Why Men Marry Some Women and Not Others: How to Increase Your Marriage Potential by up to 60%. John Molloy T.

choose a look that is not only attractive but also appropriate.

       Dressing to Be a Wife, Not a One-Night Stand

      As I explained earlier, when we finish with a self-contained element of research, we run our findings by the researchers to get their feedback. Most of our researchers were women, and they were convinced that while men claimed to be attracted to women who were not sending strong sexual signals, their collective experience had taught them the opposite was true. We then ran a focus group of women who were about to be married, and they more or less agreed with our female researchers.

      We had to conduct two focus groups with men who were about to be married to convince these women that men are interested in the personal traits of women when they first meet. Our researchers did not want to believe the results from the first group, so we convened a second. The men in both groups agreed with the women that a sexy outfit will attract hordes of men, but they went on to explain—using crude language and bawdy humor—that they saw a sexy outfit as an invitation to have sex. What is more, a woman who dressed sexy but did not deliver was a tease, and they did not want to be involved with her.

      A majority of the men who were about to marry put a woman on first meeting into one of two categories: those they bedded and those they wedded—this despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of their fiancées were not virgins when they met. While two women researchers held out for the politically correct point of view, most admitted that the double standard was alive and well in the (small) minds of most men.

      What make this information so useful is that men usually make life-changing decisions that critically affect the nature of their relationships within ten minutes of meeting a woman. They decide whether this is the kind of woman with whom they might have a serious relationship before they really know her. Nearly half the men who had asked women to marry them told us they knew their bride-to-be was special as soon as they met her. Of the 50 percent remaining, almost half said they knew there was a possibility that the relationship could become serious before the second date. Of the remaining 27 percent, almost one-third could not remember at what point they had decided the woman they were about to marry was special. Yet even 73 percent of this group admitted that the first impression she made probably did sway their thinking. Even those who believed it took them a long time to make up their minds whether this was the woman for them admitted that their fiancée had not changed much since they first met. What this all means is that first impressions are both critical and long lasting.