Not to boast, but you’re a pretty awesome person.
You look after yourself. You’re kind. You’re positive.
You make other people feel good.
So why are you still single?
Why don’t guys even notice you?
The Changing World of Dating
My older clients tell me dating was easier back in the day.
All a gal had to do was go out and sit at a table with her friends, and men would come up and talk to her.
Nowadays, if you go out with your friends, the only people you talk to end up being the same people you came with.
It’s not like that everywhere, of course.
But I hear this complaint so often by the women that James[1] coach.
They’re frustrated that there’s no way to meet men aside from dating apps.
The world has changed.
There are more single people now than ever.
3 in 10 American adults are single (neither married nor dating anyone currently), and about half of them are looking to date. [2]
In theory, we should have more options than ever before.
But it doesn’t feel that way. Why?
Why Men Don’t Approach
For men today, it’s much easier to send a woman a message via a dating app or a text than it is to walk up to her in person and start a conversation.
Single men will go out to a bustling hotspot and stare at their phone all night.
They’re not looking around hoping to spot attractive women. They’re trying to arrange something on Tinder.
Men today are much less likely to approach a woman in person.
They don’t want to take the risk. She may not be single, she may not be interested, and she may not appreciate having her privacy disturbed.
Tinder does away with those risks.
If a man gets a match on Tinder, he can be fairly certain that she’s not only single and available but she likes the look of him, too.
Does that mean you should use Tinder?
Not necessarily.
But you’ll need to adjust your strategy if you want to compete with technology. It starts with understanding the Art of Invitation…
Dating and Mating Before Technology
Past generations didn’t have to deal with technology.
The main way they got to know other singles was by meeting them in the flesh.
Dance halls used to be a thriving avenue for singles to meet and mingle.
Then dance halls gave way to singles bars, where the earliest studies on human courtship took place.
Researchers David Givens and Timothy Perper spent hundreds of hours in singles bars, decoding the body language of flirtation.
They found that there was a distinct sequence to attraction.
Singles would position themselves to be easily seen by the opposite sex. Women would toss their hair or touch their necks to draw attention to themselves.
When a woman spotted a man she was attracted to, she’d sneak glances at him until she caught his eye. She’d smile at him and quickly drop her gaze… only to glance back at him a moment later. (This even has a name: the copulatory gaze.)
Men knew what it meant when a woman kept catching his eye. It meant she was interested. At that point, he could decide whether to approach her or not.
What Givens and Perper discovered holds true across a number of mammalian species:
The female invites the male to approach.
Without a clear invitation, the male is much less likely to approach, because he doesn’t know if he’ll be welcomed or not.
The Art of Invitation
What this research teaches us is that women have always played an active role in courtship.
They’ve never been passive. It’s simply not true that women sit back and do nothing, waiting for Prince Charming to show up out of nowhere.
They spot the men they’re interested in and then make it easy for those men to strike up a conversation.
In Victorian days, women wore such big dresses that it was difficult for them to bend down. So they would “accidentally” drop a handkerchief or a glove as they walked past an attractive man. He would rush to return the item to her.
Women today use tactics like asking a man for directions, or for help, or for a recommendation.
My question to you is:
What are you doing to invite men to approach you?
If you see a man you like the look of, what do you do?
If he’s staring at his phone, it won’t be easy to catch his eye.
You could ask him a question instead. Ask him for his opinion on something. If you’re out for a meal or drinks, you could ask him if he’s been here before and, if so, what he’d recommend.
Accompany your question with eye contact and a smile.
If he doesn’t get the hint that you’d like to continue talking, don’t worry. Just smile back at him as you walk away.
Then, after you order and find a table, see if you can catch his gaze again, following Givens and Perper’s recommendation to smile and quickly glance away.
Men often need 3 clear signals from a woman before they understand that she’s demonstrating her interest.
So, if guys aren’t noticing you, ask yourself if you’re practicing the Art of Invitation. Make it easy for him to notice you. You’ll be doing him a huge favor!
[1] James Bauer - the author of the bestselling His Secret Obsession and What Men Secretly Want courses and I am very happy you’re here. His website moto, “Be Irresistible” reflects something important that he likes to share with you.
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profile-of-single-americans/
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