AS PART OF MY BODY LANGUAGE BUSINESS, I offer a service at drlillianglass.com where people can send me photos or videos of themselves and their mate or potential mate and ask me to analyze what I think of them and their relationship.
I do this for various media outlets as well because I am constantly asked to decipher the body language of celebrities and newsmakers. Television shows, magazines, and Internet sites want to know whether a star’s relationship is genuine or an attempt by his or her handlers to create a public relations spin to keep their client relevant or to promote an upcoming film or television show.
If the relationship is for real, they want to know how the couple is doing. Are they still madly in love or is there a glitch in their relationship? Will they stay together or will they break up?
Just by analyzing the couple’s body language, I have been very successful in predicting whose relationship is in trouble well before any formal separation gets announced in the press.
I look for a number of things to determine whether a couple likes each other, from the distance they stand, walk, or sit to each other to the position of their lips and jaws. I do this analysis with famous people, but by knowing what to look for, you can learn to do what I do and apply that knowledge when analyzing your own photos and videos and those of your loved ones. Some of what I look for includes:
• Smiles and other facial expressions
• Whether they look or don’t look at each other; their eye position and movement
• Jaw and lip action, especially while kissing
• How they hug, how their hips are positioned, and the space and distance between them
• How they touch each other and whether there is muscle tension
• The way their feet are positioned near each other
• Positive and negative signs of sexual attraction and signs of affection or hostility
• Mirroring
• What their hands are doing
• Shoulder and chest positions
I’ll describe these items in greater detail later in this book. The more photos I see, the more I can look for consistencies in their behavior toward each other. When I look at photos of the couple with other people or when they are standing or sitting alone, it helps me gain knowledge of the overall situation.
Videotape analyses are also excellent because I can look for leakage, when real feelings indicated by specific behaviors leak out, which tells me how the couple really feels about each other.
If you want to know whether someone is really into you, look at how he smiles at you. A smile that is genuine shows the person’s teeth.
For centuries, people have been captivated by the smile on Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It is actually a half-smile, which shows the woman’s ambivalence as the left side of her face curves upward, suggesting a smile, while the right side remains neutral. If she were in a relationship, her facial language would tell us that she may not feel 100 percent committed. Though she may tell her lover that she loves him, her eyes, which shift to the side, indicate that she may not mean it. The puffiness under the sides of her nose and on top of her upper lip indicates tension, which further confirms her expression of ambivalence.
If you want to know whether someone is really into you, look at how he smiles at you. Is it a tight, forced smile or a half-smile with the lips pulled back tightly and not showing any teeth? If so, that person is uncertain about how he feels about you. If you have a photo of him smiling, cover his lips with your hands and you will notice that instead of smiling, he looks serious.
A smile that is genuine shows the person’s teeth. The apples of their cheeks are raised and their lips are parted. If you cover their mouth in a photo, their eyes will be smiling. That is how you know the smile is real.
A tight, forced smile or a half-smile with the lips pulled back tightly and not showing any teeth means that person is uncertain about how they feel about you.
Even though this couple is smiling and leaning toward each other, upon closer inspection you will notice that the woman appears to be more into her man than he is into her. Her smile is genuine, with raised cheeks, smiling eyes, and lips parted to show her teeth. She leans her head into his head in a display of affection. He, in turn, wears an ambivalent smile with his lips pulled back tightly. His nonsmiling eyes express ambivalence about the relationship.
When someone likes you, he smiles a lot, his eyebrows are raised, and his eyes open wide. He hugs you like he means it. You both feel each other’s body close to you because there is no physical space between you. He wants to engulf you and you feel the same. He has a genuine expression of joy on his face.
When someone is not into you, she can barely look at you, let alone touch you. She puts a great deal of space and distance between you. If someone is not wearing an expression of joy when she hugs you, the relationship is in trouble and on its way out.
If you hug your partner and there is distance between you at the lower body level, chances are there is a lack of sexual attraction and physical chemistry between you.
There may be intimacy issues if a person always insists on hugging you from behind or insists on being in back of you.
Hugging, when there is genuine romantic affection and mutual attraction, takes place face to face, belly button to belly button.
If one of the parties raises her shoulder and keeps her hands and arms to herself instead of touching the other, there is trouble in the relationship. When couples are into each other, they stay physically close and can’t keep their hands and arms off of each other.
If someone touches you at the shoulder area, she most likely just wants to be friends.
When someone likes you, she can’t get close enough to you, whether she is sitting, standing, or walking near you. A couple that is into each other touches in some way, with their chests, hips, or arms, as they lean into each other. It shows sexual chemistry.
When someone is not into you, not only is there significant physical distance between you, but the person leans away. It is a subconscious message that she wants to leave and can’t wait to get away from you. Leaning away is often accompanied by covering the body as a subconscious means of protection, such as folding the arms across the torso.
Couples who like each other not only lean toward each other, they also walk in sync as they are literally in step with each other. They would never think of walking in back of or in front of each other.
If someone touches your arm below the elbow, she is probably interested in getting closer, and if she touches your thigh or lower body, she is very attracted to you.
Men may put both hands in their pockets, with their thumbs pointing towards their male organ. It is not meant to be vulgar, and most men don’t consciously realize they are doing it. But when they are attracted to a woman, many men automatically make this gesture, especially in bars and clubs when they are trying to pick up women.
