One of the most common flirting ailments is signal failure.
What is interesting about signal failure is that different cultures seems to have different version of the ailment. For instance, the British seem to find it particularly difficult to show interest in someone that they fancy. The Americans, on the other hand, tend to seem to be showing interest in everyone. Australians come across as just being friendly.
So what is all this signal stuff? The easiest way to understand it is that we are all walking around with a big traffic light over our head. For each person we see, the traffic light either shows
• Red – not interested
• Orange – maybe, get ready for action
• Green – I fancy you, come over and have a chat
The signals are given off through your body language – or, more specifically, through eye contact.
What is interesting is that eye contact is a subject that is mentioned by many flirt experts, but it is something that is mentioned in passing. Glibly they mention that if someone is interested, they will give you three seconds eye contact. Then they will look back a second time.
From my practical experience down in the trenches of the flirting war zone, eye contact is one of the biggest mine fields. The amount of eye contact that people give varies enormously, based on the city that you live in and the country where you are from. This then gives rise to an enormous amount of confusion. Women think they are giving a green light, and men are just not sure.
This whole issue really hit home to me running workshops on giving eye contact. I realised that this was crucial, because reading the material it said that three seconds of eye contact was a green light, but in the reality of London I found it was enormously difficult.
So at a singles night I gathered together 20 men and women. They were placed on either side of the room, and each were allocated a person to give their green light to. Just telling people how long is not enough – when I told the women 3 seconds, it looked to the men like it was 3 microseconds. What was amazing was that to the women it felt like it was ten minutes.
“Oh my god that felt weird”, “I must look like a crazy person”, “Now he knows I’m begging for it”, “That felt like ages and ages”. The comments from the women went on, just like this.
To this, the men responded: “That was really quick”, “I missed that”, “Was that a green light?”
What is really crucial is to get the timing exactly right.
We changed tack, and I got the women in the group to look across at the men and say in their head “You . . . are really fit”. Now, I have to admit that this is a particularly British saying. For Australians, to be fit just means you jog a lot and go to the gym. But of course, here it means attractive, gorgeous, hot etc, etc. My first attempts at “You are really hot” failed miserably as the women descended into fits of giggles.
Anyway, once the women started doing this and saying this so if felt like they were talking slowly in their heads – looking at the guy they fancied, catching his eye directly, saying (inside their head) “you are really gorgeous”, then looking away, suddenly everything changed.
“That is definitely a green light!”, “Oh Yeah” etc etc came from the men. So the issue is that timing is crucial. It can’t be too short, because men won’t realise that you are giving them a green light.
On the other hand, it can’t be too long. Historically eye contact is an extremely powerful body language signal. Researchers have found that people who are in love spend more than 70% of the time staring in each other’s eyes making direct eye contact. On the other side, between men, extended eye contact is a signal of aggression. Monkeys are the same, prolonged eye contact between males leads either to a) one male looking away and submitting or b) combat.
In a big city like London, essentially the most common people who make prolonged eye contact with you either want your money, or they want to sell something to you. Obviously when you are flirting you don’t want to come across as a money grabbing salesman.
For this reason, women often feel uncomfortable giving prolonged eye contact. However, what feels to them like a really long time, actually looks on the outside like a short time. In workshops, when women practice on each other rather than other men, the same pattern emerges. The woman giving the eye contact says “Oh that was ages”, and the woman receiving the eye contact says “That was really quick!”.
After much trying and testing, having women looking at men and saying “You are really fit” has proved to be the perfect balance between, long enough – so the men would see the green signal, and short enough so the woman didn’t look like a desperate money grabber.
To sum up:
What is interesting about signal failure is that different cultures seems to have different version of the ailment. For instance, the British seem to find it particularly difficult to show interest in someone that they fancy. The Americans, on the other hand, tend to seem to be showing interest in everyone. Australians come across as just being friendly.
So what is all this signal stuff? The easiest way to understand it is that we are all walking around with a big traffic light over our head. For each person we see, the traffic light either shows
• Red – not interested
• Orange – maybe, get ready for action
• Green – I fancy you, come over and have a chat
The signals are given off through your body language – or, more specifically, through eye contact.
What is interesting is that eye contact is a subject that is mentioned by many flirt experts, but it is something that is mentioned in passing. Glibly they mention that if someone is interested, they will give you three seconds eye contact. Then they will look back a second time.
From my practical experience down in the trenches of the flirting war zone, eye contact is one of the biggest mine fields. The amount of eye contact that people give varies enormously, based on the city that you live in and the country where you are from. This then gives rise to an enormous amount of confusion. Women think they are giving a green light, and men are just not sure.
This whole issue really hit home to me running workshops on giving eye contact. I realised that this was crucial, because reading the material it said that three seconds of eye contact was a green light, but in the reality of London I found it was enormously difficult.
So at a singles night I gathered together 20 men and women. They were placed on either side of the room, and each were allocated a person to give their green light to. Just telling people how long is not enough – when I told the women 3 seconds, it looked to the men like it was 3 microseconds. What was amazing was that to the women it felt like it was ten minutes.
