Why Men Marry Some Women and Not Others: How to Increase Your Marriage Potential by up to 60%

“She was so well mannered.”

“She was the kind of person any guy would be proud to be with.”

“She was enthusiastic.”

“She was so full of the joy of life.”

“She seemed so at ease with the world.”

“She was the kind of woman you could take anywhere and be proud.”

“When she talked, I felt so good.”

“I didn’t know if we’d become lovers, but I was sure we’d be friends.”

“It was a joy being around her.”

“She was poised” (or energetic, decent, kind, articulate, clever, entertaining…).

I don’t mean to understate the effect of physical beauty; there is no question it attracts men. But even when they first meet a woman, it’s usually the woman’s personality that makes her seem special. The words men used most often to describe their fiancées were classy, nice, friendly, kind, elegant, self-assured, poised, and so forth. As it happens, in most cases the men using these words were not themselves poised, elegant, self-assured, or classy. Nor were their fiancées, in reality. But that was the way the men perceived the women they planned to marry when they first met. It’s critical that your first impression on a man be a positive one, because it often determines how he will see you from that moment on.

Marrying Up

Whether they’ve grown up in poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods or upscale suburbs, men want to marry women who are in some ways their better. A majority of men want the woman they marry to meet their ideas of refinement, elegance, and decency. Often those are the reasons they were attracted to her in the first place.

Men brag about the women they are about to marry; for many, their future spouse is a status symbol. The whole idea that only gorgeous young women are trophy wives is nonsense. All wives are “trophy wives.” When we interviewed grooms-to-be, to the astonishment of my mainly female research team members, the main message the men conveyed was that they were proud of their brides.

A great example of this was two particular grooms who at first glance seemed to have nothing in common. A researcher and I met them outside a marriage license bureau in Florida. One was the son of a former congressman. He was also third-generation old money, a graduate of an Ivy League law school. The second was raised by a single mother in the inner city.

The bride of the second man could not stop telling us how he had transformed himself from a gang member to a man with a steady job. The researcher who interviewed her said she beamed when she announced he had just been promoted in the Fortune 500 company he worked for. She started by telling the researchers he had quit school in the ninth grade and had to work very hard to earn his GED. When I interviewed him, he bragged that he had passed the test for the post office on his first try. But, he added, if he had not, he would have kept on taking it until he did. He then went to community college at night, and after completing his course applied for his present job.

The first man told us he worked with very rich and powerful people, so the woman he married had to be very special. Then he explained with obvious pride that his bride would fit into his world because she was as accomplished as any woman he had ever encountered. He boasted about how wonderful she was with people. He told us of how she had shown grace and poise when she helped him entertain two dozen of his clients. He found it difficult to believe she was only twenty-five. This rather sophisticated man—a true blueblood—said it was his experience that women from the best families and the best schools usually don’t achieve that degree of sophistication until well into their thirties. He informed us that she had handled some of the richest and most powerful people in the world with the grace and artistry of a grande dame.

Immediately, the man raised in a slum chimed in, “I know just what you mean. I was blown away by my girl’s sophistication, too. We went to a restaurant, and she put her napkin in her lap and ordered me to put mine on my lap. Wow—she almost knocked me off my #@*&# chair.”

I use these two men as examples for several reasons. Both women were very attractive, but neither man mentioned it. These very different men made statements that reflected the feelings of 46 percent of the men we interviewed coming out of marriage license bureaus. This convinced the female researchers that men are not quite as shallow as most women believe.

But the main reason I cite these men is that both—along with almost half of the others who had just gotten engaged—said they knew there was something special about their women as soon as they met. Like nearly half the men we interviewed, these men admitted that sexual attraction was a factor in their choice of a bride, but claimed it was not what clinched their decision.

Making a Good First Impression

When you walk into a room, have a pleasant look on your face, but not a big grin. Why not? If you have a big smile on your face when you walk in but the minute you start talking to someone that smile disappears, it sends the message that you don’t like the person you are speaking with. Smiling is important, but most people, especially women, need to tone it down. What generally works best is the look you get on your face when you’re about to smile. Then you can break into a real grin when you meet someone, which lets him know you really are pleased to meet him.

One of the keys to making a good first impression is to match your verbal with your nonverbal messages. When you say, “Pleased to meet you,” you need to look and sound pleased. A majority of those we surveyed told us they were attracted to people who seemed to like them. It sounds very simple, but it’s a little trickier than it sounds.

