How to Identify People’s Sensory Preferences
Visual people are the snappy, impeccably tailored folks who dress to impress and judge others by their appearance. Visuals make quick decisions but need to see evidence. They frequently look up to the left and the right when looking for answers to questions. A visual person may wave his or her hands around when talking and have a fast-paced, monotone voice that seems to come from high up in his or her body. Visuals use picture language, saying things like “I see what you’re saying,” “That looks good,” “Do you see my point of view?” “That idea isn’t clear,” “I’m hazy about that,” “My mind went blank,” “Let’s try and shed some light on the subject,” “We need a new perspective,” “I view it this way,” “The way I see it …” and “Looking back on it now. …”
Auditory people are often relaxed and stylish in the way they dress. They have more melodic, smooth, fluid, and expressive voices that come from the chest area. They gesture somewhat less than visuals, and may look from side to side (toward their ears) when thinking about what they’ll say next. Auditory people favor sound language, saying things like “I hear you,” “That rings a bell,” “Sounds terrific,” “Everything just suddenly clicked,” “Listen to yourself,” “Something tells me to be careful,” and “I can really tune in to what you’re saying.”
Kinesthetic people are all about feeling and physical sensation. They care about comfort in their clothing and surroundings. While many kinesthetic folks tend to have somewhat fuller figures, you’ll also find many athletes are kinesthetic. They have slower speech, easy-going voices and gestures, and tend to look down when they think about what to say next. Kinos make decisions slowly, pay attention to detail, and speak in physical language, using phrases like “It just feels right,” “Let’s get a handle on things,” “Do you grasp the concepts?” “I’m up against the wall,” “Hang in there,” and “I can’t put my finger on it, but I have a feeling you’re right.”
Don’t Try Too Hard
In a study conducted at Princeton University, students of both sexes were questioned about their methods of sizing up people when they meet for the first time. Overeagerness was one of the most reported turnoffs. Don’t smile too hard, don’t try to be too witty, don’t be overpolite, and resist the temptation to be patronizing. If you’re putting on an act, you’ll come across as a phony. Sure, be friendly and smile, but avoid having a grin on your face all the time. People who don’t know when to stop smiling and grinning end up appearing insecure and foolish.
Remember, Flirting Is Fun
Some people are born to flirt, others have natural flirting skills that seem to come and go depending on the circumstance, and some of us just have no clue and need to be taught—but we all have the potential. Flirting can move a regular pleasant conversation to a different level or create an air of expectancy that says, “It’s just the two of us.” You can flirt with your eyes, your mouth, your body, your voice, your sex appeal, your words, and any of your senses.
Public flirting is just a question of attitude—you don’t have to be intense about it. Every day you come in contact with people left, right, and center, whether you’re at a bar, on the bus, or at a pottery class. So make eye contact, smile, and go over and say “Hi” if it feels right. Social flirting revolves around a promise-withdraw routine and is a playful way to signal that you’re interested in someone. Private flirting is about intensifying playfulness and sexual overtones as you make that special someone fall in love with you. If you flirt with panache and subtlety, you’ll make yourself irresistible.
10
creating intimacy
Up until now, we’ve devoted a fair amount of time to understanding the unspoken signals that convey trust, comfort, and respect: eye contact, a sincere smile, open body language, physical feedback, and synchronizing—because you’ll never get intimate with someone quickly unless you can establish nonverbal rapport. We’ve also spent some time learning how to talk to someone in a way that lets you find common ground. Now we’re going to take conversation to a deeper level and use it to prepare the way for intimacy.
Straight for the Heart
A good old heart-to-heart talk, with you and your partner both opening up and discussing your experiences, your ideas, your hopes, dreams, and feelings, is the single best way to create emotional intimacy. The closeness and trust you share evolve into that wonderful “just the two of us” feeling that’s the cornerstone of a loving relationship. It creates understanding and unity, and quickly leads to love and bonding.
At the heart of creating intimacy is self-disclosure. Basically, self-disclosure is revealing intimate information about yourself—your experiences, your ideas, your hopes, dreams, and feelings. In short: your stories. It’s not a oneway street, though. The goal is that your partner offers the same kind of information about him- or herself, just like the couples in Dr. Aron’s experiment did (see page 3). You reveal something personal about yourself, then he or she reveals something personal about him- or herself. The simplest way to encourage this return of information is to synchronize your body language and tone of voice, and give feedback. Synchronizing builds trust and comfort, and feedback lets the person feel as if he or she is truly being heard.
Emotional intimacy has two main components: risk and commitment—the former because you’re opening yourself up, the latter because as you open up together you become intertwined emotionally. Think of your hands and your fingers. When your fingers are closed, all you can do is place your hands together, but when your fingers are spread, your hands can become intertwined and strongly bound. In this chapter you’re going to learn how to open your emotional fingers with your potential partner and become intertwined. Part of the process is that you each take turns. Self-disclosure is an invitation to trust. There are levels of risk involved, but the greater the risk, the deeper the trust.
