (or men, as the case may be). Your skills
will not appear overnight though. It will take time
and experience to turn your eye into a highly
developed reader of body language. However, with
practice will come great rewards. For example, you
will know if a woman is interested in getting to
know you better, and on which level. You will
know if she wants to kiss you, or whether she
simply wants you to go away.
Ultimately dating and courtship is a way for a
woman to test a man’s desire to invest in her. A
woman doesn’t normally give off cues that are
obvious simply because she hasn’t yet decided for
certain if you are of interest to her. A woman will
normally draw out courtship in order to solidify the
bond between herself and a man. The more time a
man spends on the chase, she thinks, the more time
he will spend raising her children. Thus, for the
most part, the more she runs, the better off she will
be. This is why we often see mixed and confounded
signals which can be particularly frustrating if you
are not aware of their purpose.
The next time you are in a social setting, have a
look around and really bring to consciousness what
is going on. Some couples will no doubt be close
together, while others will have a few paces
between them. Others yet will be practically on top
of each other. What does this proximity mean?
Even deeper than this runs the gestures they make
toward one another. Some researchers will tell you
that body language is a more accurate indication of
someone’s thoughts than what actually comes from
their mouths since body language comes from the
subconscious whereas our spoken words come from
our consciousness. Our conscious mind is able to
plan and manipulate and is hence deceitful. If you
are following along, you are also putting two and
two together. As you learn about body language
you are moving it from your subconscious mind to
your conscious mind, meaning you can now plan
your body language and use it however you see fit.
Ignoring specific cues given off by the opposite sex
is a sure way to embarrassment. Reading women
incorrectly is fairly easy if you do not catalogue all
cues they give off. Some researchers put the level
of nonverbal communication as high as 80 percent
of all communication. More reasonably it could be
at around 50-65 percent. That’s exactly what
Mehrabian discovered in his communication study.
He found that only 7 percent of communication
comes from spoken words, 38 percent is from the
tone of the voice, and 55 percent comes from body
language. Thus, if you aren’t conscious of what is
happening nonverbally, you are missing out on the
vast majority of what is going on during a typical
conversation. No doubt, you could easily get away
without the conscious ability to read others’ body
language, however, why ignore such a powerful tool
when it is so easy to master?
Throughout the book, I realize that I speak mainly
in terms of what I find useful as a man with respect
to reading women, but that is only because I show
my true bias. The tools contained within, however,
are still very useful and practical for women. By
knowing the meanings of the cues, women can
better control the outcomes of specific situations.
If, for example, a woman really enjoys the company
of a particular man and wants to push the
relationship forward, she should know the proper
signals by which to make this happen. On the other
hand, if a woman is disinterested or finds herself in
a situation where an advance is unwanted, she will
be armed with the knowledge of what cues to
deliver to thwart the advance. A woman who is
perhaps careless with her gestures, may give off
particularly confusing cues to a man. A confused
man is never a good thing! If he is interested in
you, then more often than not, he will continue to
pursue. With the knowledge of nonverbal
communication, women can give specific and
accurate cues to others.
Another useful way to appreciate how body
language works and to make it appear more logical
in our minds is to picture specific body language
poses as they would appear if the person were nude.
This is especially important since the cues have
evolved under these circumstances. For example,
take legs crossed versus uncrossed. How would
legs spread wide open appear on a woman? How
about on a man? What about a person with their
legs uncrossed with their hands up behind their head
slouched down in a chair? This would most
certainly come across as a dominant and an in-yourface
kind of posture. Now imagine this very same
posture coming from an arrogant boss if he was
completely nude with his genitals fully exposed!
While our clothing masks some of the offensiveness
of these postures, the meaning is still relevant.
A bit of caution is in order here. Keep the
information in this book to yourself. The first rule
of body language is: don’t talk about body
language! This type of thing is better left unsaid. I
made the mistake of telling a bunch of intoxicated
people that I was doing some reading on body
language. Everyone immediately stopped talking
and they sat in silence doing nothing. They knew
The Body Language Project: Dating, Attraction and Sexual Body Language. 1st Edition, 2008. www.BodyLanguageProject.com Page 2