About 80 percent of the people we surveyed thought they could charm others if they set out to do so. But research shows that when most people deliberately turn on the charm, they smile too broadly, and the people they meet see their smiles as artificial. Rather than create a positive impression, they either create no impression at all or, worse, turn off the very people they intended to charm. We found that many women come across as overly friendly, something you should be careful to avoid.

Practice being charming in front of a full-length mirror. Start by trying to look like a person everybody likes. It may take a while, possibly several sessions of ten to fifteen minutes, but almost everyone who role-plays being upbeat and friendly in front of a mirror eventually ups her charm quotient considerably.

Second Impressions

What I refer to as a “second impression,” most people would call the second part of the first impression—and they’re right. The division is artificial, but it lets us break down a first impression into teachable elements.

The first element of a first impression is primarily nonverbal. It’s the message you send when you walk into a room, before you open your mouth. Obviously, first impressions are not always nonverbal. Often when you meet someone for the first time, you shake hands and start to speak immediately. But it’s easier to learn the nonverbal elements of a first impression separately from the verbal parts. That’s how the young women who practiced the nonverbal elements outlined in my sales training manual made themselves more attractive to men. The women had mastered sending signals that created a good first impression. In fact, they learned to turn on those signals at will, which enabled them to charm not only men but just about anyone they met, as well. As you might imagine, they found it a very useful talent.

Several skills you can master with relative ease will help you create a good second impression: a good handshake, a friendly recognition glance, smooth, measured movements, a pleasing voice, conversation skills, listening skills, and the ability to send a friendly message. I could spend a chapter on these skills, but a few simple instructions will suffice.

If you’re not sure of your handshake, practice it with both male and female friends. When you first catch a person’s eye, an I-am-about-to-smile look announces that you’re friendly. While you don’t want your movements to be quick or jerky so you appear nervous or unsure, you don’t want to appear stiff or dull either. Try making a video of yourself greeting people, and become your own body-language coach.

Next, record yourself speaking in different situations. Go to a speech teacher if you don’t like what you hear. (Make sure you find someone qualified. Go to a local college or university and hire someone from the speech department as a coach.) If you aren’t a good conversationalist, become an expert on one or two noncontroversial topics that interest most people, such as sports, the arts, the latest best-selling book or hit movie, the stock market—any subject you believe will interest people. (Avoid religion and politics until you become more comfortable.) Then say a few words about the topics. Be confident without being pompous. Keep your remarks short and leave “air space” for the other person to respond. Good conversationalists are good listeners, and good listeners spend at least three times as much time listening as they do speaking.

Role-play the part of a pleasant, friendly person while speaking into the tape recorder for ten to fifteen minutes every day for two to three weeks. It’s important that you don’t just look friendly and upbeat but sound friendly and upbeat, as well. Try not to judge your voice. You’re used to hearing yourself in your own head, and most of us sound better there than anywhere else. Many people are unpleasantly surprised by what they hear, while others miss obvious flaws such as an unflattering accent.

Ask friends for their opinion or—even better if you can arrange it—get more objective feedback from strangers. Give your tape to a friend and ask him or her to play it for someone who doesn’t know you, then solicit from the listener their impression of the person on the tape. If the description is negative, work on improving and retest. The good news is, almost everyone improves—some dramatically—within a few months. If you don’t see improvement, take acting classes, or put yourself in situations where you’re meeting strangers on a casual basis in low-risk settings that almost force you to interact—volunteer to help organize a local charity event, for example.

Unfortunately, to create a good second impression, you’ll need to master at least one very difficult skill: You have to maintain that pleasant, friendly look. It is harder than it sounds. Once you stop thinking about looking friendly, you’re likely to fall into old habits, coming across as your old, less approachable self. The message most of us send is no message at all: I’m not happy or unhappy, I’m simply here. Worse, 20 percent of us, without realizing it, send the message that we’re unhappy and do not care for most of the people we meet. The main reason men don’t like women when they first meet is that the women nonverbally announce they do not like the men. That isn’t the message most women want to send or think they’re sending, but it’s all too common.

Old habits are hard to break, and how you hold your facial muscles is just another habit. After you’ve mastered looking friendly and upbeat in front of a mirror, practice doing so two to three times a week for fifteen minutes. Once you can maintain a pleasant expression on your face for an extended period in front of a mirror, you can move to the next exercise.

