The relationship norm has always been, when a lady is attracted to a man,she sends him signs and wait for him to make the first move.
But how long will this go on?
Millennials will tell you normal is boring.
The dating world is changing as more apps that help people connect come online, but the fundamental rules of courtship appear to remain constant.
In the 1995 book The Rules (link is external), authors Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider argued:
“Women who played hard to get, either deliberately or by accident, were the ones who got the guys, while the women who asked guys out or were too available were the ones who got dumped.”
As a man I am guilty of conforming to this rule, I find it disturbing for a lady to state point blank that she is into me.
One wise man who was not ready to be famous once said that men are thrilled by the chase but for how long?
I randomly asked men how thrilling they find the chase and 3 out of 5 enjoy chasing after women while 2 out of 5 find this tiring. They prefer ladies who speak what they want and do not beat around the bush.
Is it about time the “Rules” changed? Should the dating tables turn?
If you’re a die-hard evolutionary type, you’ll say that men will hunt, women will be hunted, and such will always be the case because it’s just hard-wired into our hunter-gatherer DNA.
Research suggests that it isn’t simply gender (or sex) per se that influences who does the asking, but psychological factors handed down through generations of socialization, and teaching both genders that sexy women defer to a man, allowing him to be in control.
Would giving women a greater sense of control give them greater power in initiating dating relationships?
In 2011, the University of Waterloo’s Jennifer MacGregor and Columbia University’s Justin Cavallo investigated whether they could break “the rules” by manipulating the sense of control a woman felt when initiating a relationship.
They noted that social expectations discouraged women from directly pursuing potential partners and “encouraged [women] to resort to passivity or indirect strategies to shape their relationship outcomes” (p. 851).
Many women developed a kind of learned helplessness or feeling of futility about changing the status quo which, in turn, perpetuated conformity to societal expectations.
Using a sample of 92 single undergraduates (50 women, 42 men), MacGregor and Cavallo first established that there was a positive relationship between feelings of control over relationship initiation and the amount of effort a woman would put into initiating romantic relationships.
Correlation does not equal causation, as every psychology student knows. It’s possible that initiators just tend to feel more in control about their lives in general, and this is reflected in their relationships and other aspects of their lives.
Phase two of the study involved a new sample of 98 single undergraduates (56 women, 42 men).
The researchers manipulated the feeling of personal control by asking participants to recall a time in their lives when they either had control or did not.
The event was supposed to be positive in nature, such as studying hard and doing well on an exam (high control) or lucking out by winning a $5 lottery ticket (low control).
Phase three involved presenting participants with pre-set scenarios and asking if they’d ever been involved in such situations.
High personal control scenarios included getting stuck in traffic because you went the wrong way (it was your fault); in the low personal control condition, getting stuck in traffic was due to construction (it wasn’t your fault).
What I can say is,there’s barely time for play, whoever feels attracted to the other first should make the move.