Reading The Subtext
Author: Onur Sarikas

I like to tell new guys I work with to imagine all men and
women have two separate brains competing for your attention. One
mind is logical and the other is emotional. If I had to guess,
I'd say on average women have a 35/65 split and men the
opposite. The behavior of humans is largely driven by a blend of
logic and emotion. Since emotions play more heavily with women
you can influence their behavior through, you guessed it,
appealing to their emotional mind. The way you do this is
through subtext. Subtext is an emotional undercurrent to our
physical and spoken communications. Because women are generally
more in tune with their emotions, by extension they pick up on
subtext much more than men. Body language, tonality and
inflection, and also the context of the messages we convey all
have subtext whether we know it or not.

Understanding the subtext and recognizing the emotions you
instill in a woman is a critical aspect of male-female
communications. A typical example of this that a woman doesn't
even have to like a man in order to sleep with him. In fact she
could logically despise him, but that doesn't mean a thing if he
conveys good subtext and creates the proper emotions within the
woman that generates attraction. To outsiders this often creates
cognitive dissonance because at the surface it doesn't make
logical sense. She didn't like him, in fact she's repulsed by
him, but yet she's sleeping with him anyway. Most people will
think she's messed up in the head, but once you consider the
impact of emotions and subtext in the genders it all starts to
become clear.

A real world example is a woman I once dated. I called her high
maintenance while playing cards at a friend's house. That
situation is exactly what I'm talking about. To her friends at
the table me calling her "high maintenance" sounded like an
insult. Heck, even to her logical mind it may have seemed like
one. But to her emotional mind it spiked an emotion, conveyed
some good subtext, and she felt attraction towards me. It's hard
to articulate all of the subtext in the situation because the
context had several layers to it, but the common association in
the community is what most would call cocky/funny, per David
DeAngelo. While I agree with that to a point, that's not all it
boils down to.

On the flip side, women constantly try to use subtext with men
and we often miss their cues. A classic example is the woman at
a party or lounge who is trying to get a guy come talk to her.
She purposely gives off IOIs and in her mind she feels like
she's being so obvious that the other women in the room will
think she's a slut. To the guy in question he usually ends up
thinking "Does that mean she likes me? Should I go over and talk
to her?" or something along those lines. If the guy doesn't read
the signs properly then the woman can feel rejected. This
actually happens pretty often and isn't exclusive to the singles
scene and younger generations. Again, understanding subtext is
important not only for single guys, but for married men as well.
Reading and writing subtext, so to speak, is a huge part of
communicating with women. Sadly most men are oblivious to it. On
the other hand, here's a case I think most guys do recognize:

Man: "What's wrong?"
Woman: "Nothing."

That's a lot of subtext for just one word. So much so that most
men can actually pick up on it.

Another example most of us have dealt with at one point or
another:

Man: "How are you feeling?"
Woman: "Fine."

She's basically saying the same thing as above through
identical subtext. This is why it's so important to stop keying
in on the logical aspects of what a woman says and try and
relate to her emotional state when she speaks. That simple
insight can save you a lot of frustration.


About The Author: Author is co-founder of
http://GirlsAskGuys.com, a Q&A website where men and women can
ask, answer questions and learn anything and everything about
men and women. GirlsAskGuys offers hundreds of articles about
Relationships. Article originally published at
http://www.GirlsAskGuys.com