Possibly related to the present discussion, though maybe deserving its own thread eventually.
No, there's little that's EASY about expressing attraction, except for the blissfully ignorant.
One reason I'm reluctant to date is that I simply know too much about how people manipulate each other, every day, even minute-by-minute, & particularly of those whom they'd swear under torture they love.
Most do this unconsciously or in a Pavlovian manner ("push button, get food"), but knowing so many of the tricks, I constantly interrogated myself. My first lovers were, at the time, at the same stage as me (particularly Crowleyan high magick), & we often traded cross-culture notes & what we'd picked up from classes, seminars, & wild observation; later, people we met were usually exposed to this stuff as we openly commented on it.
Of course, if I met someone new, there was not much "ramp up" time. Generally, I was stuck with being outright truthful; though I never actually said the following, it's an accurate composite: "Hi, you have no idea who I am, but you are the most interesting-looking person in the room, & I'm happily married but I'd like to meet you for dinner sometime." You'd likely be surprised how often such crazed candor resulted in at least a first date.
But nowadays...
I'm out of practice. All the old doubts have crept back in. And though I'm hardly desperate, the "all or nothing" crap from Monogamism has somehow grown in the corners like mildew, at least a little. With that various garbage, I'm interrogating my unconscious again, something most polyfolk have probably never seen the need to attempt.
I cannot recall ever hearing of
Gavin de Becker, author of
The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence (1998), which sounds like the sort of title I would have come up with. It's about learning to trust your gut instinct & not overrationalize when your ass is telling you to RUN.
Apparently, de Becker looked into abusive & violent incidents, & inquired into the assailant's behavior leading up to assault, noting scripts/games that recurred, which he calls
pre-incident indicators or
PINS. I immediately recognize most of these: con-game tactics, propaganda, hard-sell techniques, hypnosis, & cold reading (plus works by Dr Paul Ekman), but it's nice to see a brief list that can be more readily grasped by the general public.
What struck me is how often over the years I've had someone mention one or more of these occurring early in dating someone, even the first time they met by accident. Hearing of these tricks did sometimes bug me, but I couldn't discern exactly why, & never noted them as significant. Now, I'm thinking about how much negativity is built into social constructs of stuff like dating & Romance.
Though the Wikipedia article isn't well-written, it has the PINS as follows --
- Forced Teaming. This is when a person implies that they have something in common with their chosen victim, acting as if they have a shared predicament when that isn't really true. Speaking in "we" terms is a mark of this, i.e. "We don't need to talk outside... Let's go in."
- Charm and Niceness. This is being polite and friendly to a chosen victim in order to manipulate him or her by disarming their mistrust.
- Too many details. If a person is lying they will add excessive details to make themselves sound more credible to their chosen victim.
- Typecasting. An insult is used to get a chosen victim who would otherwise ignore one to engage in conversation to counteract the insult. For example: "Oh, I bet you're too stuck-up to talk to a guy like me." The tendency is for the chosen victim to want to prove the insult untrue.
- Loan Sharking. Giving unsolicited help to the chosen victim and anticipating they'll feel obliged to extend some reciprocal openness in return.
- The Unsolicited Promise. A promise to do (or not do) something when no such promise is asked for; this usually means that such a promise will be broken. For example: an unsolicited, "I promise I'll leave you alone after this," usually means the chosen victim will not be left alone. Similarly, an unsolicited "I promise I won't hurt you" usually means the person intends to hurt their chosen victim.
- Discounting the Word "No". Refusing to accept rejection.
He misses a whole bunch of stuff, IMO. For instance, any credible salesperson or junior politician knows how important touch is. Find reason to shake hands with the mark, or to touch their shoulder; in a handshake, use your left hand to cup their elbow, pat their shoulder, or briefly grasp their wrist. It produces a bonding effect, & the mark sees you as more credible & trustworthy. Demanded or forced touch is common among predators as well.
When speaking to a mark, lock eyes as though you're trying to look through their skull. Some say the intent (like crowding their physical space) is to make a mark uncomfortable, then to reveal you're momentarily "harmless" & therefore generally trustworthy.
