07 July 2009
Posted in Dating 101

Image courtesy of Corie Howell

The aim of this post is to bring together a quite confusing subject of female psychology and its role in dating in a beneficial way.

The desire of knowledge with that mysterious race of lump-chest mammals has led me down the path of understanding regarding female psychology and how everything ‘clicks’. I’d like to bring it all together here in a rather long, but handsome 4 post series for the benefit of us men, and some women.

 

Female Psychology

Female psychology is an amazing subject that is truly underrated. These days I see the ‘dating ritual’ consisting of the correct pick-up line to unlock her defences long enough for us to persuade her to venture to our houses. Well not anymore, now it’s time for understanding!

 

Nature Vs Nurture

Take a little look at these questions and run them around in your head until you’ve reached an honest answer your happy with –

• Do you believe men think like women?
• Do you believe women think like men?
• Or, do you think individuals think differently from each other?

However you answer it’s interesting to know that most people these days are raised ‘politically correct’. This means they were taught that men and women are basically identical with all differences being shunted away as social influences. Therefore people are generally rewarded if they behave consistent with society’s views of their gender and punished if they don’t.

With society shaping us this way you’ll find that most people simply accept it and conform to whatever views are generated by the ‘norm’, even if they are fundamentally against whom you are.

An example would be if a male was not to act dominant in a relationship with a female, he would most certainly pick up certain characteristics from the social side of being a ‘wussy’ and referred to as being ‘pussy whipped’. The same can be said about females if they were to be assertive in work. She would be seen as a ‘bitch’ because the behaviour is out of the general female gender characteristics.

 

Evidence

Studies carried out with infant’s show that boys tend to be orientated towards technology and girls more towards social items. This was carried out using male and female infants with a mobile phone and a human face. Boys preferred the phone, while girls preferred the face.

This study provides a lot of evidence that some behaviour patterns are innate and I’d like you to keep that in mind as I base the rest of these posts on similar findings and innate characteristics.

 

Evolutionary Biology

I’m sure most of you are aware of Darwin’s teachings regarding evolution and how the flow of life connects together. If you’re not quite sure I suggest you check out Wikipedia since I won’t be going into great detail here.

A brief understanding can be seen as animals in every generation have random genetic variations. Those who randomly receive the best genes which are best suited for their current environment tend to do a little better than other member of the species. This allows those genetically gifted few to survive longer and have more access to mates which over time changes the nature of the species.

Therefore we can observe that in fact every generation is a competition between different genetic make-ups. The competition is rather slow, but evolutionary time is rather long which can lead to thousands of generations to proceed and form more advanced versions of the species as it continues.

With this understanding we can see that most of our genetic make-up today is a result of different advantageous genetic mutations that have been passed on from previous generations.

 

What is an evolutionary advantage?

Generally we’d see evolutionary success in the form of –

• Surviving long enough to offspring
• Having access to sex partners, to mate with
• Reproducing frequently
• Being able to protect and raise offspring efficiently

We as civilised people are no different now than we were when we were running around 12,000 years ago. This means our aims haven’t changed and you should be able to see why this knowledge is so utterly important for dating.

There are only two fundamental drives every human has, they are to survive and reproduce. Other than the basic need to survive, all other traits are for reproductive purposes only. For example, is music useful for survival? Nope, then it must be useful for reproduction.

 

How we are today

Our biology has been created over hundreds of thousands of years, but our environment has been created very rapidly. Due to the rapid changes in environment our biological evolution could not keep up with it and this leaves us with the way we are today, which is thousands of years in evolution behind our environment.

This means that many of the behaviours and biological influences are designed for a much older environment than we currently live in. For example, food was a rare and valuable resource thousands of years ago, so we’d store as much as we could whenever we could. This is the cause of obesity in our modern environment. This influence would have been greatly important thousands of years ago, but today it’s not needed because food is plentiful.

The same can be said for how we date and maintain relationships. Every wondered why men cheat so often? It’s because our brain is lagging behind the environment where we believe spreading our seed and having as many children as possible is the best chances of gene survival. How about why women prefer ‘bad guys’? Again, it’s because the female brain is way behind and still believes bearing children of such a man reaps the best rewards because 12,000 years ago, the ‘bad guys’ would be the chiefs and leaders of tribes I.e. the ones who had most access to shelter, food and water.

 

Why women choose certain men

When a man ‘checks-out’ a women he’s looking for certain signals that correspond with his hardwired brain to aim for survival and reproduction. One of these signals is the universal preference of curved hips and slim waists. The exact figure that men prefer is a hip-to-waist ratio of 1.7; this preference exists because the hip-to-waist ratio of 1.7 happens to be the safest for child birth.

Women also have similar preferences with men but they tend to be more personality wise rather than physical. Here’s the list –

 

Foundations

Health -

• Social Intuition
• Humour

Attributes -

• Status
• Wealth

Congruence -

• Pre-selected
• Challenging
• Confident

The first thing you’d notice with the foundations is they’re seemingly missing certain characteristics you probably thought were important, such as good looks. Even though good looks don’t make any appearance in the list they do aid to the modern courtship but only with a low percentage of 10~15%. If you obtain the foundations of the list you will never need to worry about good looks.

Understanding each of characteristics of the list will allow you to gain a massive advantage when interacting with females simply because this list is hardwired in a female’s brain which allows them to be undeniably attractive.

 

Health

All animals are biologically driven to find healthy mates, humans are no different. This is because a healthy man can provide food, shelter and protection which is required if the female was to have children with him. It’ll also be so that his children will have a much better chance of being healthy themselves as he passes on his genes. You can see why this characteristic is desirable.

 

Understanding of this characteristic

• The lazy way here for me to tell you to just get fit, go to the gym and eat right. But, I’m not going to convince you otherwise if you choose not to. It’s up to you. Having a fit body is a great characteristic to show off health. If you’re fit, you’re perceived as healthy.
• You could if you wish not work out since being healthy looking in today’s world consists with the right fashion and grooming. If you are well presented and avoid the appearance of any health problems, you are still in the race with the beef mountains that parade around beaches in nothing but Y fronts.
• Skin problems indicate ill health. It’s fairly easy to cover up common skin problems like acne these days with some cover-up make-up or you could get different creams to help alleviate the redness etc.
• A big one for older men would be a balding hairline. This can indicate ill health or loss of youthfulness, so if you’re going bald, shave it all off and be done with it.
• Finally, if you wear glasses, consider contacts. Glasses show off your sight deficiencies which may indicate poor health.

 

Extra tips

• If you can, tell stories about participating in physical events such as running a mile every morning or wrestling a 4 tonne bear naked. Ok, maybe not the last one. But attempt to show health (not in an obvious way like your showing off by carrying trophies in your pockets)
• The last tip and one of the most important would be to never talk about being sick; never bring her attention to anything unhealthy about you. If you go through all the trouble of getting fit and healthy you could ruin it all by referring to a time when you caught something nasty in Thailand. Bear in mind though that this doesn’t mean you have to pretend you don’t have a headache when she blatantly saw you down 2 aspirin, it’s reserved for uncommon illnesses.

 

If you'd like to move straight on, here's part 2 of this incredibly interesting freak show of biological answers on women. If you've got any opinions of extra tips you'd love to share, post them in the comments - your opinions are valued here.

Craig is a 22-year-old student studying psychology at Bournemouth Uni. He runs a dating blog aimed at helping every man get the perfect relationship through the psychology of dating. If you enjoyed this post, get free updates via RSS or E-mail.