Transcription
Hi, I'm Joe Navaro and welcome back to people watching. Today I'm answering how do you know when someone is into you and what if they are not into me? Here's just some things to to think about.
Number one is look at the frequency of eye contact. And I don't mean staring. I mean, where there's just a nice casual look, return to whatever it is they're doing, and then they look back again. So, the amount of times that they look at you. Now, gazing at you is different than staring at you. Staring can be very unnerving. So, you differentiate, but frequency of gazing at you is key.
The second one is notice if when you look back at them, if their face relaxes. There are many muscles of the face, the forehead, and when we see someone we like or we enjoy being near them, our face tends to relax those muscles.
The third clue is one of what I call vententral fronting. So, this is our our vententral side. Our dorsal side is back here. we tend to reveal more of our vententral side towards a person that we like or enjoy. So if we're sitting at a bar, we may suddenly turn towards that person. So we expose most of our vententral side. And that can also include um this side of of the arm where we're talking to someone and if we like them, we might turn uh this uh towards them.
You may see some more self-touching more than usual. One of the interesting things about this and people often say, well, you know, she was playing with her hair. Is that a sign that she's into me? The interesting thing is is that the movement of the hand towards the hair or the preining behaviors that we may see from a young man let's say fixing his shirt or his collar. It is the movement because of the brain's orientation reflex that actually garers the attention. So when we fear when we don't like we hold very still. when we when we see a lot of movement, maybe hair fixing, preining uh behaviors, it is in fact because we want to be uh noticed.
Um, the other thing you probably haven't noticed u but is up there on my list is how often we will orient our feet towards those that we like. We may start out a conversation where somebody's beside us and our feet are facing forward or maybe even away, but as we grow more and more comfortable with them, our feet will eventually turn towards them. This is a big clue that there is a lot of psychological comfort and thus there is more and more um harmony.
Obviously, proximity has a lot to do with who we like and are they into us and so forth. So, if if you find that you're looking at someone that may be interested in you and they're in a group, you may see behaviors where they're trying to move closer to you or align themselves so that they are more in your area of vision. So attempts to move closer, draw closer, or be within that visual range is also a huge indicator.
At some point, gazing uh just isn't enough. And so one of the clues that I look for is when it goes from an occasional look to, you know, literally uh and I've heard both men and women say this, I, you know, I couldn't take my eyes off of him or I couldn't take my eyes off of her. And obviously at that point, that's a huge clue. But again, they're not looking at you with a fixed stare like a predator would. They're gazing on you. But that gaze is fixed.
When people get along, when people are into each other, you'll see more mirroring. So oftent times at a party, you'll see somebody's gesturing and then the person they're interested in will also begin to gesture and so forth. So mirroring is also an important part of establishing if somebody likes you.
This isn't the full list. Uh, no one in fact has the full list, but it can certainly help you to look for these clues and say, you know what? Uh, that wasn't an accidental look. Maybe there's more to this.
Talk about a subject that's very sensitive, but I get a lot of questions about what if they are not into me? How do they know? how to know if they are not into you. I've studied this uh o over the years only because so many people have asked about it. So here are some of the things that I've observed over time. It's not the list isn't complete obviously, but these are the things that that stand out.
You know they're not into you when they refuse to turn their vententral side. When the person, let's say you're sitting at a bar talking to somebody and they refuse to turn their belly side, their vententral sides towards you, that's one of the first signs that says they're not into you.
The second one that I look for is they never touch you. they avoid touching you or even amongst intimate couples where you accidentally brush up against somebody and they have this jerky reaction where they move away. So lack of touching and touching that is almost reactive that is away from you when they accidentally get touched is a big clue.
I often talk about the honesty of the feet. And when we're comfortable around others, our feet tend to reveal themselves more. We tend to, let's say, if we're both at the table, maybe accidentally touch our feet, orient our feet towards each other. When people don't like each other, their feet pull away, turn away, avoid each other. Very sensitive to how we feel, the feet are. So pay attention to the the feet. Anytime you feel the feet moving away or refuse to turn towards you, something's not right.
