Are Women More Likely Than Men to Require Chemistry to Go On A Second Date?
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You’re spot on when you recognize that first-date sparks don’t portend a future relationship. But when you say that women are more likely to cut off someone who doesn’t make them tingle, I have to challenge you. If you’re going to compare and contrast our genders, men are, by far, the more visual and chemistry-driven sex. Which means that they are more likely to conclude within five seconds of meeting a woman that there is not going to be a second date.
In general, women are more forgiving of men, as long as they are kind, respectful, and potentially good providers. In general, men are more likely to be forgiving of women of pretty much anything as long as they are young, thin and pretty. Hey, I don’t write these things, I just report them.
To me, the most interesting aspect of this is not that men, are, in fact, shallower than women. That doesn’t really qualify as news. But your point, Roger, that first date sparks don’t mean anything more than first date sparks? Well, I’m betting that’s a revelation to a number of our readers
I confess candidly that I would probably not have gotten to know my wife if we had gone on a conventional date instead of meeting at a party. Nor would I have gotten to know a previous girlfriend in 2004 if we’d met on JDate. Doesn’t mean they weren’t attractive or interesting. All it means is that we all make snap judgments on dates and inadvertently cut off people who have true potential. As anyone who’s ever met through friends knows, sometimes HOW you meet is as much a determining factor as chemistry in terms of moving forward.
Alison Armstrong does a great piece about the value of chemistry. She says that while we spend our lives looking for that intense one-of-a-kind chemistry with a partner, it’s actually BAD for your relationship. She goes on to explain that we are simply not at our best when we’re crazy about someone. We become insecure and weak and needy and yes, somewhat crazy, in the presence of chemistry. …
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17 Comments »Filed Under Dating, Favorites
JimmyE 1
Some thoughts-
1) men are more visual and are therefore more likely to rule women out BEFORE the first date.
2) Men are expected to pursue women. Consequently there’s not much time to analyse the first few dates. If we’re having a good time, we start planning the next call and plans for the second date.
3) If a man likes a woman and finds her attractive, he’s probably going to hang about till he gets to have sex. After that, he might start to ask himself if the relationship has long term potential.
4) Women have more options in the early stages of dating, and are therefore more likely to exercise them.
5) ‘No Sparks’ is often a euphemism for more concrete factors which people are too polite to admit to (even to themselves)
feelingflirty 2
You have some wacky comments but I like it!
redheadfromtdot 3
I think that Jimmy nails it.
Furthermore:
“No chemistry” is a way of saying “lack of physical attraction”. People seem to take offense to the latter because they hear “not attracted to you” as “you’re not attractive”.
Attraction is a funny thing. It’s there or it’s not. One person can feel it while the other doesn’t. It’s hard to control.
Many of us have been physically attracted to people we didn’t like and wished we were attracted to people we did.
I’ve learned that if I’m not attracted to a guy I can’t date him even if compatibility is strong. It’s not right nor fair to either one of us, and attraction is necessary for sex. If I’m dating a guy that I have fun with, and get along well with and find compatible but I don’t want to be physical with him, I tend to date him until I convince myself to let this one go. I often hope that the attraction will suddenly appear or reappear but it rarely works that way and even then it’s not really “sudden”, but the sudden revelation of something gradual.
I’m friends with some guys that I’ve dated. If the chemistry’s not there and it feels platonic, there’s little difference between “dating” and “hanging out”.
I’ve decided that sometimes “sparks” (“stars”?) are the reaction to something new, masquerading as feelings of attraction, and then in time the feeling peels away.
And yes, how you meet is an important part of the formula.
I hope I’m making sense in my sleepy state. Forgive the rambling.
Roger 4
Thank you Evan and everyone else for your insights. I continue to learn new things every day!
