Dating Advice for Men- Attracting Tips, How to Talk to Girls

Become An Expert In Flirting

Flirting can be one of the more pleasant and exciting aspects of life. It can be a heady experience that causes the heart to beat faster, and the result of a blush and downcast eyes is oddly but undeniably satisfying. The idea that flirtation has become the sole province of females is erroneous; the mere act of tossing someone a significant glance can be considered flirting and, for that reason alone, men play an equal role in the drama. But this is a dance that requires carefully placed and well-timed steps, and it’s long past time to dispose of your tricks, techniques and pickup lines. Let us turn to science and the ongoing study of social interaction to guide our dance steps. You may be surprised at the amount of knowledge you don’t yet have on the science of  flirting.

It all begins with eye contact

Actually, it begins and ends with eye contact, because if she realises you haven’t focused on her eyes for even two consecutive seconds, she’ll lose attention before you even say a word. As the Social Issues Research Centre put it: “Your eyes are probably your most important flirting tool… they are also extremely high-powered transmitters of vital social signals.” Eye contact is extraordinarily powerful, so it’s important to walk the line between intensity and subtlety, which is why we usually restrict direct eye contact to only a second or two. This all falls in line with The Player’s very simple method of making more eye contact when listening and averting your gaze a bit more when speaking.

Keep communication honest and balanced

While it remains true that men and women are often at odds in regard to communication, it’s still possible to strike up an engaging, entertaining discussion without posturing. Both sexes can be guilty of bending the truth and altering their behaviour, and posturing and untruths (unintentional, though they may be) are often prevalent in a first conversation. This is a bad idea. For example, a man who orients his actions and speech toward seduction, which is nothing more than an invented personality. The same goes for girls who say “I love you” just so they can hear men say the same words. Obviously, the key is to avoid the mind games, keep it simple and, as the article states, “Let the authentic reward come to you.”

Never underestimate body language

The numbers have been confirmed time and time again. The science of flirting is a popular subject among researchers and love seekers alike, and in terms of importance, body language always seems to top the list. The BBC’s comprehensive look at love and flirting has revealed that 55% of all given and received messages come from body language. Only 7% is in the words we say. As you can see, the advice involved in the column is to accept this, embrace it and, in some cases, “match their moves.” In other words, come to recognise the concept of “mirroring.” It shows reciprocated interest and places both parties on equal footing, which is something that is of great interest to the ladies. But above all else, just ditch the pickup lines and other verbal techniques, because that 7% ain’t gonna help much. Paul Newman, a man among men, was a “student of human moves” in The Color of Money. You should be too.

If the word ‘active’ conjures up imagery of you picking your way through dense undergrowth, breathing heavily, clutching a paintball gun and waiting for your next ‘kill’, maybe you need to re frame it in a dating context.   While we’re not 100% ruling out paint-balling as a date idea — probably best to make sure you’re on the same team though — the idea of an active date is slightly broader than paint based warfare. Here’s our recommendations.

Matt Janes is founder of DoingSomething.co.uk, the new dating site dedicated to making dating fun.

Short stroll A walk’s a damn fine way to pass the time, and an equally fine way to get to know someone, to boot. No pun intended. Choose a nice park to stroll in and there’s all manner of things to look at, and hence talk about. Park wildlife, park people, park life. Didn’t someone write a song about that? If you’ve talked about it in advance, maybe you could even feed the ducks together? It is probably best to mention it before the date, on the off chance she doesn’t suffer from Ornithophobia, the fear of birds. It’s more common than you might think. As is Sciurophobia: the fear of squirrels.

Suggestion: If you’re anywhere near the capital, Hyde Park wins every time. It’s got birds, squirrels, and even a smattering of triathletes.Take A Bike Ride A bike ride gives your date a nice 1950’s Enid Blyton feel. Whilst it might not be a good midweek evening date with the nights are drawing in, it’s still fine for a Saturday or Sunday. The merits of a bike date are many. It demands a little bit of planning and forethought and an opportunity for you to demonstrate some of your manly skills in the art of navigation. Our feeling is that all bike dates should end up in a public house. There’s no law for this, but over at DoingSomething towers we’re lobbying for one. We recommend finding cycling routes along canals, or anywhere really in our beautiful english countryside.