Role-play meeting men in front of a mirror. The goal of this exercise is making that pleasant and positive expression part of your everyday life. You want that look to become your everyday “walk-around” face—the face you wear when you go to the supermarket, mop the floor, shine your shoes, eat lunch, talk to a friend, attend business functions, and, of course, encounter men you would like to meet. It should become as natural as breathing. You will have succeeded when you can maintain that pleasant expression without thinking about it—unless, of course, you have good reason for not looking pleasant.

After the mirror work, the best way to make that positive look a permanent part of you is to record yourself with a video camera, trying to maintain that upbeat, friendly look and sound. After fifteen or twenty minutes, play back the video and see how well you’ve done. Don’t despair—most people have to practice in front of a mirror repeatedly, using a video camera to test their progress. It’s far more difficult to maintain your new pleasant expression on camera and in real life than in front of a mirror.

Just as with other forms of exercise, you need to build endurance. Once you’re able to maintain your new face for a minute, practice two minutes in front of the mirror and then two minutes on videotape. Keep doing this until you can maintain your friendly expression in front of a camera easily for ten minutes.

The mirror helps monitor your nonverbal messages, and this improves your performance. Don’t become discouraged by your first sight of yourself on camera. More than 90 percent of those I have known who practice using a video camera make life-changing improvements.

If in addition to looking and sounding positive and friendly, you hold yourself erect without becoming stiff when sitting, standing, and walking, people will find you more attractive. This usually is not too difficult for women, who generally have better posture than men. Still, we found it was necessary for members of both sexes, if they wanted to create a great first impression, to monitor their posture. Start by videotaping yourself while you’re sitting, standing, and walking. If possible, have a friend or family member videotape you when you’re not aware you’re on camera.

It’s not a matter of remaining West Point ramrod straight. That doesn’t send a positive message; it says, I am stiff and uptight. Keep your head erect and your shoulders back. The best way for a woman to do this is to put a book on her head and a tightly rolled washcloth on each shoulder. Practice moving from place to place while keeping all three balanced. When you can keep both the book and the washcloths in place for ten minutes—or better still, when you can keep them in place without even thinking about it—go to the next step. Sit with them in place. Wear them while you watch television or do some desk work until you can keep them in place without effort.

Erect posture says to most people that you’re positive and self-assured, which in turn makes you more attractive. Men like women who like themselves.

When you’ve mastered these skills, you’ll have no trouble making a good first and second impression. Life in general will become easier.

Charm Crosses Over

Sending positive nonverbal and verbal signals not only makes you more attractive to men but also helps you marry. I knew the exercises in my sales training brochure had done this for some women, and I assumed it would work for others as well. I was right—and the results were better than I would have guessed. Since the afternoon Margie asked me about using sales skills in social settings, at least three hundred women who tried it reported back that it had worked.

Once you learn to make a good first impression in a business setting, the skill is transferable to social situations.

What your Clothes Say

Of course, what you choose to wear is just as important as the body-language messages you send. I tested the class message sent by women’s clothing and its impact on the people they meet years ago while researching the Dress for Success books. I assumed the reaction that took place in a business setting would be similar to the one that occurred in a social setting, and I was right. As we’ve seen, men are much more likely to approach a woman if she is dressed in an outfit with which he is comfortable. Men are more likely to marry women from a background similar to theirs—but it’s usually women they perceive as their “betters” in social situations.

A perfect example is seen in the movie Working Girl. Melanie Griffith plays a twenty-something secretary from a blue-collar family who meets and charms a successful businessman—played by Harrison Ford—from an upper-middle-class background. When we first meet her, she is wearing cheap clothing and jewelry, overdone “big” hair, and inappropriate makeup. They all scream blue collar. Then she undergoes a makeover. She starts dressing in expensive-looking, understated clothing similar to what her older female boss wears; she loses the processed hairdo for a short, neat executive style; and finally she tones down her makeup. In real life, she would have had to spend more time working on her body language and verbal patterns, but nevertheless the effect is spectacular. It makes the relationship between the two characters, who are obviously going to be lovers, believable.

We all judge people by the way they present themselves. When a man meets a woman for the first time, he reacts in a predictable way to her body language, facial expression, speech patterns, and clothing. He has been conditioned by the other women he has met, by Hollywood images, and by his background to make judgments based on how she looks. Sometimes those judgments are based on how he processes information, but just as often they are unconscious. No matter how he makes the judgments, they control his actions.