Sahaja 5
I think redhead hit the nail on the head – There is a decided difference between good looking and attractive. There are extremely in shape men that have great bodies, but we don’t find them attractive. In contrast, there are men that not models by any means that women flock around. Women pay attention to the details – very true. And when we have a gut feeling,its usually on point. So if she doent want to meet up, call it a good thing – if it was going to happen, it would have. This is time you saved, and now you can be meeting someone else – that you can connect with.
sheetal 6
well, i had a guy who wanted to marry me since the last 5 years, n to be honest i only kept him as an option for so long coz our compatibility was great, almost 9 out of 10. i kept in touch with him simply bcoz i thot maybe one day i mite fall in love with him and i can marry him…but till today i just cant seem to do it…coz the only thing that has stopped me so far is lack of chemistry…i just find him much more unattractive now than it was 5 yrs back.to the point that now i have begun to hate him…but still i know if i marry him our marriage cud turn out to be long lasting in every way…but heck i just don want to…dats the last thing i wud do on earth…i wud rather go for a guy with chemistry 5 out of 10 and compatibility 5 out of 10, as they see in vedic astrology, the overall compatibility includes chemistry as well..chemistry is just one of the many ingredients of compatibility….
Michael17 7
Evan, I usually like your blog. But I was disappointed with a big part of your response. You made an observation that doesn’t jibe with my experiences.
It is definitely not my observation that women are more forgiving–as in likely to go on a second date with a guy, as long as he is “kind and a good provider”. I can’t tell you how many “good” dates I’ve gone on, and my friends have gone on too, that have not led to second dates–due to the woman’s choice. My experience is actually that *men* have the more realistic expectations of a first date–we get that first dates are awkward situations, and so we’re usually willing to see her again as long as she is reasonably attractive and we had a good time with her. It actually seems that many women have the bar set much higher–some sort of magic has to happen on the first or a second date is a no go. This chemistry for women does have only little to do with looks, but it is just as shallow in that it doesn’t really have anything more to do with how happy the woman would be with the guy in the long term–past the first few dates.
And that’s too bad for both parties. There probably are a lot of single women who would have been in a happy relationship with a great guy if they had only said yes to a second date. (And in all fairness, you point this out in your blog, and I agree with you there.) I’m definitely not advocating “settling”, but there is a big difference between settling and giving something a chance.
Michael17 8
So I agree with “Roger”, the person who wrote the question, at least when it comes to online dating, and I don’t think that your challenge of him was valid. Yes, men are likely to decide withing a minute from seeing her pictures whether they could be into her. But women are likely to disqualify a guy as quickly, from reading his email. Or even from her first 30 seconds in his presence.
Either way, it’s just as shallow. More “looks” for men, more “energy” for women. It happens on the reptilian level for both genders.
I would say though, that we as men are better at getting past it. As visual as we are, most of us are mature enough to know that we really don’t need to be with a supermodel, and if you’re in front of us on a date, then that means that you are at least “pretty enough” for us to be with. A lot of women do seem to have expectations of “magic” happening between two strangers, and (we seem to agree on this) I’m not sure how well that serves anyone. Again, there is a huge difference between settling, and giving things a chance to happen.
Denise 9
Sounds like there’s some frustration in regard to dating, par for the course.
I’m thinking too this is primarily based on on-line dating, which is fraught with a lot of no-go first dates. Given the opportunities to date are higher on line, then wouldn’t the instances of rejection be higher too?
So I can be totally frustrated and irritated with the fact that men look at my well-written profile with all kinds of what I think are good pictures, and don’t write me. I assume they are dismissing me based on my pictures–they never gave me a chance. How is that any better than a woman who actually takes the time to go out with someone to see if there’s a connection?
It’s the nature of the beast with on line dating.
Now, as Evan points out, meeting people in real life is a much different process. It could be through friends, in a relaxed situation, over a period of time like at work, etc. When I meet a man in person for the first time when I’m out and about, and he shows he’s interested in me without being overbearing, that’s what amps up the attraction for me and make me much more likely to want to see him again. That is a HUGE difference from on line dating where none of that physical interaction is happening–we’re both just supposed to sit down and have attraction?
#3 Redhead
LOVE your third paragraph and I have done the same thing multiple times in on line dating, and my first intuition has won out each and every time.
Michael17 10
Good Response, Denise #9. The truth is that anyone has the right to decide whether or not to get involved with someone for whatever reason.