“Oh my god that felt weird”, “I must look like a crazy person”, “Now he knows I’m begging for it”, “That felt like ages and ages”. The comments from the women went on, just like this.
To this, the men responded: “That was really quick”, “I missed that”, “Was that a green light?”
What is really crucial is to get the timing exactly right.
We changed tack, and I got the women in the group to look across at the men and say in their head “You . . . are really fit”. Now, I have to admit that this is a particularly British saying. For Australians, to be fit just means you jog a lot and go to the gym. But of course, here it means attractive, gorgeous, hot etc, etc. My first attempts at “You are really hot” failed miserably as the women descended into fits of giggles.
Anyway, once the women started doing this and saying this so if felt like they were talking slowly in their heads – looking at the guy they fancied, catching his eye directly, saying (inside their head) “you are really gorgeous”, then looking away, suddenly everything changed.
“That is definitely a green light!”, “Oh Yeah” etc etc came from the men. So the issue is that timing is crucial. It can’t be too short, because men won’t realise that you are giving them a green light.
On the other hand, it can’t be too long. Historically eye contact is an extremely powerful body language signal. Researchers have found that people who are in love spend more than 70% of the time staring in each other’s eyes making direct eye contact. On the other side, between men, extended eye contact is a signal of aggression. Monkeys are the same, prolonged eye contact between males leads either to a) one male looking away and submitting or b) combat.
In a big city like London, essentially the most common people who make prolonged eye contact with you either want your money, or they want to sell something to you. Obviously when you are flirting you don’t want to come across as a money grabbing salesman.
For this reason, women often feel uncomfortable giving prolonged eye contact. However, what feels to them like a really long time, actually looks on the outside like a short time. In workshops, when women practice on each other rather than other men, the same pattern emerges. The woman giving the eye contact says “Oh that was ages”, and the woman receiving the eye contact says “That was really quick!”.
After much trying and testing, having women looking at men and saying “You are really fit” has proved to be the perfect balance between, long enough – so the men would see the green signal, and short enough so the woman didn’t look like a desperate money grabber.
To sum up:
- One of the most common flirting ailments is signal failure
- We give off flirting signals through our body language
- The amount of eye contact that women give various enormously
- To give a green signal, hold his eye contact and say ‘you are really fit!’ in your head. Then repeat.
- Eye contact shouldn’t be any longer than this or it could be perceived as intimidating or desperate
8 comments:
Something I took part in once had this sort of set-up. I was at a camp in Denmark, and we all chose a wristband (red, amber or green) to show our status.
In true British style, all the Brits who went over there chose an amber wristband! The Danes (sexually liberated young people as they are) were practically all green.
The camp co-ordinator wore all three. Strange young man. Nice, but strange.
The girl I had a crush on - Danish girl with flowing blonde hair and blue eyes - had a green wristband on that I couldn't resist glancing at. And she seemed to keep following me around. I keep wondering to myself... what if I had known how to put out any more signals?...
Erm, would it be uncouth of me to say that your ableism's showing? Not everyone has fully functional eyes; among those who do, making and holding eye contact is supposedly more difficult for people with Asperger's Syndrome and other autistic spectrum issues. I have a close friend who, due to a muscular twitch, can't keep looking at anything for more than a second, including someone else's eyes.
But hey, not everyone's straight either, and I've got used enough to that assumption on this blog.
Yeah, sorry about all of us being straight, and writing a blog about our experiences as straight men.
What about men giving women the "green light"? Or are we just assuming that it should only be women who have to "give off the signals" because it should always be men who make the approach?
It is 2008 and not 1958, right?
Actually, I'm quite unconfortable if men don't give me the green light.
Now, I'm a pretty ugly girl(big girl too), so I'm used to very few guys showing interest in me. Which is why I never assume that a guy is interested unless he directly states it. I'm the type that people start talking to in a friendly manner.
So it's really up to the guy(in my case, at least). Hot as he may be, unless he shows obvious signs of flirting I'm sure as hell not going to give any.
Excellent advice, which I do appreciate (and will try out this weekend), but I second thegirl's comment. What did the women in your study perceive to be 'the green light'? I assure you that we need the go-ahead, too. I don't assume that all men want me and are waiting for my green light. That's definitely not the case.
Interesting. It makes perfect sense when you think about it.
I'm with fen, though, I've never really considered myself to be all that pretty so I find it really hard to flirt or show interest in case I get rejected. It gets a lot harder with age as well. Confidence has never been a strength with me. I just need to work on that and try this out.
I'm Australian and I've often had the comment "I thought maybe you were just being friendly!" I didn't realise that it was a cultural trend for us though. Oops!
More to the point though, while I agree generally with the content of this post I don't really like the angle. Where are the intructions for men on how to give a green light themselves? Or if they instructions are the same, a mere comment indicating that they can also use this technique.
The images of society that this writing conjures for me are of one where women need only choose the man to whom they give a green light and men wait for any woman to give a green light, which they will then definitely respond to. Once again the men are the hunters and the women are the hunted. These old ideas about flirting take too much power from women and put too much pressure on men, in my opinion.
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