Making Your Move: The Science of Seduction

🎙️ Episode Overview
In this episode of The Mindfully Masculine Podcast, Charles and Dan dive into the art and science of making your move in dating, inspired by insights from The Man’s Guide to Women by John Gottman. They explore the subtle interplay of attraction, pheromones, first impressions, and how to nail the all-important first kiss.

🧠 Key Takeaways

• Pheromones & Attraction: Discover the role of pheromones and why smelling clean is more appealing than overloading on artificial scents.
• Confidence is Key: How to communicate interest without hesitation but with respect.
• The First Kiss: Practical tips on building anticipation and reading signals for that unforgettable moment.
• Preparation for Intimacy: Why oral hygiene and thoughtful grooming make a difference.
• Alcohol & Confidence: Understanding the role of “liquid courage” and alternatives for sober confidence.
• Communication in Action: The delicate balance of taking the lead while being receptive to your partner’s cues.

💡 Actionable Insights

• Keep your grooming simple: one subtle fragrance is enough to make an impression.
• Practice reading nonverbal signals to navigate consent confidently and respectfully.
• Treat the first kiss as a shared experience—take the lead, but allow space for mutual engagement.
• Avoid overanalyzing the relationship too early; let shared experiences naturally build the connection.

🖥️ Explore More
Visit MindfullyMasculine.com for the full episode, additional resources, and to explore other episodes where Charles and Dan break down the modern male experience.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to topics like pheromones, attraction, sensory perception, and relationship dynamics.
• 2:29 Personal hygiene and scents
• 3:23 Women's heightened sense of smell, estrogen, and hygiene tips
• 7:14 Significance of the first kiss
• 8:31 Alcohol's role in dating and confidence
• 10:48 Kissing as a balance of assertiveness and responsiveness
• 11:39 Don't (verbally) ask for a kiss
• 12:59 Reading nonverbal cues
• 14:20 Kissing techniques and incorporating touch
• 16:10 Key takeaways
• 18:27 Next episode: evaluating deeper connections

Transcript

Charles: 0:00

Welcome to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles Alright this week's episode. Dan and I will continue discussing the Man's Guide to Women written by the Gottmans, and topics covered this time include pheromones and attraction, differences in male and female sensory perception, the importance of the first kiss, navigating signals and consent, oral hygiene and preparation for intimacy, confidence and alcohol's role in dating. Techniques for kissing and building anticipation and communicating preferences in relationships. This is a short one. We recorded it the day after the presidential election, so I cut out quite a bit of the opinionating done mostly by me, just to focus more on the important content that we're trying to get across. But I'm sure a little bit of it will bleed through in this and future episodes if you want to know our opinions on politics, so look forward to that. Thanks very much. Check out mindfullymasculinecom and enjoy the episode.

Dan: 1:05

Good morning Charles.

Charles: 1:07

Hello there, dan, how are you? I am doing great, excellent. It's been a busy week and today's just Wednesday. Last night was election night and I was, I guess one of my biggest concerns was that it was going to go many days, weeks or months before we had an answer. And yeah, very I was surprised that didn't happen. That did not happen, yeah, by even a day that's crazy.

Charles: 1:33

It was decided 8 30. There were some people who were like I think we know how this is going, and certainly by 11, 30, 12 o'clock, it was like this is over, and so I may or may not share some additional thoughts in a future recording about how it went and what the implications are for the kinds of things we like to talk about relationships, masculinity, yeah, things like that. But anyway, let's talk about the next chapter in our book, the man's guide to women. Let's talk about the next chapter in our book, the Man's Guide to Women. Chapter number five is a whole new section called Romancing a Woman, and the first chapter of this is making your move how to make a move on a lady that you're interested in. We start the conversation off with a discussion about pheromones, and I feel like this is something that is interesting to know, but not necessarily something to strategize about.

Charles: 2:29

When it comes to how you smell and what your smell does to attract or not attract other women, I would say the main thing to shoot for is don't smell bad and don't smell overly artificial. Don't neglect keeping your body clean and smelling like soap, and don't also don't bathe in cheap aftershaves and body sprays that will overpower any of your natural scent that you might be giving off. Those would be my two rules of thumb Don't be stinky, and don't be stinky by either way. Don't be stinky by your own natural odors that you don't take care of to wash and disguise, but also don't be stinky by buying something in a bottle and cover yourself in it.

Dan: 3:23

Yeah, so something I learned from this chapter was that and I already knew this about myself, because I don't have a great sense of smell- or a great sense of taste? You sure don't, yeah, clearly.