Dating definitely exposes what some might call “boundary holes”:
“But I’m a Nice Guy who has all these things going for me! She should be going for me instead of that unemployed loser who still lives with his parents.”
“She said she was going to call me back! She should be taking my phone calls and texts instead of just disappearing.”
“He shouldn’t not call me back after I slept with him. After all, he was the one pushing for it!”
If we have any luck, some of those boundary holes will get “patched up” with time. I have dated a lot this year (over 30 dates, not to mention that I made contact with many more women). I definitely learned and grew a lot from the experience, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t “suffer over the uncontrollable” anymore. I’m much better but I am by no means perfect.
Andrea 11
@Michael,
I don’t think that Evan’s response should be interpreted so much as an indictment of men. His advice here is pretty consistent with his other advice. When women write in with questions, he’s good about showing you how you are thinking about the situation only from your perspective, and you’re assuming that because you did A it must have caused or be the reason for B. Or they are assuming that their female point of view applies to the men in question. Only it doesn’t. And for Roger, he’s assuming that he knows the reason why he’s not getting date #2 but he’s applying his own assumptions about how things work, which isn’t going to work because he’s not a women.
I don’t necessarily think it’s helpful to try to argue who is more shallow, re men vs. women . We are all shallow about the things that we consider to be essential to us, but we visit this blog and others to figure out why some of those aren’t so important, why some of them will result in you failing in your search to find the one, and why you might want to relax some of those requirements because they don’t necessarily add up to a good, long-term relationship. Many people here have written about the things that they just won’t accept in terms of looks, background, education, etc., and it’s always interesting to see how someone has an argument for how their own prejudices and preferences are acceptable but another person’s are wrong (namely if you fall into the category that someone has completely rejected).
I think that the point though is that while men are screening out women based on visual attributes (so they are satisfied with that as long as they feel that the pictures that they see are current and represent the person that they meet), women will go on the first date with some men that might not fit their physical(or other) criteria completely to see if more can develop. And of course, Evan has said repeatedly that most of the people asking questions are women, so even without stats you could safely assume that more women are employing these strategies if they are getting coached or reading up on these subjects.
So the difference is that maybe you and Roger are assuming that you are an ideal for women physically (and in other ways related to background) because they’ve gone out with you, and that they are rejecting you because they didn’t feel a spark and fall in love with you on the first date. Correlation isn’t causation, and you need to consider how accepting a first date means something different for you than it may mean for the woman in question.
On a side note it’s not helpful for you to start assuming women are rejecting you for hot but unemployed losers, b/c the anger and resentment might start building and showing up in your profile or during your dates (some people will ramble on online and in person about how women are shallow gold-diggers and I’m not sure why they think that not only turns the gold-diggers away, but pretty much all women).
I think I’ve read in other articles here that a man will pretty much decide within a few minutes of meeting a date if he’d like to sleep with her. If he doesn’t, then he’ll finish the date(or maybe cut and run), and no matter how interesting and engaging she is, she’ll never hear from that man again. If he does find her hot enough, the rest of the date might make him dislike her as a person and not want to see her again, but the physical attraction is there or it isn’t. (And if she’s hot enough, he might still try for the sex).
I think that as many women learn to compromise, they learn (or have experienced in other ways) that they could in fact come to be attracted to a man that might not have struck their fancy on first meeting. I think many women have fallen in love with a man whose looks would not have appealed to her at all had she not gotten to know him. So you might be a bit shorter, balder, heavier, and less-educated than the women sitting across from you would like. However, she’s more likely to meet you anyway if something else about you seems interesting, because meeting you in person might win her over.
In my opinion, the easiest women to win over in this manner are women that you have regular access to-your co-workers, people who are in the same clubs and groups that you belong to, etc. I think many women are won over by men that they didn’t originally consider b/c they got to know him completely.
