Why Women Seem Mysterious And How To Adapt Your Understanding, Part Three

How much of the uncertainty and mystery when it comes to communicating is really the woman’s doing? In previous chapters we already said that any individual woman is not necessarily going to feel the way that even she expects to. I don’t know if this is a surprise to women but it is normally a surprise to a man. Knowing this is key to adapting your understanding.



Your expectation of how someone will act is just that: It is your expectation. You may think your expectations are reasonable yet they convey no obligations upon anyone else. The more you adapt your understanding the less likely it is that a woman’s actions in a particular circumstance will surprise you. A lot of your success in communicating will come out of how well you know the social norms in a particular circumstance. This type of knowledge will help you feel and act more in control of yourself. However, how a woman will ultimately feel about any particular circumstance (like about you) is a lot less predictable.



Certainly, this is not to say that women as a group are entirely unpredictable. Studies of how groups of people in the aggregate tend to act can reveal statistically accurate information. Yet, any particular woman as an individual is going to be a lot less predictable when it comes to her feelings. In particular, how she will feel about you is not predictable, but it also does not have to be a mystery. Here’s one way to look at the process of how people choose each other.



Men, in contrast to women, tend to choose women at first site based on similar physical traits. Men tend to be attracted to the same traits other men find attractive. If you are a man then you have a pretty good idea of what I mean. In general, signs of beauty and physical indicators of good health and vitality are preferred. Some studies have indicated that while women prefer these same traits in men, women’s preferences for how a man looks (what they consider "good looking") are not as predictable. Women’s preferences are much more varied, particularly when it comes to facial features.



To put it in another way, men tend to find the same physical traits attractive in women. Women, in contrast, tend to find a much wider set of physical traits attractive in men. This is to say, men tend to agree on attractiveness in women while women tend to have a wider variety of preferences.



It’s not entirely clear why this is. Some have postulated that this has developed over time as a means of decreasing competition between women when it comes to choosing mates. No one really knows. Assuming it is true or somewhat true it does tell us that how any particular woman perceives any particular man is less predictable than a man might think. How she perceives that man is going to be the basis for how she feels about him. How she feels is going to guide whether she becomes attracted to him.



A lot of the anxiety you may associate with the "mystery" will dissipate if you learn to adjust your expectations about women. More precisely, women as a group tend to react predictably to certain signals and circumstances. A particular woman in whom you are interested is going to be decidedly unpredictable based on how you think she should act or feel. Much can be characterized about a group of women. Much less can be characterized about individual women. No matter how either of you think it might go, neither of you are really going to know until you communicate. The point is that you should focus on the process of communicating and worry less about guessing how it will turn out.



You should be aware of an advantage women have when it comes to perceiving relationships. Because women tend to rely more on their feelings and intuition they don’t have the same desire as a man to "understand" relationships in a logical form. They will tend to rely more on feelings than on reason to detect how a relationship is developing. Look for signs of this when talking to a woman. Don’t try to anticipate it or manipulate it. Just be aware of the dynamic.



While it may seem counterintuitive, simply knowing this about women and about yourself can help you. Knowing this you will not help you to reason through how a woman is acting. However, you can use this insight to help understand how she engages the process of becoming attracted, or not.



As a woman becomes aware of how she feels about you then she will begin to communicate her emotional state to you. How she acts will at some point align pretty much with how she feels. Whether she thinks she wants you to know how she feels will affect how she acts but it will be very difficult for her to hide entirely how she is feeling. Ultimately her mind will try to align her actions with her emotions.



Understanding what you are seeing and what signals you are communicating will help you to manage your expectations and help to avoid potential confusion. If you become confused then she will quickly sense this. Neither one of you will enjoy the interaction and it will quickly end.



By identifying common causes of confusion, it is possible to identify behaviors that make it less likely you will achieve your goal of positive communication. These negative behaviors can be controlled and substituted with positive behaviors that will encourage women to respond to you in the way you would prefer. Manage your expectations. Control your behavior and communication. Adapt your understanding of how she perceives you. Enjoy approaching and attracting more women.