First, watch this video of Michael introducing this lesson:
Audio of Michael reading the lesson below:
It was worth it just for the smile on his face when she walked in the room.
The hours of kickboxing classes. The stupid diet. The trip to the salon.
It was worth it just for the way that he looked at her. The way he puffed up his chest when he saw her in her dress.
There was lust in Jim’s eyes, sure. She was used to that. But beyond that, there was something else as he looked her up and down. Satisfaction. Pride. Power.
He wrapped his arms around her and shuffled her out to the car. On the drive to the party she caught him looking at her out the corner of his eye. She looped her arm in his and saw him sit up straighter in his seat.
She could feel the eyes on her when they walked in the door. Men scanning her up and down. Women envious of the figure she’d worked so hard for. She could feel a glow coming off Jim as he escorted her in the room. “They all want her,” she could hear him thinking. “They all want her, but she’s mine.”
A Quick Warning:
In this lesson we’re going to talk about what men think about your physical appearance and what men want from you when it comes to how you look, how other men and women react to you, what your physical appearance means to him, and how you take care of yourself.
And we’re going to be brutally honest and possibly a little mean.
The guys I surveyed didn’t hold back at all. They vented their frustrations and anger. I could sugar coat this stuff or say it in coded language, but if I did, I wouldn’t be doing my job to let you know what’s ACTUALLY going on in his mind.
This stuff isn’t politically correct and it might offend you. But I’m going to say it anyway. OK? Good.
What Women Desperately Want to Know. . .
Before we dive in here, let’s cover some of the big questions women had in the Secret Survey about how you look and what it actually means to him.
This was a BIG topic in the Secret Survey, with a ton of questions from women about what men really think about their appearance (this is one of those things guys lie about a lot, because they know you wouldn’t like the actual answer). . . and a lot of guys being brutally honest (for the first time ever) about what your appearance really means to them.
Here’s what women wanted to know:
“Does he find me attractive?”
“Does he want me to lose weight?”
“Does he compare me to girls he sees on TV?”
“Is he first attracted to a woman’s mind, body, or soul?”
“What does he think about me? Do I arouse him? Does he like my body?”
What Men Desperately Wish You Knew but are Afraid to Tell You. . .
“I’d like you to lose weight.”
“I wish you would dress up for me like you used to.”
“You’ve gotten fat.”
“It kills me that you don’t seem to care about attracting me anymore.”
“60 extra pounds since marriage. Not so sexy.”
“She needs to exercise more.”
“How she looks, both body and attire, is important to me.”
Now, if you’re like a lot of women you might be reading this and immediately thinking. . .
Why Are Men So GOD DAMN SHALLOW?
I mean, YOU don’t care so much about how he looks, right? YOU don’t expect him to look like George Clooney or Brad Pitt or have abs so well defined you could play checkers on them. YOU don’t care if he’s gained a few (or maybe even a whole bunch). So why is he so focused on your physical appearance and how you look?
Doesn’t who you are matter? Can’t he see past a few extra pounds?
Can’t he understand that after a couple kids and working all the time and keeping the house up you don’t have time to go the gym every day?
Can’t he see your inner beauty first and fall in love with your outer beauty later?
Unfortunately, the answer is “no.” He really can’t. And it’s not really his fault. Just like a lot of infuriating things about men, his maddening desire to have a fit, beautiful woman on his arm is deeply rooted in evolution and biology.
We’ll cover the concept of what your appearance means about him in a second, but first let’s talk about how attraction actually happens for a guy.
“Is a man first attracted to a woman’s mind, body, or soul?”
I loved this question when I first read it in the Secret Survey. But it also made me kind of sad.
In a perfect world, I’d be able to say that men don’t care how a woman looks when he first meets her. . . that he can see down to the core of who a woman is from their very first conversation, and that men are spending all their time trolling bars and surfing dating sites looking for a soul mate who truly completes them and who they can build a life with.
But I’d be lying if I did.
Plain and simple, the first thing that attracts a guy to any woman is how she looks and if he finds her physically and sexually attractive.
Honestly, to prove this all you have to do is run a little experiment on a dating site (which is exactly what I did).
A few years back (when I was single) I started using websites like PlentyOfFish. com and OKCupid.com to meet girls I wanted to date (or just sleep with).
And I got really frustrated really quickly. Why? Because even though I’m a reasonably good looking and successful guy, I couldn’t seem to get answers from any of the women who I wanted to date.
Now eventually I figured it out (the key as a GUY on a site like that is to send wholly unexpected and interesting messages that can’t be ignored.
Curious? Check out Text the Romance Back), but before I did, I decided to be a little dishonest and sneaky and scope out the competition.
How?
By creating a fake profile on OKCupid and pretending to be a woman.