However, I do think that in the world of online dating, you aren’t going to get a lot of time to win over a women who don’t find you much more appealing in person…some people will give you one date, and others might give you 2 or 3. But do realize that you do at least have this chance, even if you think that you aren’t George Clooney, and people not following-up with you cut you early probably to work the numbers more and because they might have decided that they don’t have the time to invest in seeing if something else is there. Everyone’s timeline for this is different, and I guess that you are encountering women who think it’s better not to take a second date, but some do take several. I think YMMV as to whether or not you’d rather be cut loose after one date or several, because I think that if you are already attracted, that will only grow, and it will feel even worse to be cut after say 4-5 days as opposed to just 1, because if you’d taken her out multiple times, you are clearly very interested.
A man might not be expecting you to look like model, but if he doesn’t think you are good-looking he just won’t contact you in the first place, and if you aren’t good-looking enough in person, you won’t see him again. It can make it easier because a woman isn’t getting a first date if she isn’t deemed attractive enough, but you do, and this is the cost of that difference. I think that men and women just have different points at which we are cut, and different ways in which we can blow it, and then there is just the part that neither of us control and we have to accept that too.
Lis 12
There’s a biological fact here that has been missed…in general, men can enjoy sex with any partner. For most women, if there’s no attraction, the experience is at the best boring, and at the worst miserable. Whereas sex with someone a woman has chemistry with is mind-blowing. Do you really want to have sex with a woman for a night or a lifetime who isn’t enjoying you?
Don’t be so quick to indite women for saying no to someone they don’t feel a spark with on the first date. She did right by the man giving him a chance to see if an attraction developed by getting to know his personality, his mission, his values, and how he treats her when they’re out in the world. And she did right by him again by immediately excusing herself from dating someone she’s not going to develop an attraction to. I think it’s the sign of a mature dater and a woman who has self-esteem and values the man’s time, money, and feelings. It is equivalent to a man saying no to a first date with someone he is not visually attracted to. And it is the sign of a mature male dater to understand women’s dating process and value that she gave him a chance to know him as a man.
Karl R 13
Lis said: (#12)
“There’s a biological fact here that has been missed…in general, men can enjoy sex with any partner.”
If that was a “biological fact” then we wouldn’t have overlooked it. As a man, I don’t enjoy sex with just any partner. Based on comments from other men, I would say the ones who enjoy sex with every partner are the rare exceptions to the rule.
But since this is supposed to be a “biological fact”, perhaps you could provide a link to some scientific data to support your claim.
hespeler 14
I second what Karl R said. If it were in fact true that men can enjoy sex with any partner, then you would not have as many frustrated male online daters since there is an abundance of women to choose.
In fact, being a man and being visual (guilty as charged), when I come across a woman that I find physically attractive and she does not feel the same, I feel an intense form of rejection. Maybe I’m generalizing but I would say that most people put their best foot forward on the first date and appear nice enough to date a second time. Therefore, what do we really have to go on but looks/chemistry at the end of a first date. If men decide to go on first dates based primarlily on physcial attraction and women decide to give a guy a chance based on the totality of the circumstances then as long as a woman is close enough to her online pics, all she has to do is stay cool for an hour or two to get a second date.
I’m not trying to make this a man vs. woman thing because I actually believe that giving a guy a shot when the woman may not be sold on his pictures is very mature and open. However at the same time it also makes a guy feel like the rug has been pulled out from under him.
Giving him a chance to know him as a man sounds good and honorable on an esoteric level but on an emotional level, it feels more like a tease than anything else (to me at least so I admit that I may not be speaking for all men). I rather not know what I can’t have…
Queenofheart 15
Ok, now let me ask you. Who would you rather go for 10 chemistry and 7 compability or 7 chemistry and 10 compability? State if you female or male, please. Jenny
Aisling 16
@Lis # 12: Agree totally.
Also, to go a step further, I wish I had a dime for every guy who sent me a nastygram online when I politely rejected him. It boggles my mind. I would never do the same if the roles were reversed. This is a huge reason why I have abandoned online dating for the present.
Amaryllis 17
@queenofheart: 7 chemistry+ 10 compatibility always Because chemistry though fun to have is always fleeting However having more compatibility means a higher chance of having a long lasting relationship which I want. (Female)