Two Ephiphanies
In which two socio-sexual observations are shared
ITEM 1: I was driving through town last night when I drove past what I mentally registered as “a couple: young woman and her boyfriend”. I didn’t see their faces, merely saw them walking along the sidewalk together, and my first thought was: “why did I register them that way?”
NB: yes, this is how a UHIQ mind works sometimes, operating simultaneously on multiple channels, with some channels performing instant meta-analyses of the other more outward-focused channels.
Were they talking? No. Holding hands? No. They weren’t the only male-female couple on the sidewalk, so what made me catalog them as “young woman with boyfriend”? Then it struck me. What made them stand out from all the other people on both sides of the street was the very lackadaisical manner in which they were walking.
The girl was walking slowly, taking short, but wide-legged steps and swinging her arms. The young man walking similarly slowly, with his hands in his jacket pockets, and he was rotating his torso side-to-side in near-harmony with her swinging arms.
What this told me was that, unlike everyone else, neither of them particularly wanted to get to their destination. For them, the journey was the destination, the primary purpose of their walk was to spend time with each other, not to get anywhere. And it occurred to me then, perhaps this is a useful metric for determining whether a woman is attracted to you or not.
If my read on the slow-walking is correct, then the slower a woman walks, the more she swings her arms, and the broader the angle of her steps, the more she is probably interested in the man with whom she is walking. I don’t think this is a conscious behavior; perhaps the female readers here could share their thoughts on the observation and interpretation.
ITEM 2: The false communication of Gammas and women.
Avalanche, who is a longtime and much-valued reader whose communication style I nevertheless find to be maddening despite her efforts to rein in all the punctuation and the parentheticals, posted a comment here that proved enlightening.
I wonder if Vance -- who SEEMS to be "such a nice guy" -- is TOO nice to go for the throat. Trying to explain, to "help Zel understand" and come be rational in the discussion, seems rather Delta, or at least not Bravo? If he could get Zel to stop emoting, and come to the calm negotiating side, then he could achieve his task of getting the Alpha's agreement signed? Trump had to break in and reach for Zel's throat...
Sometimes Vance seems pretty strong, in e.g., politely-but-firmly chastising the Euros about censoring and immigration and locking up their OWN people over migrants, but was he trying to mediate or moderate by pulling Zel back into honor? adulthood? non-Gamma-hood? as an insufficient way of protecting his alpha from the waste of his time?
It may be my misunderstanding of a Bravo's way of backing up his alpha? Of managing others or interceding in their importuning to avoid the gamma annoying the alpha? Or is that not part of a Bravo's usual tasks?
What struck me about this was the realization that a certain amount of what passes for communication on the part of women and Gamma males is not actually communicative, but performative. Others have noticed elements of this before, especially when women are recounting their day, their eyes glaze over, and they cease to pay any attention to the person at whom they are talking. But I don’t think they have consciously grasped that this is just one form of what can be described as performative communication.
Now, everyone does this from time to time. Retelling the same story to people who have already heard it several times before is something of which I am as guilty as anyone else. I’ve seldom been as in awe of the depth of anyone’s obvious love for another person as when during a college visit to my grandparents’ house, I asked grandfather how he could not only stand it, but actually sit through it while smiling and nodding appreciatively when my grandmother told the two of us a story that I had already heard several times, and which I am certain he had heard scores, if not dozens of times.
He just shrugged and said, “She enjoys telling it. I just like to see her enjoying herself.”
He was certainly a better man than I am.
Anyhow, another form of performative communication is inventing spurious alternatives and asking unnecessary questions that have already been answered. This is the sort of thing we often see online, as well as the Gamma’s solo dialogue in which he asks himself questions, answers them, and in some particularly sad cases, cracks himself up with his own witty repertoir.
False communication red flags:
I wonder…
Could it be…
Just for clarification…
Honest question…
Do you think that maybe…
Is it possible…
My father is dying. He went to his GP this week after just being discharged home from the surgeons and the change between visits -- he had a checkup late last year -- shocked his doctor. He is retelling the stories I have heard from my childhood, and my wife has heard multiple times.
But these are now precious, for these are the last times we will hear them in this life.
Item 1: They weren’t yet a couple, they were flirting. The slowness signals that the woman is interested, his matching his pace with hers signals that he is interested, but couples that are together already don’t flirt like this, unless it’s a very new relationship.