You’ve recently met someone new—a friend of a friend—and you are completely blown away by them. This person is so great that you assume they must have a partner or at least plenty of dates with people who are like them—that is, super awesome but totally out of your league. This person is high status, a cool dresser, always making funny comments at just the right moment. Although you are attracted to this new acquaintance, you are not about to let them or any of your other friends know the truth of it. You risk looking like a fool if your feelings are discovered, as of course you would not expect they would like you in the same way.
One night you host a small get-together. Your crush shows up and then pays lots of attention to you. You assume they are simply being super nice because they’ll probably need to take off to another party any minute, and yet they spend the whole night supportively at your side, looking and smiling at you, laughing at your bad jokes, even physically reaching out and touching your arm a few times, right in front of your friends. You feel great. Then you wonder if this person is messing with you, until it dawns on you that they simply think you’re an emotional charity case and must be feeling sorry for you.
LET’S SCAN THE WHOLE SCENARIO. First, suspend judgment and take stock of exactly what could be going on by being more descriptive.
Look at the key signal that led to your judgment—the public display of affection (PDA), the power of the person reaching out and touching your arm in a social setting. Now, while it could be true that they are feeling sorry for you, it could be that they like you.
Feeling the power of the PDA may briefly surprise and delight you; however, you ultimately default into feeling negative about it because you have deeply rooted feelings of unworthiness. You cannot believe this person would like you. You assume nothing will ever happen, and then when the other person reacts positively to you, this does not change your mind but instead catapults you into disappointment over your unworthiness. Instead of feeling they could be into you, you default to a place where you assume they feel sorry for you.
So why the assumption of pity?
Sad facial gestures are pretty clear and are universal. In this situation, body language signs that may indicate you are correct in your assumption are signs that could communicate sad feelings toward you and so may suggest pity. You would notice the corners of the lips and the upper eyelids drooping down; eyes in an extended gaze and that possibly are damp; eyebrows slightly pulled together in the middle or downward at the edges; a mouth that is turned down at the corners; or their head tilted to one side. If any of these signs were displayed you may indeed be onto something. However, there appear to be more indicators saying they may be attracted to you:
This friend of a friend has been hanging out lately with your regular gang.
This person is just so totally great and you are attracted to them.
You host a small get-together. Your cool wish-they-were-more-than-a-friend shows up.
This person was at your side, looking and smiling at you.
They laughed at your jokes.
They touched you by putting their hand on your arm . . . in front of your friends.
All in all, this looks pretty positive for you and points toward your initial assumption being incorrect.
What is the context that may be making this feel negative to you? You are in a fun social atmosphere at your own place, after all, therefore having the advantage of being in familiar territory. Is there something else going on for you, a specific lens through which you are looking that is perhaps skewing your interpretation? Are you feeling down? In a bad mood? And what has gone on recently for you relationship- wise? Is your own context of negative past relationships winning out above any other framing of this moment? Did you just break up, go through a negative experience, get some bad news? Or is anything giving you a feeling of depression generally? Is there something else going on for you that could be clouding your perception?
What is most powerful here is the way we value the signals we see around us in relation to ourselves. We provide our own emotional context, which can completely override and often skew anything that, when we consider it objectively, tells a different story. A good way to try to see our way through our own clouded perception is by projecting interactions into a different context; in other words, pretend you are observing this same exchange between the person you like and someone else at the party. Would you still feel the same way—that the other person is being pitied?
And the social context: If you critically consider your value in this group, do you believe you are less valuable than others? If you have undervalued yourself, it is possible that no signal or group of signals will be powerful enough to convince you that someone is attracted to you. But if it is true that you are so value-less, why would anybody show up to your party at all? And clearly people did, and you have friends, and so you do have more value and power than you are giving yourself credit for. However, along the same lines, it may be possible that your friends sense your insecurities, and through empathy and kindness may wish to make you feel better about the power of your social position by giving you extra signals to prove your worth and value.