Charles: 3:35

So the stuff you're willing to eat in interest of your diabetes and your physical health.

Dan: 3:40

I thought you were going to talk about my decorating of the house, my tastes, right.

Charles: 3:44

Come on now your literal taste. I have no problem with how you furnish your house. You're able to just decide. Some stuff is good for you, so you just eat it, and I can't do that.

Dan: 3:54

No, I get that. But one of the things he mentions is that women have an enhanced sense of smell and what I think he said he linked that to their high levels of estrogen. That met. Even if you don't think you're stinky, you're like oh, I just went to the gym and I don't smell anything. Play it safe, take a shower. I remember I was back in college. I was listening to a personal development guy, a guru, about dating and things like that, and what he recommended was take a shower and wash yourself with soap three times before you go out on a date, because the woman will smell you. Yeah, and he goes, soap yourself up, wash off three times. I'll never forget that.

Charles: 4:39

I was just like that seems excessive, but that's tough, because I not recommend doing that with the cheapest soap you can buy. Yeah, I think that would end up drying out your skin Right. And the one distinction I do want to draw and I've heard this from multiple women too there is a difference between In a man who was sweaty recently and a man who was sweaty a while ago and then the sweat dried on you and then the bacteria started to feed off.

Charles: 5:07

That makes sense, yeah, so, if you were sweaty very recently, like when you just walk in the door from being in the gym or working outside, you're not going to smell as bad as if you just park it on the couch and watch a movie and try to cool down from the hot weather outside and then that sweat evaporates and just leaves the stinkiness stuff behind. Yeah, that's bad.

Dan: 5:29

Yeah, so I'm guessing the pheromones are coming out with the initial sweat and then now it's the bacteria and everything else and the sweat is gone, the water is gone and the romance is gone.

Charles: 5:40

Yeah, the stinky bacteria is what remains and the gases they give off from eating your dried sweat. That's yeah. That's the thing I would say. Yeah, yeah, recently sweaty is not nearly as bad as sweaty a while ago. Yeah, but it does. Yeah, it does make sense. And I would say again, dousing yourself with a body spray or a deodorant or a cologne, that's another way to prevent the natural pheromones from from coming through. And women do use those pheromones to evaluate somebody. That would be a good match for them. And I, like the example he gave of a girl could think that her brother is super stinky, where the girlfriend of their brother might love the way he smells, and it's because that's a disincentive for brothers and sisters to make babies together to say, okay, we're genetically similar, so I'm not going to like the way he smells. Yeah, and most girls I know who have brothers, especially younger brothers, they always complain about how stinky they are yeah, yeah.

Charles: 6:44

Yep, and it's interesting to know that that's where it comes from. Yeah, okay, um, instruction set of how to handle that first kiss, like some actual techniques and stuff that I don't really want to get into because it did go on a little long for me and I I don't want to just sit here talking about how boys should kiss girls for an hour I do, so let's get into it.

Dan: 7:14

No, what was interesting, I thought, with the first kiss is he did preface this with how much of an important memory this is for the woman more so than losing their. This was crazy.

Charles: 7:27

Yes.

Dan: 7:28

The stat. More than losing her virginity, it was more than a lot of other memories, he said, even years down the road.

Dan: 7:35

he said women can remember, like the, with 90% accuracy everything that you have yeah, the time place, the smells, the yeah, all that and thinking back with my first kisses I I don't remember quite as clearly, I couldn't say 90, but it did have a pretty significant impact on my emotions at the time and so that helped seed that memory in my brain a little bit more than other times, like I know exactly with my current girlfriend exactly where it happened, when it happened, how she looked, how it happened yeah same and might have been.

Dan: 8:11

Might part of that might have been, because there were other. It didn't happen until like the third date, and so there were some opportunities and of is this the right moment? And so those for those first three dates most of them it was is this going to happen? Is it not going to happen. So there was a lot of buildup, too, before we actually did have my first kiss.

Charles: 8:31

Yeah, and I think at the time you were, you were either going light or off your drinking too, or were you not? You're either drinking lighter or you were not drinking at the time I think I was not drinking at the time actually, because that was that has been.

Charles: 8:48

I'm almost at three years now of no alcohol and that was something that I did with my dating. I had relearned some of those. The first step he recommends here is oral hygiene. If you just got done eating some stinky food, then that might not be the time to go for a kiss. And one thing I thought of was how you always have those Listerine strips. I like the little Listerine pump. It's great to have those with you.

