Stupid question for the guys here, but how long is optimal to counter-signal to a woman. i.e., how long do you pretend not to be interested in her, whether she is interested in you or not. Based on my non-trivial romantic experience, I have two theories.
1. Wait until she makes unusually-long eye contact with you. It should be pretty noticable, like ~5 seconds or longer, such that it would otherwise be unusual. Use Bayes theorem. THEN WAIT ANOTHER WEEK to stop countersignalling.
2. Three weeks. IDK it just seems to work that way.
3. You do not stop counter-signaling until you have been dating for several months. Just gradually decrease the amount of countersignaling by always signaling slightly less commitment to the relationship than your partner. You may be free to stop countersignaling.
I suspect that option 3 is the optimal strategy, but is taxing/emotionally draining. Any suggestions?
Follow up, it is not that hard to independently assess someone’s quality as a partner. You could assign someone a percentile at intelligence, kindness, attractiveness, emotional stability after a two weeks of knowing them. Like “this person is kinder than 40% of people but less kind than 50%”. So why rely do people rely so heavily on the weird countersignaling heuristic?
Stupid question for the guys here, but how long is optimal to counter-signal to a woman. i.e., how long do you pretend not to be interested in her, whether she is interested in you or not. Based on my non-trivial romantic experience, I have two theories.
1. Wait until she makes unusually-long eye contact with you. It should be pretty noticable, like ~5 seconds or longer, such that it would otherwise be unusual. Use Bayes theorem. THEN WAIT ANOTHER WEEK to stop countersignalling.
2. Three weeks. IDK it just seems to work that way.
3. You do not stop counter-signaling until you have been dating for several months. Just gradually decrease the amount of countersignaling by always signaling slightly less commitment to the relationship than your partner. You may be free to stop countersignaling.
I suspect that option 3 is the optimal strategy, but is taxing/emotionally draining. Any suggestions?
Follow up, it is not that hard to independently assess someone’s quality as a partner. You could assign someone a percentile at intelligence, kindness, attractiveness, emotional stability after a two weeks of knowing them. Like “this person is kinder than 40% of people but less kind than 50%”. So why rely do people rely so heavily on the weird countersignaling heuristic?