Women also showcase their bodies to show a man they are interested, but they do it differently. They will often play with a necklace to draw attention to their neck and breast area, which says they are available, vulnerable, and open. Fiddling with their jewelry draws attention to the area that attracts most men—the breasts. Similarly, women often toss their hair off their shoulders to draw attention to their upper body.
How a couple walks together is very revealing. A huge giveaway that a couple does not connect with each other is in how many steps separate them. When one half of a couple walks several paces in front of the other and leaves the other behind, it means that he or she doesn’t respect the other person and is trying to distance him- or herself.
Even though men usually have a wider stride than women, there is never any excuse for a man to walk ahead of a woman. In Western culture, it shows rudeness and a lack of concern and respect.
If someone covers her body with her arms or hands, know that she wants you to stay away from her body. If you notice that her hands are cupped as she covers up, it means that she doesn’t want you to touch her and that she is angry with you. Where a person touches you also tells you how that person feels about you.
Animals use their body language as they preen and show off their body parts to attract a mate. A peacock will display his feathers during mating season while a baboon may show off her bottom. The same thing occurs in the human kingdom.
People attracted to each other lean into each other. It is a primitive behavior that allows for a closer view and closer smell.
When people are interested in each other, they subconsciously do what the other person does. The reason they can tell what the other person is doing is because they constantly look at them. They are literally taking the person in, breathing in the person’s smell with the sides of their nose flaring as they try to detect compatible pheromones. They also absorb the person visually as they subconsciously watch for mutual attraction, such as pupils widening and eyes becoming moist and attentive.
The reason why people who are attracted to each other have great eye contact is that they like what they see. They like observing the other person’s appearance, movements, and nuances, which give off clues that they may be like-minded and that there may be a shared attraction.
After a while, when the couple feels more at ease because they have both subconsciously agreed that they like each other’s smell and the pheromones they each give off and they discover that they find each other visually appealing, they begin to bond by mirroring each other’s behaviors and nuances. It is the equivalent of saying, “I identify with you and I am just like you.” When the mirroring is genuine, it happens automatically, and you aren’t even aware of it. If you suddenly become aware of it, you may find it amusing.
If you are sitting across from someone and notice that her toe is pointing up, there is a good chance that she is attracted to you because it signifies that she is happy. Toes pointing up indicate happiness, while toes pointing down, with the heel off the ground, indicate the opposite. If the person’s toes point in your direction while you are sitting or standing, she likes you. If you see one of their feet positioned with their toes pointing toward the door or the buffet table, she either wants to leave or she wants to get some food.
Although books offering advice on finding a mate try to teach you how to manipulate others and have them like you by mirroring their movements, it doesn’t work when the behavior is contrived. Mirroring is a natural phenomenon that occurs when two people are genuinely into each other, and it cannot be manufactured.
A kiss is the ultimate test to validate whether your vision and sense of smell have deceived you. A kiss is your chance to get extremely close to see, smell, and taste the person who has attracted you. You may like their looks, but they may not smell or taste right to you and that will end the attraction.
When you are initially into a person and vice versa, you cannot stop kissing each other because all your senses are stimulated by them. But when a relationship wanes, it starts with the kiss. Kisses become perfunctory, short, and hard. They become hard because of lip tension that says, “I don’t really want to be kissing you.”
Kisses are supposed to be soft and moist, and when they are hard and dry, you can be sure that the person is not into you.
When people like you, first and foremost they speak to you with respect. In addition, they do the following:
1. Speak in sweet-sounding, nonharsh tones
2. Speak with a lilt in their voice, conveying animation and excitement
3. Engage in give-and-take during conversations
4. Elaborate on what you say and ask questions—They relate their experiences to what you have just said
5. Sprinkle their speech with terms of endearment and politeness
6. Never think of putting you down or hurting your feelings in any way
7. Speak truthfully
8. Openly and readily discuss and clear up misunderstandings or miscommunications
9. Make definite future plans to see you again
10. Show interest in your plans, friends, and family
When people don’t like you, they do the following
1. Answer abruptly, give curt answers to your questions, and do not elaborate
2. Don’t reciprocate or ask you questions
3. Constantly talk about themselves
4. Exaggerate or lie to you
5. Are critical, judgmental, or sarcastic
6. Make it a point to put you down
7. Compete with you or try to top you to show they are better than you
8. Negate or minimize what you hold dear (career, family, friends, pets, hobbies, etc.)
It’s time to get out of the relationship when the other person rolls his or her eyes or makes faces when you speak, accompanied by an audible sigh of impatience and disgust. The eye-rolling and face-making doesn’t just happen in private. It happens most of the time, especially when you are in the company of others.
Every relationship has its ups and downs, but there comes a time when the relationship can no longer continue. When the anger has escalated to the point where verbal and physical violence may erupt, it is time to call it quits. Here are several body language and speech and voice red flags that signal the end of a relationship:
• They constantly speak loudly and in an angry, impatient, and disgusted tone.
• They blame and are accusatory toward you.
• They call you names and curse at you.
• They demean and degrade you, telling you directly or indirectly that you are stupid, ugly, fat, etc.
• They compare you to others as they point out your flaws and shortcomings.
• The two of you no longer have civilized conversations, only arguments.
• They are physically in your face and in your space, ready for battle with their hands on their hips.
• They gnash their teeth in anger. These actions are often precursors to verbal and/or physical violence—warning you to leave.
• When someone points a finger in your face or at your chest, know that the next step is usually physical violence—You are in danger and need to leave the relationship. There is no going back because all respect has been lost.