Basically, I found a couple pictures of a beautiful girl online, wrote a profile for her (which was awesome, I’ll admit), posted it online, and waited.
Now, if you’re a guy on a dating site, you usually don’t get many women emailing you (unless, I hear, you advertise that your income is millions of dollars a year, and then the gold diggers come out).
But within 30 minutes of posting my profile as “Sasha,” my inbox was flooded with messages from guys.
They were practically tripping over themselves to impress my fake girl (and most of them were making the boneheaded mistake of saying stuff like “You’re so pretty!!” in their email. Losers).
What was really interesting was how the vast majority of these guys didn’t even mention the profile I’d written (which I’d really slaved over and went into a lot of detail about Sasha’s favorite bands, what she liked to do with her free time, and her deep and abiding love of her family).
Instead, the guys just hit on her like jocks hitting on a wasted cheerleader at a frat party, sent lots of pictures of themselves looking poetic with their guitars, and tried every piece of game they could to get this hot blonde to give them the time of day.
What’s even more interesting is that when I eviscerated Sasha’s profile and turned her from an interesting and intelligent neuroscience student to a ditzy nanny, she got the EXACT SAME AMOUNT and EXACT SAME KIND of messages.
What Does This Actually Mean?
1. When it comes to online dating, most guys are dumb. (Seriously. The WORST way to open up a conversation with a woman on an online dating site is by talking about how hot she is. Dumbasses.)
2. When it comes to initial attraction to a woman, physical appearance trumps everything. I’m sure you’ve seen this with male friends of yours. . . guys who date absolute psychos, “mean girls,” and “bitches” just because they’ve got a pretty face or a “rocking body.”
Here’s How the Math of Attraction Works in a Guy’s Mind. . .
Step 1: “Is She Hot Enough?” All guys have a bar they set in their mind for how hot or physically attractive a woman has to be for him to consider dating or sleeping with her. Some guys set the bar insanely low (“Is she breathing?”), some guys set the bar insanely high (“She must be a super model!!” – personally I’ve met plenty of models and always find them too skinny and vacuous, but hey), and some guys have totally different bars for women they’d have sex with versus women they’d actually date (we refer to these guys as “scum”).
For most guys, the bar is set right around the quality of woman they think they can actually get to hang out with them. Once you’ve been a guy out on the dating scene for a while, you pretty quickly learn what level of girl you actually stand a chance with and tend to set your bar right around there.
Step 2: “Is She Into Me and Do I Have a Chance with Her?” Once a guy figures out if a girl is hot enough for him, he moves on to gauging if he actually has a chance of getting her number, getting her to make out with him, or getting into her pants. A lot of guys put crazy amounts of effort into learning how to seduce beautiful women. Other guys play a lot of Xbox.
Step 3: “Do I Actually Like Her as a Person and Do I Enjoy Hanging out with Her?” Weirdly enough, this step doesn’t actually enter into most guys’ minds for a few weeks or even months after he starts dating a girl. And a lot of guys will stay with a horrible, horrible girlfriend just because she’s hot (even if they don’t like her and even if she’s horrible in bed (which is a little like having a Porsche with no engine if you ask me).
Now, obviously there are variations. Sometimes a guy will meet a girl who he just clicks with or whose pheromones drive him absolutely batty or he’ll just have that ATTRACTION he can’t deny with a girl. Or maybe a guy will (I hate using this word) settle for a girl who’s not as physically attractive as he’d like because he thinks he can’t do any better.
But for all guys, appearance matters. It’s not fair. It’s probably not right. But it is true. And it’s as true for me (as a hyper-emotionally aware relationship advice guy) as it is for any other guy. I love who my girlfriend is as a person, but I never would have gotten to know who she is if I hadn’t felt powerfully attracted to how she looks first, and if she hadn’t been hot enough for me to want to pursue.
So WHY is How You Look so Important to a Guy?
There are actually two reasons looks are so incredibly important to a guy and to a guy’s self esteem.
1. Basic attraction. Guys are VISUAL creatures. We’re turned on by what we see, and our eyes (and the mind they’re attached to) are our primary erogenous zone. If you’re not a guy’s physical type or if he’s not visually attracted to you, you’re going to have almost an impossible time getting his attention.
2. Having a beautiful woman on his arm raises a man’s status among other guys. . .
I call this concept “reflected glory.”
And it’s incredibly important. . .
Most guys don’t talk about this, but having a physically attractive woman who other men want or admire massively raises his status in a room.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about status and tribalism and all that here, but the core idea is that all guys want to be the alpha of the group. . . the most powerful guy who gets the most beautiful women and who’s in charge. And one of the ways guys show dominance and power is by showing off the beautiful woman on their arm.
