Body language in Flirt & Romance. Julia Brook

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      For whom is this book meant and for what purpose…

      For many of us, the most important and difficult to fulfil desire in life is that of finding a partner – someone to share our happiest moments with and someone to lean on during difficult times.

      We all wish to love and be loved, yet we often experience our beloved becoming our greatest enemy. The person we expect to be supporting us becomes someone that destroys us, weakens our self-esteem, crushes our dreams and betrays our most intimate secrets.

      The ones close to us strongly influence how we are, who we can be and what we can achieve. They are the most important partners, friends and soul-mates in our lives.

      Human relations are one of the most challenging aspects of life for everyone. Working in adult training and education, as well as counselling people who have found themselves in relationship dilemmas, I have often noticed how badly intelligent and educated people read others or adequately interpret the behaviour of the opposing party.

      Verbal information is usually understood very narrow-mindedly. On top of this we badly interpret body language. Without understanding what is actually being said we find ourselves acting poorly in conflict situations. All of this, unfortunately, can have irreversible consequences in our lives – broken relationships and broken-up families. Living alone may seem rosy only for those who don’t know what they are missing. Most of us would choose cohabitation with a loving person.

      One of the reasons that we fail in relationships is that we assume that others think, feel and interpret information like we do, while forgetting that we all come from different backgrounds, past experiences, and have varying capacities for empathy. Because of this we all have a different understanding of what is going on around us and what others mean and are experiencing.

      We tend to forget that we all have different 'reference systems,' due to differences in our growth environment and our past experiences.

      Another reason for failed relationships is the so called 'desperation' factor, meaning that when we desperately want someone in our lives, we are able to imagine all kinds of idealised things about our partner. We close our eyes to the reality in front of us, not wishing to see people and situations as they really are.

      The third stumbling block involves our experiences from the past – our previous relationships and their influence on our current relationship. This obstacle is often the most difficult one to overcome for those who have had previous experiences of breaking up with former partners.

      Additionally we are haunted by our parents' perception of relationships, and their opinion of our partner plays its own role. How our parents accept and appreciate our partner's suitability for us has its influence. Not to mention the impact of the 'family model' developed by our parents, which undoubtedly overshadows the way that we think about love and marriage.

      So how do we make sure that our significant other is the true love we are looking for and not in fact someone who will become a nuisance from hell? The answer lies in our ability to read body language and interpret nonverbal behaviour.

      Body language is the key to understanding hidden attitudes and feelings. People instantly react to events whether they want to or not and these automatic reactions leak information about our most secret feelings, even those we want to hide.

      What we feel determines our attitudes towards things and that in turn influences our conscious and unconscious behaviours. By being able to read body language, we are able to get a glimpse of the sometimes shocking hidden reality.

      If words express what a person is thinking about, then body language reveals what the person is actually feeling and what he or she is trying to cover up. By interpreting body language we are able to see 99 % of what is going on in people's conscious and unconscious thoughts.

      But let’s not forget – body language needs to be analysed according to context. The body signals immediate feelings and we need to take into account all of the body signals present in response to a certain situation. Body language analysis cannot be made on the basis of one single expression.

      Ignoring context and not analysing a collection of signals as a whole, you will most likely get a wrong final result. So – always consider a collection of signals and their suitability for the context.

      By trusting our instincts, and adequately identifying what kind of feeling the counterpart creates in us, we will make fewer bad choices, and be much more likely to find the 'love of our life,' whom we can love and be loved by for our whole life.

      What nonverbal behaviour tells us…

      Reading people’s minds is not a magic trick, it's a science. By learning to perceive non-verbal signals, and by being able to analyse body language in context, we can identify the psychological reasons and covert attitudes of a person's behaviour, and we are able to more than 90 % of the time anticipate the person's potential behaviour in the near future.

      Nature has supplied us with empathy, which helps us to intuitively sense what is happening within others. Unfortunately, most of us trust ourselves too little and we are rather inclined to believe what we are told from the opposite side, i.e., 'closing our eyes' to the reality in front of us.

      Emotions like fear, hatred, happiness, sadness, etc., arise from the brain. Our brain controls how we express these emotions through our body language and facial expressions. The tone of our voice, our posture and facial expressions are all a result of our brain's complicated processing of information.

      There are four 'signal systems' in human interaction, processed by our brain. Speech and sounds are processed with hearing; facial expressions and body language with eyesight. We use different parts of the brain to process this information, but our mind will use these processes to form a unified opinion of what our body feels.

      The tone of someone's voice tells us whether the person is cold, glad, serious, dull, etc. The tempo of their voice reveals whether the person is irritated, tense, calm, confident, insecure, etc. Low voices seem trustworthy to us and high screechy voices make us want to leave the room.

      Both facial expressions and the expressiveness of someone's voice are caused and controlled by the cranial nerves in the brain. So even if we try to hide our feelings, they still always 'leak' out.

      The words that we use speak of our thoughts, ideas, problems, wishes, etc. If we learn to listen properly, we can receive information about what is happening with the person we are talking to. Are their words sincere or in fact ambiguous? Is the agent of the sentence left out? Are we spoken to in the 'we' form or the 'me' form? Why are some words repeated and some endings of sentences silenced? How we speak and what we speak of both leak information about what we are thinking.

      Body language and facial expressions mirror feelings and attitudes, and tell us what kind of a person we are dealing with. Could this person be patronising to others, sick, afraid, dangerous, dominant, sporty, dominant, etc.?

      First, our subconscious mind and body react, and then based on our attitude we begin to consciously think and act.

      The first thing we need to ask ourselves when meeting a stranger is – what do I feel around them? Our intuition informs us of potential threats and we sense when something is out of order.

      If we know how to interpret body language and nonverbal behaviour, we can focus on the actual reasons why we feel the way we do around this person, and what are the reasons behind their behaviour?

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