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The Gentleman blog provides information on men’s shoes: info on oxfords, derbies, brogues and welted shoes.
Real-life info on etiquette, manners and good manners for in everyday life, at work and in public.
Living better for a better life. Tips for everyday life, philosopher’s insights and pleas for being a gentleman.
All about fashion for men with style: news, trends, influences and fashion history.
What women want, especially the men want to know. The gentleman blog helps and clarifies.
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Success with the opposite sex
Attractive or appealing? How man arrives at woman
The image of an attractive man is commonly quite clearly defined. When it comes to evaluating a man according to his attractiveness, both men and women usually mention the same criteria: well-groomed appearance, honesty, humor, athleticism, good manners, education, a respected position in society, and a steady job coupled with a high income. Mark Lambert explains in the Gentleman blog that, however, it is not so much the rational attractiveness of a man for a woman that is decisive, but rather the emotional attraction.
The widespread fiction of the attractive man
If a man gets advice on how to be more appealing to women by flipping through lifestyle magazines, watching Hollywood romances or consulting women directly, the image he’s supposed to fit into is pretty clear: the Prince Charming.
Media as well as women love to pass on the cliche of their prince charming to men. A man who is perfect himself and carries a woman on his hands. However, the reality usually looks completely different.
If you look at couples, you can see that very few women are with a prince charming. Much more so, the picture that often emerges is one in which attractive women are with men who by no means combine all of the socially attractive traits. This raises the question of why many women choose a man who does not at all correspond to what they actually desire and communicate.
Subjective attraction vs. objective attractiveness
Paradoxically, the "dream men" often don’t go down so well with women after all. When they ask why, they get an answer à la: "You are a dream man. Please never change, but unfortunately I do not feel it."
At the same time, the ladies complain that many gentlemen of creation do not meet these criteria. Now, you might conclude that women don’t approve of and don’t want these other men, but that’s often not the case at all.
When a woman complains about a man, it’s often not because she doesn’t care about him or doesn’t want him. On the contrary. She often grumbles, precisely because she is interested and expectations and prospects have built up in her mind, which, however, were not fulfilled at that moment.
Feeling beats rationality
The feeling of attraction is something different from social attractiveness. Attraction is based on feelings, attractiveness on rational criteria. However, we humans are mainly guided by our feelings, women even more than men by the way. The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1887 – 1961) even went so far as to say that women only use their rational mind as a complementary function when they get stuck with their feelings. This is a bold theory to say the least, but at its core I think he meant the following: Emotions are a much stronger driver than rationality. They make us feel directly whether we are feeling good or bad.
How men trigger attraction in women
There is no formula for attraction, because every woman, every man and every situation is different. However, there are factors that influence the feeling of attraction equally in all people. The core of this is to be somewhat challenging to the other person, as this activates the other person’s reward center and motivates them to want the other person more. However, just as with all "medications", the dosage is crucial as to how much of it is good, and at what point it becomes toxic to attraction.
Even if romantics like to see it differently: Love and attraction are two different pairs of shoes. The phase of getting to know and love each other usually requires different behaviors than being together in a long, committed relationship.
But you should not draw the conclusion that women are attracted to "assholes". This is an outright mistake. No man is well advised to behave this way when dealing with women. What really makes a man a challenge for a woman is mostly just the fact that he does not try to please her at all costs and to fit into the image of her prince charming. Instead, he needs to know who he is – and that’s no contradiction to being a gentleman.