You see this a lot with Hollywood guys. If you ever watch a guy with his date on the red carpet, you’ll notice that in many ways the tall, leggy blonde is kind of an accessory. . . she’s a signal that tells every other guy in the room, “this man is important.”
Now guys don’t really talk about this stuff with each other, but we all subconsciously acknowledge it and subtly defer to the guy with the hottest wife or girlfriend (sounds silly, doesn’t it?). Personally, I’ve experienced this myself on a few occasions. Most recently with a woman named Marisa who I dated for 6 weeks a few years back.
Marisa was gorgeous (actually, she still is): 5’10”, long black hair, a great smile. And my favorite thing about dating Marisa was how having her on my arm made me feel, and how other guys acted towards me when she was with me. It seems like every time we’d go out, women would stop to tell Marisa how beautiful she was and guys would pull me aside to congratulate me on my girlfriend.
Ultimately Marisa and I were utterly incompatible (though we’re still friends today). And even though I was less attracted to Marisa than I have been to many other women, the fact that she was considered to be a total knockout to the world at large made her really difficult to give up because of the reflected glory she gave me.
Does This Mean That Your Guy Needs You to Starve Yourself Thin, Pluck Every Unwanted Hair, Get Ridiculous Plastic Surgery, and Live on the StairMaster?
No.
No, it really doesn’t.
I know that just reading this stuff can be disappointing and even horrifying to women who don’t meet the conventional ideal of beauty. But even though your physical appearance IS important to a guy, it’s not the only thing that matters.
Most guy’s don’t ACTUALLY want you to look like or act like a supermodel or one of those girls on Jersey Shore (If my girlfriend started plucking everything or wearing those silly high heels everywhere I’d be horrified).
But he does want you to be as attractive as you personally can be.
Remember, confidence is the sexiest thing about a woman (confidence and amazing eyes that you get lost in. OK, I digress.)
I’ll tell you right now any guy in the world would rather have a size 12 woman who’s confident and curvy (think of Marilyn Monroe: she was no bean pole) than a size 2 waif who is constantly hating herself.
Would he prefer that you lose a few pounds (if you’ve gained weight since you got together)? Sure, probably. But it’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is to put forth the effort to be pretty for him. Lift your chin. Make eye contact. Flirt. Put on makeup. Start exercising. Only wear sweatpants when you plan on sweating.
Don’t do it for the numbers on the scale or to impress anyone. Do it for the energy it’ll give you and for the feeling you’ll get being proud of your body.
I’ll tell you right now as a guy that he wants you to put in the effort to dress up for him. He wants you to realize how important visually attracting him to you is and to put as much work into looking good for him now as you did when you first started dating.
If you need more proof, just read through the survey results. Read through the pain in the words so many of these guys put down. How desperately they want their wives and girlfriends to look good for them.
When you’ll do, you’ll realize. . .
When you stop trying to impress him and attract him, it kills him inside.
Worse than that, it causes him to stop objectifying you and stop seeing you as a sexual creature worth pursuing and seducing. And once that happens, you’ll see his sex drive, his pride, and even his basic masculinity start to wane. That energetic man you fell in love with in the first place will just fade away.
Summing Up Lesson 7
- The first thing a man is attracted to in a woman is how she looks.
- For men, attraction almost always starts with the visual and the physical and grows from there to be something deeper and more powerful.
- The Math of Attraction starts with if a woman is hot enough for him, and the personality aspect only comes in later.
- Men are so wired to respond to the visual and physical that they’ll put up with bad girlfriends for a long time. We all know guys who have been with bitches for way too long just because they look good (Just like we know women who have been with douchebags for way longer than they should).
There are two reasons that a woman’s looks are so important to a guy:
1. Basic attraction: Men are visual creatures, and looking at a woman is his primary way of getting erotically turned on.
2. Reflected glory: Having a beautiful woman on his arm massively raises a man’s status with other men (and with women, too).
- While guys do compare you to other women to some degree, most guys really just want you to be the best, most attractive, and hottest you can be. Most guys I talk to don’t really want a supermodel girlfriend. They want an idealized version of the woman they’re with now.
- Don’t stop trying to attract him. Your being in shape, dressing up and being a pretty woman is important to him. (Just like his taking care of himself and being a strong, dominant man who you can respect is important to you.)
Exercises for Lesson 7
This one’s easy.
Pick a night when you and your man are planning on spending a quiet night at home. A night when you’d normally just get pizza and curl up on the couch with in your PJ’s. Instead, get home before him. Spend some time getting dolled up for him. Show some skin. When he gets home, look at the light in his eyes. When he asks what the occasion is, just say “I just wanted to look good for you.” See what happens.
Up Next: What Men Want Sexually (Seriously)
Only one lesson to go (and it’s a doozie). In our next lesson we’re going to talk about what guys REALLY want sexually.
