I have a friend of mine that loves to disclose to guys her physical issues.
"Yeah, I have strange shaped boobs"
(I see cross eyed boobs that bounce around like loose car headlights)
"You will never see me without make up"
(Craters like the surface of the moon under that? Holes filled in with spackle?)
"I have these awful stretch marks on my butt"
(I picture bright red whip lines, and zipper like Frankenstein scars)
"My cellulite is so bad you will never see me in a swimsuit"
(I imagine a bag of cottage cheese leaking at the seams)
Now as if this isn't bad enough, she takes it to another level. Whenever we would drink she would belch so loud she would set off car alarms. She would spit incessantly and sometimes do one of those old man mucus retrieving nose growls and hauk a loogie against a wall. When she ate I would hear about intestinal troubles and what dairy is going to do to her in an hour, so I better use the bathroom now.
"Next time you look at the paper, take a look at the real estate section. Not one of those ads has any bad comments to say about the property."
This friend was fortunately just a friend and she was staunchly going to remain that way because there is no way I would ever check to see how close my imagination was to the real thing. I mean she was cute enough but each of her descriptions made me feel as if there was a poisonous snake hiding under each garment of clothing. The external behavior was hard to handle as well, considering in the 7 years I was in Japan I have never heard a girl burp, fart or god forbid "hauk a loogie" I was like a mortified minister stuck in the red light district of Amsterdam.
Next time you look at the paper take a look at the real estate section. Not one of those ads has any bad comments to say about the property. I don't think they are hiding anything but "an excellent fixer upper" is just that. Great for a handyman or someone in construction willing to put in the time. Now if they said "place gutted by a fire and should be condemned" they may never get any fixer-upper type people to even take a look.
When you talk to another person, they are busy building an internal construction of you. Whatever you say gets tacked on to the mental model they carry around in their mind. If you talk about your past cocaine addiction, they nail to your mental mannequin pictures of you snorting in a toilet stall with a tattooed friend.
Even something small - "I was a bit promiscuous when I was younger" - adds footage of you doing the entire football team at a drunken post game party. Since your listener does not know the actual extent of your promiscuity, they fill in the gap with the most protective image for them, in other words THE WORST CASE SCENARIO.
"Attraction is built in the mind, & it is in your best interest to build the most attractive you."
About 10 years ago I met the daughter of the man who owns Nestle Chocolate. I didn't know anything about her before hand, all I knew was that she was going to join a group of us camping. I remember her getting out of a friend's car and watching the car retrieve about 4 inches in suspension. She was, to put it bluntly, HUGE, 21 and about 300bls but...by the end of the trip I was captivated by her. She was the sweetest most interesting girl, she was strong, funny and insanely confident.
By the end of the camping trip, I thought she was the most attractive girl there. My mental model of her had pinned all over it these wonderful qualities, these attractive traits. She was truly and amazing girl and my mind radically diminished any physical flaw she might have had. What was important was not what my eyes where seeing but what my mind was perceiving. Attraction is built in the mind and it is in your best interest to build the most attractive you.
In summary:
- If you have a house in the swamp, brag about your 8 person spa
- People tend to envision the worst case scenario, just in case it might be true
- There is always a buyer as long as the property is well advertised
- Perception is the key to attraction and you are responsible for that
About the Author
Mike Masters writes a blog for women about relationships at MikeTheMasterDater.com. Traveling the world and dating every single girl he met along the way allowed Mike to make an uncountable number of mistakes in relationships. These mistakes led to a fluency in the psychology of dating that could only be gained from radical immersion.
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