Suggestion: If you’re up Leeds way, The Cow and Calf pub in Ilkley is as good a watering hole as any to to base a ride around.

Here’s a fun exercise for readers under 35: Take a moment and think of friends of yours who have gotten married recently — say, in the last five years. Then, out of those couples, count the ones who didn’t live with one another beforehand. You can’t.  Or at least I can’t.  For people of my generation, the idea of following a traditional relationship path to marriage seems to have become more the exception than the rule. But why? What are
the ramifications? Inquiring minds want to know!Thankfully, my social circle
recently provided a perfect soup-to-nuts example. It’s not really something
I’d thought about that much in the past, because usually when it’s a close
friend’s relationship you’re either (somewhat) unconditionally supportive or
in some cases they were already in it when you met them. But, in this case, I had the pleasure of observing the rapid, nonsensical escalation of a relationship between two tertiary friends/acquaintances. It went something (read: exactly) like this:

1.Boy and girl meet.

2. Boy and girl start having sex.

3. Boy and girl become implicitly exclusive.

4. Boy tells girl that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her.

5. Boy asks girl to move in together. And that’s where they stand, as far as I
know.  Does that sequence of events not seem strange to anyone else? Apparently not, but it blows my mind.

Bang first, date later, then comes marriage and divorce

I get the whole idea of the university hookup culture, where a “bang first, date
later (or not at all)” culture is the norm. But why are people carrying this concept into adulthood, where we’re supposedly using dating as a means to seek out a partner to create and raise children with? Ladies, here’s a pro tip: If you and I get intimate in the first couple of times we hang out, at no point afterward am I ever going to see you as the kind of girl I’d go ring shopping for. I can’t speak for every man on the planet, but if you want to land a guy like me (and shut up — yes, you totally do), heading to the bone zone early on in our interactions is not a way to earn my respect and admiration. Not the kind of admiration you’re looking for, anyway.That said, I don’t really care how people find themselves coming together. What I fail to wrap my head around are steps 4 and 5. In step 4, notice that I didn’t say he proposed. No, he actually bothered to make an overture to tell her that he wanted to be with her forever without making any reference to marriage. This to me is the most half-assed, insecure, situationally unromantic thing you could say to a
woman.I wasn’t aware there were steps between “I love you” and “Will you marry me?” (save for the traditional “It’s over because I slept with your best friend/sister/mum”), but apparently those steps are “Let me mechanically and equivocally explain my intentions” and “Let’s live together just to see how this goes first.” The last part is really what gets me: Cohabitation. The trial marriage. When exactly did this become a step?I have one simple rule regarding that, and I’ve explained it to every girl I’ve been in a relationship with: I will never, under any circumstances, cohabitate with a girl I’m not married to. My rationale is simple: There’s science. From a study by William G. Axinn and Arland Thornton:

“We develop hypotheses predicting that premarital cohabitation is selective of those who are prone to divorce as well as hypotheses predicting that the experience of premarital cohabitation produces attitudes and values which increase the probability of divorce…
The [study] results are consistent with hypotheses suggesting that cohabitation is selective of men and women who are less committed to marriage and more approving of divorce. The results also are consistent with the conclusion that cohabiting experiences significantly increase young people’s acceptance of divorce.”

Cohabitation and divorce are linked

“The results are consistent with the conclusion that cohabiting experiences
significantly increase young people’s acceptance of divorce.” That’s
called a correlation, and while it’s not the same as causation, it’s the
closest you’re going to get in a study dealing with so many human variables. Now, there are proponents of cohabitation who are quick to point out that studies like this probably don’t control for differing ideologies, which is a great argument to pose if you don’t understand how controlled sociological studies work. For me, the conclusion of that study (and the myriad others like it) is good enough reason to avoid it.I think there’s a pretty simple reason for the results: Cohabitation artificially downplays the monumental change that comes with being married. So many couples, particularly of my generation, treat living together as a natural, necessary step in their relationship. As though the idea of a “practice marriage” will help them get it right the first time. It won’t, and it doesn’t.