Читать книгу How to Make Anyone Fall in Love With You: 85 Proven Techniques for Success - Leil Lowndes, Leil Lowndes - Страница 26

Step One: Non-verbal Signal After the two partners are within speaking range, one or the other makes his or her presence known (as described in the previous chapter) by a smile, a nod or a glance.

Step Two: Talk

One of the two then speaks. Perhaps he or she makes a comment or asks a question. Even a simple ‘Hi’ will do, but something verbal takes place.

Step Three: Turning

Now it gets interesting. When one partner throws out the verbal signal, the recipient must turn at least the head fully towards the speaker and acknowledge the comment receptively. If he or she does not, the Hunter seldom tries again.

However, if the partner does turn warmly towards the speaker, they fall into conversation. Then a crucial pivoting takes place. Hunter and Quarry gradually switch from just their heads turned towards each other to their shoulders. If they like each other, their torsos soon turn, followed by their knees. Finally, in successful meetings, their whole bodies wind up facing each other.

This head-to-head, belly-to-belly, knees-to-knees gradual sequence can take from minutes to hours. With each increasing turn, intimacy increases. With each turn away, intimacy decreases.

Step Four: Touching

Concomitant with talking and gradually turning towards each other comes a powerful aphrodisiac, touch. A slight brush of his hand while he passes you a pretzel, a light touch on your jacket as she whisks away a piece of thread. The touch is fleeting, almost imperceptible.

How you respond to his or her first touch is a big factor in whether the interaction continues or not. If he or she brushes your jacket and you slightly stiffen your shoulders, your partner can subliminally interpret this as rejection – often wrongly. But it is too late.

At this point in the progression, Dr Perper tells us, it becomes impossible to tell which is Hunter and which is Quarry. Once the initial touch has been executed, well received and even returned, the man and woman are on their way to becoming, at least for the duration of the evening, a couple.

At about this point, yet another phenomenon takes place. Eye contact takes on a different character. As early as 1977 a researcher observed escalating eye contact in couples as they went from more formal eye contact to gazing. Their eyes gradually embarked on travels all over each other’s faces, hair, necks, shoulders and torsos.²¹ This is the visual voyage we talked about earlier.

Step Five: Synchronization

The final step is the most fascinating to watch. As though to confirm their new-found affection for each other, the couple begins to move in synchronicity with each other.

For example, the man and woman may reach for their drinks at the same time and put their glasses back on the table together. Then they progress to subconsciously shifting weight together, swaying to the music together, turning their heads to some outside interruption together, and then simultaneously looking back at each other.

Dr Perper wrote, ‘Once synchronized, couples can stay in synchronicity seemingly indefinitely until the bar closes, until they finish dinner and drinks and must leave, until their train reaches wherever it is going; to put it another way, until the business of the outside world intervenes and causes their interaction to stop.’²² However, if either partner tripped up on even just one of the above five steps (for example, not getting in synchronicity with each other), Timothy Perper and his research associates knew they could start humming the couple’s swan song.

Recently, I had the pleasure of watching a couple who were obviously very much in love. I was dining in a restaurant at a table facing the bar where a young couple was sitting. Their bodies were completely facing each other, and they were leaning towards each other, practically falling off their stools. They smiled and nodded as each crooned out bits of conversation. Their hands occasionally brushed each other’s and their movements were in total synchronicity as they lifted their glasses and returned them to the bar. They laughed together. They frowned together. Except for the moments when an outside noise invaded their private world, they maintained total eye contact. Even then they turned their heads away and looked back towards each other in unison. People would say they are in love.

As I was paying my bill, the waitress noticed my watching the couple. Smiling broadly, she said, ‘Yes, I’ve been watching them, too. Aren’t they sweet?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘They look like they’re very much in love.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘They just met ten minutes ago!’

I thought, both of them must have read Perper’s Principles. Or they were, as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun says, ‘jes’ doin’ a what comes natch-ur-lee!’