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

While sending an appropriate class message increases the chances that a first meeting will lead to a relationship, signaling that you are—to borrow a phrase from the older generation—a “proper young lady” is even more important. The men we talked to often described their fiancées as “decent,” “family-oriented,” or what I refer to as “situational virgins.” More than 80 percent of the men we put in focus groups who were getting married in 1999 sooner or later said or even bragged that the women they were going to marry were the kind of woman you would be proud to introduce to friends and family. There was no question they were talking about the women’s virtue. You could tell by the vocabulary the men used when describing women they would not marry—women who by their standards were “loose,” “easy,” or worse. Those who were more broad-minded replaced sexual virtue with social virtue. They described their fiancées as women they could take home to Mother or introduce to their bosses.

The Perils of Dressing for Sex

After they gave these descriptions, we asked men when they first realized that their fiancées were “nice girls.” More than 70 percent told us they knew the minute they met, and almost half said or implied that this was what had first attracted them. The biggest surprise was that when asked to describe their fiancées when they first met them, 19 percent of the men described what the women were wearing. I’ve been researching clothing for more than thirty-five years, and never did more than 7 percent of the men questioned remember what anyone wore at a business meeting that had taken place more than three months earlier. More importantly, many of the men described their fiancées’ outfits when explaining how they knew the women were virtuous. They made comments such as this:

“She looked so determined to cure people in her crisp white [nurse’s] uniform, I knew she was the type of girl I couldn’t mess with.”

“Her suit made her look like a little girl dressed in Daddy’s clothing, very proper but sexy as hell.”

“She was wearing jeans and a blouse with lace at the neck and cuffs. It made her look like an innocent little girl.”

“Her outfit wasn’t revealing. In fact, it covered her from head to foot—but it was sexy.”

“I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was wearing this pink dress.”

“If you were picking a costume for an angel, that dress would be perfect.”

The vast majority described clothing that announced the woman was respectable. Only seven men of the more than two thousand we questioned said their fiancée was dressed in a very sexy outfit when they met. This was backed up by the women, most of whom remembered what they were wearing when they first met their fiancés. Only a handful told us they were wearing a sexy outfit; most said what they were wearing was anything but sexy.

So if you are going to a social setting where you are likely to meet eligible men, choose a look that is not only attractive but also appropriate.

Dressing to Be a Wife, Not a One-Night Stand

As I explained earlier, when we finish with a self-contained element of research, we run our findings by the researchers to get their feedback. Most of our researchers were women, and they were convinced that while men claimed to be attracted to women who were not sending strong sexual signals, their collective experience had taught them the opposite was true. We then ran a focus group of women who were about to be married, and they more or less agreed with our female researchers.

We had to conduct two focus groups with men who were about to be married to convince these women that men are interested in the personal traits of women when they first meet. Our researchers did not want to believe the results from the first group, so we convened a second. The men in both groups agreed with the women that a sexy outfit will attract hordes of men, but they went on to explain—using crude language and bawdy humor—that they saw a sexy outfit as an invitation to have sex. What is more, a woman who dressed sexy but did not deliver was a tease, and they did not want to be involved with her.

A majority of the men who were about to marry put a woman on first meeting into one of two categories: those they bedded and those they wedded—this despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of their fiancées were not virgins when they met. While two women researchers held out for the politically correct point of view, most admitted that the double standard was alive and well in the (small) minds of most men.

What make this information so useful is that men usually make life-changing decisions that critically affect the nature of their relationships within ten minutes of meeting a woman. They decide whether this is the kind of woman with whom they might have a serious relationship before they really know her. Nearly half the men who had asked women to marry them told us they knew their bride-to-be was special as soon as they met her. Of the 50 percent remaining, almost half said they knew there was a possibility that the relationship could become serious before the second date. Of the remaining 27 percent, almost one-third could not remember at what point they had decided the woman they were about to marry was special. Yet even 73 percent of this group admitted that the first impression she made probably did sway their thinking. Even those who believed it took them a long time to make up their minds whether this was the woman for them admitted that their fiancée had not changed much since they first met. What this all means is that first impressions are both critical and long lasting.