You’re getting ready to go out on a first date with a guy you met online.

What’s the single most important factor in determining whether you have chemistry?

1. How much you have in common
2. How well you flirt
3. How you look
4. How you smell

I’ll tell you the answer in just a minute, but first let’s look at the way most of us—men and women alike—get ready for a date.

If you want to make a great first impression, there’s one thing that’s absolutely crucial: cleanliness. Take a shower, wash your hair, brush your teeth. Get every trace of sweat and grunge off.

Then you want to pick the right outfit. Something that strikes just the right note.

Last but not least, top it all off with just the right scent. For men that’s cologne; for women, perfume, lotion, or powder.

You’re ready to go, confident you look and smell your best.

But what if that fail-proof routine actually sabotages your chemistry?

I know. It sounds CRAZY.

What could possibly be wrong about showing up to a date feeling clean, well-dressed, and smelling great?

The short answer is…

Pheromones.

I’m not talking about those dubious pheromone sprays that show up in spammy ads in your inbox.

I’m talking about YOUR pheromones.

The ones you have by virtue of being a member of the animal kingdom.

Pheromones are simply scent signals. They’re found in almost every kind of animal, from squid to bees.

You have your own unique “scent signature.” It’s how your dog recognizes you. Mothers can even recognize their babies by scent alone.

This signature scent is one of your most appealing attributes.

You’ve probably heard about the sweaty t-shirt studies. On several occasions, researchers have asked women to sniff sweaty t-shirts and report whether they found the smell pleasant or appalling.[1]

They found that women prefer the scent of men who are immunologically different from them.

Researchers speculate that this preference is built into our biology, helping us pick mates that have the best chance of producing genetically robust offspring.

So it’s not the case that there are certain pheromones that are universally attractive to the opposite sex. Rather, whether or not you find someone’s signature scent attractive is based on your own genetic makeup.

This idea caught fire in what’s known as pheromone parties.]

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A long time ago, I was standing in one of those lines.

You know the ones. Glaciers move faster. Might as well pitch a tent and break out the freeze-dried food, because you’re in it for the long haul.

I’d been staring at the head of the person in front of me for so long that every I was on a first name basis with every strand of her hair.

I was just wondering whether it was too late to switch lanes when I heard something. A song playing over the loudspeakers.

I had no idea who was singing it. I don’t usually listen to country music. But the lyrics caught my ear.

It was a song about a guy who is out with his girlfriend when they see another woman. The girlfriend can tell from the look in his eyes that the woman they just saw was his ex. Fear strikes her. Maybe her boyfriend still has feelings for this woman. Maybe their relationship isn’t as secure as she thought.

He sees that she’s reacting. He moves immediately to reassure her. And the way he does it is just perfect.

“Yes, there was a time / I thought she had it all / She meant the world to me / Back when the world was small.”[1]

I thought: Yes! That’s exactly right.

It’s hard to know what to say to someone who worries that you can’t love her (or him) with your entire heart because you’ve given that heart away before.

That worry doesn’t come out of nowhere. Have you ever been with someone who talked about an ex-girlfriend with an unmistakable glow in his eyes? He tells you he’s over her, but you know the truth.

These days, no matter who you date, he’s going to have a relationship history. He’s going to have one first love he never got over, or an ex who keeps popping up in his life like a bad rash.

What do you do about it?

Do you close your eyes and pretend his past doesn’t exist?

Or do you let him know that it worries you? That you feel vulnerable when he talks about his exes or hangs out with them?

That’s sure to convince him you’re not insecure in the slightest. Even better, cyberstalk him and interrogate him about every attractive girl on his list of friends.

Obviously, I’m joking. But what DO you do?

You change the way you think.

And his past stops worrying you, no matter how much it gets in your face.

Here’s how.

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If I could make a guess about you, I’d bet that you’re harder on yourself than anyone else.

Am I right?

You’re hard on yourself because being a good person matters to you. You want to be good at what you do. You want to be good to the people you love. You don’t want to let anyone down. You don’t want to let yourself down.

Because of that, it feels frustrating when certain parts of your life don’t fall into place like they should.

For some women, that’s their working situation. For others, it’s their health. And for many, it’s their love life.

When you have the sense that you ought to be in a relationship—with a man who wants marriage, no less—you can feel inadequate. It feels like everyone else is in a committed relationship, and the only reason you’re not is because you don’t “measure up” somehow.

So you come down even harder on yourself.

You tell yourself all sorts of horrible things. Like you’re too unattractive or too overweight, too boring or too old. You pick apart everything you think a man could find wrong about you.

And when you go out on a date … and he doesn’t call you back … you assume you know why. He’s seen what you see when you look in the mirror. Someone tired and worn down. Someone not pretty enough, not sexy enough, not fascinating enough to interest a man.

As a man, I can let you in a little secret…

That’s NOT what he sees.

He doesn’t see what you see. He’s not sitting there across from you, picking you apart. To him, you’re just you. Either he likes the experience of being with you, or he’s not feeling it. And he can’t really explain why.

If there’s one thing that distinguishes men from women in dating, it’s the degree to which they analyze every interaction. Men don’t do much analyzing, and women do a LOT.

So all the stuff that’s going through your head when you’re trying to figure out why the date went wrong or why he didn’t call you? That’s YOUR stuff.

You’re trying to guess what he thought of you, but all you’re coming up with are the same old thoughts you’ve always had about yourself. You’re using rejection as an excuse to beat up on yourself.

And Dr. Kristin Neff wants you to stop. Here’s why…

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How long does it take for a man to know if he’s attracted to you?

He knows from the moment he sets eyes on you.

In hard numbers, that’s 100 milliseconds.

Researchers at Princeton found that we’re most accurate when it comes to making snap judgements about two traits:

Trustworthiness and attractiveness.[1]

We don’t need a half-hour coffee date to figure out whether we’re attracted to someone. Our gut has its answer at hello.

Given how much work we put into winning over the opposite sex, that’s frustrating. It suggests that, no matter what you say during that coffee date, he’s already made up his mind about you.

But maybe … just maybe … that’s a GOOD thing.

If he’s already decided whether he’s attracted or not, there’s no performance pressure. You can sit back, relax, and let the date unfold as it will. If it seems to be going poorly, you can cut it short with no guilt. You don’t have to try to change his mind.

Research like this brings up interesting questions about how much control we actually have over attraction.

Most of us believe there are a number of practical things we can do to improve our attractiveness. It’s as if there’s an attractiveness scale of 1 to 10, and we can move up on that scale with hard work and effort.

But therapists who work with married couples often see attraction in a very different light. Couples pick each other not because he’s funny or she’s sexy. They pick each other because of lovemaps formed long before they met.

These powerful, subconscious influences explain why men may pass over a seemingly “perfect woman” to marry someone who appears less appealing. The outside world sees a mismatched couple, whereas in fact they’re the perfect fit.

Lovemaps even explain your dating history.

Consider the men you’ve found yourself attracted to over the course of your life. Was your attraction to these men a conscious choice … or was it a compulsion that made no sense? If it felt like something you had no choice over, then that’s a sure sign it was coming from your lovemap.

Lovemaps also explain why the guys you like often end up dating women who aren’t half the woman you are. You can’t understand why he would pick her over you. But then again, you’re only seeing what’s on the surface. You’re not seeing his lovemap.

So what is a lovemap and how can it help us understand the enduring power of first impressions?

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