Generally speaking, low-risk self-disclosure is personal information that a good friend will probably know about you—your likes and dislikes, how many siblings you have, and light-hearted stuff from your past and present, such as your hobbies and pastimes, your favorite board game, the silliest thing you ever bought. “I’m happiest when I’m tinkering with my car.” “I’m always forgetting birthdays.” “I can’t tell a joke to save my life.”
Medium-risk is personal information you don’t normally reveal and trust to just anyone—your opinions, your dreams and aspirations, good and bad judgments or choices you’ve made. You might reveal what you did as a kid that got you in the most trouble, the one food you could eat every day, your favorite ways to escape reality. “When I was younger, I dreamed of being a professional tennis player, but when it came down to it, I realized I didn’t have the drive.” “I came here on vacation three years ago and never left.” “What I’d really like to do is quit my job and go raise horses in Montana.” These kinds of revelations will help you both get a fuller sense of your compatibility. You’ll be able to tell whether it’s worth spending more time with this person and if there is real opportunity for mutual trust.
High-risk self-disclosure is visited only occasionally on a first encounter. It involves trusting and sharing your deepest feelings, and even your fears and insecurities. “I sometimes wonder if people find me interesting.” “I’m the black sheep of the family.” “I’m too old for games.” High-risk usually requires that you change the upbeat tone of low-risk and medium-risk disclosure to a more serious key. While high-risk can lead to deep trust and bonding, it’s not called high-risk for nothing. Think hard before you reveal things that might be a complete turnoff to someone who doesn’t yet know you well. And remember, you’re not going to say this sort of thing to just anyone—you are building deep rapport and encouraging emotional investment in someone who might just end up being your matched opposite.
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Tell lies and you’re doomed. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard tell outright lies ab
out themselves when getting to know someone new. They’re rich and own several businesses. They’re about to sign a record deal. They’re friends with Michael Douglas. They’re 29—really. This kind of behavior happens in both real-world and online dating, and is one of the worst things you can do. Sooner or later, the person you’re trying to impress comes face-to-face with the truth, and then it’s all over. No second chances.
A Few Ground Rules
When you feel the time is right for self-disclosure, it can help to have a few things in mind rather than blurting out the first thing that comes to you. Remember, your date is still in select/reject mode too, and you still need to be charming, not alarming. Come up with three or four things you think he or she would understand and perhaps feel the same way about. When the time is right, reveal one and see where it goes. If the response is good, you can go on to the next one, taking turns sharing feelings and ideas.
Since there is risk involved in this kind of self-disclosure, here are a few ground rules.
1. Move cautiously and considerately, paying close attention to the feedback you receive. The flow should be natural and easy—no surprises, no shock value statements, and the mood must remain upbeat.
2. Judge your topics. Sharing experiences—trips you’ve taken, adventures you’ve had, and the like—is probably the least threatening form of self-disclosure. Sharing ideas involves more risk since the conversation can get heated if you get into politics, religion, and values. Sharing feelings is the highest-risk kind of disclosure, so be sensitive and moderate yourself according to your sense of how shy the other person is.
3. Take turns. When one of you reveals something, the other must respond in kind. When talking with a friend, it’s not always necessary for him or her to respond to your ideas, experiences, hopes, and feelings. In self-disclosure, however, you’re asking your date to reciprocate. Handle it like a game of tennis, taking turns, cementing what you have in common, and determining how much you really are like one another, one revelation at a time. As you finish speaking, look away briefly. This signals that you’re done. When you look back at your date, you’re inviting him or her to speak—and he or she will.
4. Pace yourself. In a way, the process of self-revelation is like an emotional striptease, but nobody is going beyond their undies. You don’t just back up your confidential truck and dump everything out at once. There’s only so much most people are prepared to reveal about themselves early on, and there’s only so much you want to hear from the other person.
Conversation Jitters
Sometimes being nervous can cause you to talk too much, or not enough. If you feel nervous, stop and call it something else—excited sounds much better. A few moments of belly breathing can calm you down, then you can turn your excitement into a smile, saying to yourself, “Hey, am I ever excited. This is great.”
Getting Too Personal
Self-disclosure is the key to intimacy, but there’s a fine line between baring your soul and unloading your baggage. Stay away from anything embarrassing or socially inappropriate. This is not the time to mention that you spend $100 a week on lottery tickets, or that your mother is a kleptomaniac, or how difficult it is to buy shoes with bunions like yours. And you probably already know this, but it’s worth repeating: Stay well away from discussing your previous dating and sexual entanglements, at least until you are fully committed to each other. And even then, tread lightly. A discussion of your romantic past can quickly slide into comparison, competition, and insecurity.
Keep in mind the principle of scarcity and play your cards one at a time—a little mystery is good for love. Talk too much and you deflate the mystery, inflate your vulnerabilities, and end up appearing pitiful, boring, and definitely not sexy. On the other hand, if you talk too little, sooner or later you’ll stop being mysterious and just become hard work. You may even come off as arrogant or aloof and seem just as boring and unsexy as the person who doesn’t know when to shut up.
