Courtship – Rejection Signals – 3

There is a posture that both men and women use, the "pointer", that is, the direction toward which the body, or part of it, is directed. We have the tendency to turn our attention toward things or people that interest us but often it’s not possible to do so in an explicit way.

If there are, for instance, two men and a woman and one of the two men is speaking, it’s considered polite to listen to him directing our body toward him. If, however, the second man is attracted by the woman, he will try to make this interest know to the woman but he can’t do this in a clear way, that is, adverting his attention from the person that is speaking so as not to appear as a rude person.

To do this, he cannot turn completely toward the woman, so he will turn only part of his body in her direction, for example the legs, the upper part of his body or just a foot. Nonverbal language researches have verified that the direction of our body is often more significant than that of our eyes.

We can also fake our attention to someone by looking at him, but unconsciously our body or a part of it will be turned in the direction of the woman or the man from which we are attracted.

This posture is produced by individuals both when they are standing and when they are seated. In this second eventuality, we usually need to observe the direction of the crossed leg and where the foot of that leg points to.

Observing the "aim" of the body or of a limb of a person, is therefore possible to understand from who she or he is attracted and to make a picture of the situation accordingly: if someone talk to us but his bust or the lower part of his body is turned toward someone else, he probably don’t find us so interesting.