A lot of times with individuals where you're talking to them and you're talking about pleasant things, you're trying to engage them, but their whole time they're rubbing their neck, touching their neck, or covering their neck. Usually that is suggested that something isn't right. We tend to cover our necks, touch our necks when there's psychological discomfort.
The other one that I've noticed over the years is when we like the person next to us, we'll reveal, for instance, the inside of our wrists. I used to see this a lot when people smoked a lot and people would hold the cigarette like this and if they liked each other, you you would see more of the wrist. What I've noticed is that as you're talking to someone, let's say it's a woman, she's playing with her hair, but she's only facing the back of the wrist towards you and not the inside of the wrist, it suggests that something isn't right. Because when we're very comfortable around each other, we tend to reveal our vententral side.
The other thing I I look for, and I sit at the airport a lot watching this, is how quickly when someone is uncomfortable, they'll put their travel bag on their lap, their purse or their bag, and they refuse to move it. When we're comfortable, we put things down. When we're not, we move it there.
In a restaurant situation, a a clear sign that people are getting along is they tend to move the flowers and the salt shakers and things out of the way. When they're not into you, you will see this. They will literally move things in between you, the glass, the flowers, so that there is all this material that suddenly comes between you.
When we're not comfortable around other people, our blink rate actually slows down to the point when there's total distrust. We don't blink. We don't blink because inherently what we're trying to communicate is that we're not very comfortable, that we've got an eye on you, that we don't see you as trustworthy. So the blink rate goes down. When we're comfortable around others, our blink rate is normal. somewhere around 12 to 15 times a minute depending on atmospherics and we can look around comfortably. But when somebody has that that hard stare at you, chances are they're psychological uh discomfort.
And of course uh don't dismiss lack of a smile. What kind of smile are they giving you? a full genuine what is called a duchain smile where it's relaxed the eyes are engaged that's what you want to see if the smile is contrived if it's the muscles are tight yeah right that kind of thing that's indicative of psychological discomfort many times when we don't like other people we feel uncomfortable around them you'll see more lip compression They you'll see head nodding out of uh acknowledgement, but you'll see more lip compression, which is indicative of psychological discomfort. Or you'll see what's called a lip pull, which can be to the sides, but they're trying to get you to agree with something. Lip pulls indicative of psychological discomfort. But there's also when we pull the upper lip down, this is the filtrum. These are the filtral columns. You'll see people go like this. I don't know. When you see that psychological discomfort, they're not into you. If you're seeing if you're seeing those filtral columns um being pulled down, uh trust me on that one. They're they're not into you.
is when we're comfortable around people, we tend to expose more of our neck. When we see psychological discomfort, let's say we say something and the person with us all of a sudden goes from exposing the neck to becoming literally stiff necked. Psychologically, you've turned them off. It's a powerful sign that something isn't right.
The other one that I look for is if every time they talk to you, they talk to you from the side. They never turn towards you. So all the communication, let's say you're at a bar or at a dinner is like this and they never orient towards you. That that's always negative.
people who uh as they talk to you have to grab objects, hang on to objects, grab the edge of a table, that is all psychological discomfort. Obviously any kind of facial tension and you know I've written plenty of books whether it's the dictionary of body language or what everybody is saying all the behaviors associated with tension of the face the eyes the neck they're just not interested uh in you.
If the person takes zero interest in what you do, what you've studied, in your life, in your family, in any any of your endeavors, if they have zero interest, don't waste your time. Don't waste your time. They may be interested in you for other reasons, but when we look at uh long-term people that show no interest in you, uh psychologically, uh they are indifferent to you. They don't really care. They're really not into you.
So, this is not the total list, but it's certainly the list that I often go to the most. It's really simple. Are they likable? Are they engaging? Do they make you laugh? Um, and are you having a good time? And if you see any of these behaviors, and certainly if you see an aggregation of these behaviors, then they're really not into you.
So, I hope you liked it. If you really enjoyed it, subscribe. And I always look forward to getting your uh questions uh right here. So, thank you.