A Conversational Road Map
If you look carefully at a couple as they become absorbed with one another, there’s a pattern to what happens. Their movements and voice characteristics become synchronized. There’s plenty of eye contact, smiles, open body language, gazing, private flirting, and great attitude. But there’s also a detectable pattern to the way the conversation flows. It goes something like this:
1. The conversation starts with small talk. Small talk is light or casual conversation about nothing in particular. A good place to start this chitchat is with an occasion/location statement followed by an open question, as you saw in chapter 6. The weather, the news, or sports will do in a pinch—just don’t linger on them too long.
2. Very early on, the small talk gets blended in with play talk. Play talk is anything funny or playful, from an amusing observation about the location or occasion to something funny that you’ve seen, read, heard, or experienced recently. Late-night TV hosts use play talk all the time—check out how they do it. Engaging in play talk will give you an idea of your date’s sense of humor and attitude toward life.
3. And after a while, it shifts into the higher gears. Using small talk and play talk as a base, the conversation shifts at a certain point through low-risk, medium-risk, and (very occasionally) high-risk self-disclosure.
Remember to look out for a “Me too” moment, which can take your conversation to another level. That moment can and should come very early on, during play talk or even in small talk. Watch for it, because as soon as it happens, that’s your trigger to move to low- and medium-risk self-disclosure. The “Me too” trigger means you’ve gone from first gear to second in terms of intimacy.
Talk Show Teachers
If you want to learn more about conversational patterns, watch talk shows and notice how adept the hosts are at keeping conversation moving. Letterman, Conan O’Brien, and Oprah are particularly good. Try to identify the classes of talk (small, play, low- and medium-risk). Pinpoint when the shifts between these types of talk take place. Most of the late-night hosts (I’m not talking about the serious interview folks here) shift from small to play talk in the first five to ten seconds with a new guest.
These shows are free tutorials that can help you learn and practice the art of conversation right in your own home. But keep in mind that the self-disclosure on these shows is not mutual, it’s one-sided. It’s all about getting the guests to open up. The host is there as a facilitator. There are occasional exceptions, though, like the time on Late Night when Julia Roberts turned in her chair so she faced Letterman rather than the audience. She deliberately synchronized herself with him, gazed unwaveringly into his eyes, then teased him through a seductive self-disclosure session, telling things about herself and getting him to reply in kind. He was visibly flabbergasted at the energy she cooked up between them right there on the air.
EXERCISE: Getting Ready to Reveal
In preparation for changing the tone from just friends to something more intimate, think about the kinds of things you might reveal. Refer to the stories you will be writing in the workbook and use them as inspiration.
Low-Risk Disclosure
* What could you say about your likes and dislikes, without getting too deep?
* What lighthearted anecdotes can you talk about from your past and present?
* What amusing stories could you share about family, friends, hobbies, travel, your hometown, school, or work?
Medium-Risk Disclosure
* What could you share about your opinions, your personal feelings, your dreams and aspirations, your plans for the future, your good and bad judgments, or choices you’ve made?
High-Risk Disclosure
* What will you need to share (when the time is right) in order to have a better chance at intimacy and closeness?
* What can you say about your deep feelings, your fears and insecurities, your understandable human weaknesses?
Walking the Talk
Mario attended one of my early workshops on making so
meone fall in love with you. One day out of the blue, I got an e-mail from him: “I feel I must thank you for the success I am having in my life. It all started when I took your workshop in Toronto. Your advice saved me from going down the wrong path. I have since found my matched opposite and am having a great time. I would love to have a coffee with you when your schedule permits. Thanks again, Mario.” A few days later we met and he told me his story. I have taken some license with his words to help make the story more useful, and as you can probably guess, Mario is not his real name.
First, a little background: Mario is 29. He started his own toy company when he was 22 and got rich quickly after inventing a toy that became a bestseller. Soon he had two new toys that were also doing well, but the once fun-loving toy inventor quickly became all work and no play, putting in 18-hour days. He had trouble meeting women, and when he did meet someone he found attractive, he tried to use his expensive car and fancy clothes as a shortcut to connecting. Now he’s ready to try my method.
Mario has met Amanda several times in the coffee shop next to his office, where he goes every day for an extra-large coffee. A few times, they’ve bantered good-naturedly about which flavors they prefer. Having attended a few of my workshops, Mario has gotten pretty good at getting free information, so he’s learned that Amanda works as a physiotherapist in a sports injury clinic and that she’s an amateur competitive cyclist.
Mario likes Amanda’s energy, her warm smile, and her athletic build. He feels good around her and suspects they could be matched opposites. He wants to ask her out.
More than anything, as I’ve said, a date requires talking, so Mario rules out movies, sports events, and other super-noisy (or silent) locations. As he filters his ideas, he asks himself the four questions from the last chapter:
How to Make Someone Fall in Love With You in 90 Minutes or Less Page 18