The real reason some guys think all girls fancy them

Some peacocking alphas suppose that every woman fancies them. Others, are woefully, pathetically (Englishly) unaware of any interest. Research has long shown that men misread signals.

However, a new study by Union College in New York reports that a man’s “attachment style” may affect his perception of a woman’s interest.

“Attachment style” is a characteristic that indicates how men behave in relationships. There are three types of attachment style: anxious, avoidant and secure.

ANXIOUS

• you enjoy closeness but worry your partner does not
• you expend a great deal of emotional energy on your relationships
• you are highly (even overly) attuned to changes in your partner’s mood
• you want love but fear rejection
• you take things very personally
• you need the reassurance of hearing from your partner regularly. Distance makes you anxious

AVOIDANT

• you prefer  independence to intimacy
• closeness makes you uneasy
• you are uncomfortable talking about personal issues, and your partner might say you’re distant
• you are wary of signs that your partner is becoming controlling
• you tend to keep everyone slightly at arm’s length

SECURE

• you take natural pleasure in closeness and intimacy
• you don’t intellectualise or worry about your relationships
• you are calm, open and intuitive of how your partner is feeling
• you share both successes and problems with your partner
• you are supportive of your partner when they are struggling – and this isn’t a big deal

The researchers in the States asked almost 500 men to imagine catching the eye of a woman in a nightclub. She smiles back. They were then asked to place, on a scale, how interested they think she is – from “not at all interested” to “extremely interested”.

The men were also asked to indicate whether they thought they tended towards attachment anxiety or attachment avoidance.

Men who displayed higher attachment anxiety are more likely to presume that the woman is interested in them. The is partly due to their hunger for intimacy: they project their own flirtatiousness onto the woman.

“If you view yourself as being flirtatious, that biases you to seeing others as behaving similarly,’ Joshua Hart, associate professor of psychology and the lead author of the study.

Those higher in attachment avoidance were less likely to assume interest on the woman’s part.

“Their lower interest in intimacy led them to be less interested in the fictional woman,” Hart concludes.”Thus seeing themselves as being less flirty, and in turn, imagining the woman as less sexually interested in them.’

In matters of the heart, it’s selective vision; we see what we want to see.