The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [67]
INVISIBLE FLIRTING
Can words convert attention to attraction?
As Yves Montand and Mae West proved, in the ravishment of hearts, you can talk, croon, or coo your way past an imperfect face. There is nothing like friendliness to hatch a romantic mood. Even in a laboratory, men given the mildest attention were found by behaviorists to believe that they shared interests with a woman despite reading unambiguous written evidence to the contrary.
Practice makes the flirt, so develop a habit of turning incidental transactions into satisfying interactions. This isn’t about being cheesy, turning it on solely for those you find attractive, or faking it: Become a compulsive bestower of artificial sunshine and you’ll drain your reserves. (A friend in PR attributed her divorce to being girdled in niceness all day—for which she compensated with a grand unloosening of barbs at the end of it.) Simply trade pleasantries in a queue, greet the waiter, the bus driver, chat while your purchases are scanned at the checkout. Immediately your days, and you, will seem brighter—a low-watt equivalent of the glow that people in love emit.
➺ Rule six: Synchronize your speech
If you like what you’re hearing, intensify engagement with a little romantic legerdemain, a tactic that should continue to work, however long you have been a couple.
Talk’s rhythm, bounce, and flow conjure the delicious sense of having clicked, a process you can help along by becoming conscious of the other’s pace, volume, and tone. Don’t slavishly copy. An experiment on students concluded that only perceived similarity in speech rate increased social influence; extra slow or fast speakers were irked by overaccurate imitations, unaware of their own oddity, just as most of us fondly believe our voice to be deeper and richer than it sounds to any other (our skulls are hospitable to bass notes that scram when our voices project through air).
Also attend to your target’s vocabulary. Words imply sensual preferences, according to neuro-linguistic theory, so adjust your vocabulary to appeal to the other’s dominant sense. Listen. Is he visual? Or does he talk of feelings, textures, smells, sounds? Now echo this language in your speech.
You could try grafting yourself directly onto their romantic mainframe. Hypnotist Paul McKenna claims a friend (friend? pah!) uses speed seduction: “He asks [women] if they’ve ever been in love, and what they felt like, and then attaches himself to that feeling.”
➺ Rule seven: Exploit rules of engagement
Charm’s good luck turns on a simple equation:
This can be a low-input endeavor. Women fought duels over the “polite and quietly humorous” eighteenth-century duc de Richelieu (model for Valmont, the rake in Dangerous Liaisons) because he listened. Smitten intellectual Emilie du Châtelet raved: “I can’t believe someone as sought-after as you, wants to look beneath my flaws, to find out what I really feel.”
Listening has the further advantage of unself-consciousness, and, relaxed, your confidence will unburden confidences. Director Ang Lee hypnotized actress Tang Wei into sharing
secrets I’ve never told anyone. Right away I can feel that he really wants to know me. Other directors look at you as a piece of flesh and refuse to meet your eyes. But Ang looked into my eyes. It was like he wanted to know my heart.
As with humor, those who are direct and clear (but not overbearing) slip under our radars because their bearing implies that we’re already intimate. Physical cues are:
Close distances
Eye contact
Touch
Move the other person to feel closer to you: Lower your voice, and your interlocutor will lean in and feel like an ally. What is more, primates are profoundly susceptible to mimicry, unconsciously mirroring each other. Watching somebody hold his breath, it’s peculiarly difficult not to hold your own, and in police interviews, interrogator and suspect’s body languages converge after three minutes (hence body language and its experts are always suspect).