Charles: 9:13

So, when you're out with your existing girlfriend or girl that you might want to date. Have that available so that you can at least do a little something to offset the food and even if you don't stink.

Dan: 9:25

Which? A lot of times is I've said oh, my breath stinks, whatever.

Charles: 9:28

And girls like no, it doesn't just for your own self-confidence, just cover your bases, yeah and so that, yeah, that brings us to the next thing that I brought this up to say was be confident. Yeah, that being confident, like I, I always went out of my way to not get, even, I would say, buzzed on dates. I would have maybe two drinks and then I would stop drinking, switch to club soda or whatever, but even just having one drink in me did make going for a kiss easier than having zero drinks in me. So that was something that I did have to relearn, some of these things when I gave up alcohol and was going on dates for sure, yeah, called liquid courage, for a reason exactly.

Charles: 10:12

Yeah, it does feel a little. You're a little bit more in your head when you don't have right the alcohol in you, and so it's a little bit of, which is good in some ways, because it's easier to know that you're picking up signals that she wants you to kiss her, but it's also easier to tell yourself that you're picking up signals that she doesn't, when in fact maybe she does, and so I think not drinking is a better way for me, and so I'm going to stick with that. And, um, I'm with my girlfriend now. So this is does she want me to kiss her? Does she not want me to kiss her as less of a factor Cause my girlfriend always wants me to kiss her.

Dan: 10:48

So, right, and one of the one of the tips that is, I think, helpful is he equates kissing to a dance. And so you, in a way, so you take the lead a little bit, but unlike dancing, you let her lead a little bit as well. Right, and it's a give and take and it's not just a you imposing whatever you want and then getting more and more excited and getting more and more aggressive, which can push somebody off a little bit. So remember to take a breath, give some space, right? Just same thing with communication, with relationships, with anything, is don't don't take up all the space. Let there be a little bit of a vacuum, a little bit of a vacuum there and an opportunity to let the other person express themselves and want and feel that wanting, right, so tease a little bit.

Charles: 11:39

What's? What's your take on asking for a kiss?

Dan: 11:44

No, you do not ask for it. I agree, oh no.

Charles: 11:48

I've done it before and I can tell it didn't. It did not have the reaction. That was mostly somebody that I went out with after my divorce, which is seven years ago Now. I did it just cause I was feeling uncertain and she said yes to the question, but I could tell that she would have been happier if I didn't ask. So, here's the thing. So if things are going well enough, you can recover from asking for a kiss. But if things are borderline and you ask for a kiss, then it could sink your chances.

Dan: 12:20

Simply said. You can still ask for a kiss without using your words.

Charles: 12:24

Exactly, and I think that's the after he says read the signals, which obviously you should go slow and that's what we've talked about before. When you're going in for the first kiss, instead of asking for it, just move confidently, but slowly enough that, if she needs to turn, give you the cheek or running the other direction screaming. She has time to do that. So if you move in slowly, if she wants it, it's going to build anticipation. If she doesn't want it, it's going to give her the opportunity to throw you the cheek or put up a hand or whatever If she doesn't move, then you keep moving forward.

Dan: 12:59

Look at her lips and look at her eyes and you won't be guessing. It won't be one of those where, oh, I better ask because I'm not sure. If you're not sure she doesn't want it. I really believe that. And if she does kiss you, it might be out of a sense of obligation or guilt, because you asked. Sometimes people ask you to do something you don't really want to do it, but you're like, oh, this person really wants it. I feel bad, kind of thing. That's the last thing you want is somebody to like feel bad.

Dan: 13:27

Give you a pity kiss yes, agreed.

Charles: 13:28

I would say if you start moving into the kiss and she doesn't move away, she doesn't stop you. That means she's open to being kissed by you, right and how yeah good of a job you do kissing her.

Dan: 13:41

They change how good she feels about you kissing her you also gotta remember is women are so much better at picking up body language than we are, right, so you know so. So you don't need to worry about her misinterpreting what you're doing, like she's gonna figure out. You're going in for the kiss. You don't need to get her to sign on a dotted line that she understands you are coming in for a kiss at this point. So, even if you think you're doing it in a slick, sly way, she's seen this. She's seen the writing on the wall. Well before you even thought about taking action, I think.

Charles: 14:20

Yeah, the only. Then he goes into more of the detail on how to build anticipation, how to actually do the kiss, how to touch her. And again, read the book. It's great. I don't want to go into all the detail, but he does say what you don't want to do is just leave your arms limply at your sides while you're kissing her, that you got to touch her in some way.

