Dating Tips: The Male-Female Translator

You’ve read the book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. You’ve seen Mel Gibson in What Women Want. And you’ve marveled at how different men and women not only communicate, but think.

So, you already get it: Men and women have such strong differences sometimes that we might as well classify each other as separate species. So what’s a fella to do? Well, keep reading, because I’ve put together a male-female translator for you that should help bridge the gender gap.

How Women Think

First, it helps to understand that men and women think differently, and about different things. Check out The Female Brain and grow accustomed to the idea that much of the difficult in the male-female translation comes on your (male) end.

Women tend to have a more well-developed hippocampus and more of their brain is dedicated toward language. Women are simply better communicators than we are: both in sending and receiving.

This means that women are better at figuring out how you’re feeling than you are them, and their “attraction” radar is also more developed. Have you ever been out with female friends, and they suddenly bring up the fact that a girl somewhere in the room is checking you out? Trust them, and go approach the girl: women don’t steer your wrong here.

Women are also sharp when it comes to the courting game; in fact, they’re close to empathic. They know how you feel, because like any other one of us, they’re wired to feel and adapt to the dominant mood in the group. They’ll sense it if you’re not at ease with yourself, and if you place too much importance on her reaction to you, it’s game over.

So what’s an effective way to communicate with women? Stop thinking and start feeling. Don’t worry about words, worry about your mood above all.

If you roll up to a woman and she gets the sense that she can knock you off of your current emotional state, she’ll know that you give her power over your emotions, and it’s a turnoff. However, if you demonstrate that you’re unreactive to her, she’ll sense that you derive your sense of value from yourself, and not from her, and she will become attracted. Don’t make female-to-male attraction any more complicated than it has to be.

Direct Translations

With this knowledge, as well as knowledge from The Female Brain that women have a strong, strong, strong nesting instinct, it’s important to understand that this is the place women are coming from.

Let’s look at some examples of some common things women have been known to say throughout the courting process and see if we can’t work them out to a simpler level.

Woman: “[Crying].”
Translation: Okay, crying isn’t a word, but men sometimes wonder why women cry so easily. It turns out they are about four times more likely to cry than men, and to find out why, we have to look at the purpose of crying. We cried as babies because we needed to communicate and express that something is wrong. Men are worse at communication than women, so women have the need to display an unmistakable sign of sadness; crying, in other words, means “I’m sad, dummy.” And you should have figured it out earlier.

Woman: “Do you think she’s attractive?”
Translation: “Affirm your attraction to me.” Try to imagine why you would ask a woman this - and don’t do that, by the way. You would already know the answer: most of the time, when women ask this, they’re asking it about someone like Angelina Jolie or some bikini model. Women ask this because they’ve sensed you’re attracted to someone else (you gave it away via non-verbal cues that they’re excellent at picking up on). Should you say yes or no? Whatever; neither matters. Don’t worry about words so much anyway. What matters is the underlying communication that your woman is looking for you to be honest, authentic, and straightforward - about how much you’re attracted to her. This doesn’t mean you should turn into a flower-buying wussboy; it means show some real, manly desire for your girlfriend/wife.

Woman: “Does this make me look fat?”
Translation: See above. Keep in mind, however, that just because she wants validation from you doesn’t mean you have to give it to her. Make her work for it a little bit; tease her, have fun with her, and then when you do validate her by ultimately choosing her over others, she’ll actually feel like she’s won something.

Translation: “Kiss me.”
What a woman does: I’ve written this one backwards because there are lots of communications that say “kiss me, you fool.” Any woman in her right mind will tell you that they want to be swept off their feet, desired, and seduced, and it’s amazing that women will give you blatant hints and help along the way, but they do. Here are some hints that says she wants to kiss you, if you’ve just started a social relationship with her: prolonged eye contact, looking at your lips, sustained eye contact even when nothing’s being said, keeping close proximity to you, not resisting your other “touches,” leaning in to you, turning her body toward you…you get the point. If you think it’s a possibility, go for it.