Ask what else you have seen that suggests they could be feeling sorry for you.
As well as facial displays of pity, we can look to pupil size, which may be an indicator of sadness. People judge a sad facial expression to be more intensely sad as the pupil size decreases.1 We mirror each other’s pupil size, and so our pupils may also become smaller when viewing sad faces with small pupils. No parallel effect exists when people look at neutral, happy or angry expressions. The greater the degree to which a person’s pupils mirror another’s, the more empathetic that person is.
Now let’s look at how to test and get feedback on whether you should stick with your idea that they are feeling sorry for you, or move on to a different position and a new judgment about what they are thinking.
If you are at a bit of a low ebb, perhaps feeling a bit depressed and insecure, you need to be sure that what you are seeing from them is not mirroring, or them feeling sympathy for you. So here’s the low-risk test: Take a breath, pick up your energy and put on a full Duchenne smile with your mouth and eyes, rather than trying to soften any sadness with a masking smile just in your mouth. Contrary to popular belief, studies show that most people, under ordinary conditions, can convincingly fake a true smile.2 Show up at your most positive and upbeat and see if they are still giving you the same level of attention. And now look for any pupil dilation when they look at you. They probably aren’t feeling sorry for you if you yourself are not demonstrating the behaviors of feeling sorry for yourself. And if they are feeling sorry for you, once you display more buoyancy in your attitude and overall demeanor, they will feel their mission is accomplished: They cheered you up, or if they really do like you, you will appear more open to their attention.
BODY LANGUAGE MYTHBUSTER
Dilated Pupils Signal Sex
How many times have you heard that if someone’s pupils are big, it means they are attracted to you? How true is this? Our eyes naturally dilate to allow in more light, but dilation also occurs in response to what we are thinking and feeling. When we’re interested in something, our pupils dilate. The iris muscles are under the control of the autonomic nervous system, which deals with involuntary reflex actions, and so pupil dilation is difficult for us to consciously control. So it is when we are around something we desire. And we tend to be attracted to people with larger pupils simply because they are displaying that they are interested in some way in us. It feels therefore less risky if we make a move.
But over the centuries and across cultures, we have found ways to make the pupils dilate or look bigger, even when they are not being naturally stimulated. Today, people put on eyeliner and wear contact lenses to do this. In the past, people used belladonna plant extract to dilate their pupils, in an effort to appear more attractive. The atropine in belladonna, or deadly nightshade, is an anticholinergic that blocks the effects of acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter released by parasympathetic nerve cells. What this ultimately means is that the pupil cannot constrict and so only relaxes into dilation. People don’t tend to use this method any more. However, caffeine and over-the-counter decongestants can produce the same effect. And of course, conversely some people will try to cover up if they are feeling an attraction. This could be the poker player who wears sunglasses, trying to conceal their attraction to a hand of cards they hold while lying to other players about its value or bluffing. Or it could be the legendary Chinese jade dealer behind tinted spectacles who hides their delight at a great deal being presented. So although it’s no myth that dilated pupils can indicate desire, there are ways to create or counter the effect. Therefore, in the world of body language, dilated pupils should in no way be viewed as a certain signal for sex.
QUICK SCAN
S: Suspending judgment allows you to explore your feelings about the public display of affection and recognize how your reasoning caused your initial assumption that the person is just feeling sorry for you. You also allow yourself to consider more holistically the visual cues, as well as the other nonverbal stimuli you receive. Touch can have an incredibly powerful effect alongside or even without visual cues.
C: Examining the social and particularly emotional context here encourages you to take into account feelings and moods you have been going through lately that override and skew your interpretation of the body language, setting the stage for biased judgments. We may see through our clouded perception by projecting interactions into a different context.
A: Information can change when your eyes focus in or pull out. Ask yourself what other details you see by getting closer.
N: Purposely changing your demeanor or physical attitude for a moment is a great way to test whether others will change in response and whether a new judgment may be accurate.