Dan: 14:40

Don't ever leave your arms limply at their sides, no matter what you're doing.

Charles: 14:44

That's good advice. That's good advice. Yeah, uh, yeah, even if you're standing, give me the speech. Yeah, you, you want to.

Charles: 14:51

There's a great episode of 30 rock where liz tina fey's character has alec baldwin participate in a sketch on their sketch comedy show and oh, it'll be fun. You'll be like the executive that we're like fighting against or whatever. He's, okay, I'll do it. And then he was like trying to figure out what to do and he couldn't figure out what to do with his hand, so eventually he's holding two mugs. That's my favorite long-running sitcom of all time. I like it better than friends, better than seinfeld, better than anything. It's my favorite long sitcom.

Charles: 15:18

Okay, the fair, the uh summary at the end is understand pheromones, but also understand that you do not have control over your pheromone situation. You do have control over your non-pheromone smells, which, again, I'm a big fan of. Keep yourself clean at all times. Go less is more. With fragrances I always talk about, I like to limit myself to one fragrance at a time. So if I'm wearing a deodorant that has a scent, I'm probably not going to wear an aftershave that has a scent. If I'm wearing a cologne, I'm not going to have a hair treatment that is very smelly. I like to just limit myself to one fragrance and stop there. But the most important thing is smell like a person who's clean and takes care of their body, and then the specifics can be up for grabs.

Charles: 16:10

Bad first kiss is a relationship killer. She's going to remember that first kiss Kissing releases a flood of feel-good hormones, which those can also have some impacts on future decisions that you and her make about whether you stay together, whether you keep dating, things like that. We'll talk about that more in the next episode. And you can learn to be a good kisser. It's just a matter of reading some books and studying on it. Watch some YouTube videos. Just don't assume that even if your last girlfriend loved the way you kiss and talked about it all the time, you may have had some things that worked for her that may not work for the next person. So be aware of the different techniques that are out there and what some girls appreciate and some don't. And just yeah, add that to your toolbox and you'll be better. And the big thing is just always look for those nonverbal reactions. Asking a girl after first kiss how was that? What did you like? What did you not like? I probably would not do that.

Dan: 17:06

Yeah, in any situation. Yeah, in any situation, yeah, yeah.

Charles: 17:09

Minimize the talking about the relationship, especially at the beginning, and just live in the relationship. Look for the signals, verbal and nonverbal, but don't don't grill people on what did you like, what did you not like.

Dan: 17:24

Stuff like that, that's a intimacy and excitement killer yeah, and because you're asking them to be vulnerable at that point too, and they might not be willing, because, asking those details, you are revealing a lot of things and information that you might not be willing or she might not be willing to share at that point. And so you're literally saying, hey, please be vulnerable with me, and you're almost pulling things out of them or asking for that, and, yeah, it's an awkward. It's an awkward ask.

Charles: 17:58

And I think there is a time to to have that conversation, though. There is a time to say hey, I really love how things have been going, I'm having a lot of fun with you. I'm feeling great. I really love how things have been going, I'm having a lot of fun with you, I'm feeling great. If, if there's anything that you're into or you would enjoy me changing up, I'd love to hear about it. Yeah, and I think there's good times to have that conversation and there's times that's too early to have that conversation.

Dan: 18:21

You're asking her. All you're doing is communicating that you're open to information.

Charles: 18:27

You're not asking for it Instead, communicating that you're open to information and you're not asking for it. Instead of hey, I'm a chameleon that will change into whatever you need me to change into when, if you bring up that kind of conversation too early in the process, it could be basically, I don't care about what I like or what I'm into. You just tell me what you're into so I can be that thing. You don't want to give that impression, okay, so let's stop there for this episode and the next one we're going to. This is going to. This chapter is called is she more than a hookup reading a woman's true profile? So we'll talk about this. The chemicals start going crazy. It's very easy to get overexcited and make some not great decisions for your long-term health and happiness. So we're going to. We're going to talk a little bit about what to look for and look out for in deciding where you want things to go with a lady.

Dan: 19:23

And what that has in common with a baby's head.

Charles: 19:26

Yes, I love that. That was great, all right, thanks very much, dan. I will talk to you again soon.

Dan: 19:32

See you soon.

Charles: 19:33

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the entire episode, Dan, and I know that you have a lot of choices when it comes to men with microphones sharing opinions, and we're glad that you picked us. Please check out our website mindfullymasculinecom for audio episodes, video episodes.