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© Rory Ridley-Duff, 2006 Publisher Manuscript
Chapter 3 - Friendship and Flirting
Introduction
George Burns once famously said:
There will always be a battle of the sexes because men and women want different things. Men want women, and women want men.
Let‟s have some fun with this idea and explode a few myths.
 
Myth:
Men are more interested in sex than women.
Science:
Men and women are as interested in sex as each other
1
.
Myth:
Men initiate nearly all sexual encounters.
Science:
 Women initiate between 65% and 90% of sexualencounters
2
.
Myth:
Men are afraid of commitment.
Science:
“Commitment” has different meanings, and different
consequences, for men and women
3
.
Myth:
Men are always “up for it”.
 
Science:
94%
of men and 98% of women report “unwanted sexualattention”;
63% of men and 46% of women report
“unwanted sexual intercourse”
4
.Betty Friedan, one of the founders
of the modern women‟s movementin the United States, reviewed women‟s growing sexual appetite
prior to
the 1960s. She claims that from the 1950s onwards, it outstripped men‟s
5
.The most compelling contemporary evidence is that 98% of romancenovels are read by women, and this constitutes 40% of the market forpaperback books. Furthermore, most romance novels are now based onstories about the workplace in which a man (or men) overpower a woman who resists.
6
While romance novels cover a wide range of books (not allcontain explicit sex), they are always about the sexual chemistry thatoccurs between men and women.Consider this carefully for a moment. If nearly 40% of all thepaperbacks read are female fantasies about romance at work, how is thisimpacting on workplace relationships between women and men? And if 
the single most popular story line in women‟s romance novels is identical
to the legal definition of sexual harassment, what are the implications for
managing the “problem” of harassment at work? While there is a
difference between having and acting out a fantasy, having fantasies about work colleagues changes our body language when we are with them.
 When body language impacts on work colleagues‟ perceptions (whetherintentional or not) a person‟s workplace fantasies starts to affect their
colleagu
es‟ workplace reality.
 
 
2 Emotion, Seduction and Intimacy© Rory Ridley-Duff, 2006 Publisher Manuscript
 Another way to gauge men‟s and women‟s interest in each other is
dating sites on the internet and personal ads in newspapers. While moremen register on-line (60% men, 40% women), personal ads in newspapersare consistently the reverse (around 60% women, 40% men)
7
. Each places
more adverts in the place they most frequently „visit‟. Taken together,
however, it shows that men and women seek each other in roughly equalnumbers.On adult sites specifically designed for people to find casual sex,however, men outnumber women by 20:1. Does this prove that men aremore interested in sex than women? No. It simply shows that women
 want sex “with strings” while men want sex “without strings”. As Warren
Farrell wrote in the late 1980s:
Women are still taught to be sexually cautious until two, three, or all four conditions
– 
attraction, respect, emotions, and intellect 
– 
are met. Many women add fifth and sixth conditions: singleness and status/success. And many add a seventh, eighth, and ninth: the man must ask her out; he must pay; and he must risk rejection by initiatingthe first kiss. Men are socialized to want sex as long as only 
one
condition is fulfilled 
– 
physical attraction.
8
 
Subsequent research confirms that this is still the case.
9
  A few years ago, Robert Winston referred to a study during the BBCtelevision series
 Human Instinct 
to suggest that men are much moreinterested in sex than women
10
. Based on a simple test, he claimed that75% of men, but almost no women, responded positively to a sexualapproach by an attractive member of the opposite sex. He pointed outthat fewer men responded positively for an invitation to have a coffee thanan invitation to have sex. He then used these findings to suggest that men
 were “instinctively” more interested in sex. There are two problems with
his assertions. Firstly, they ignore cultural norms regardingnon-verbal/verbal initiation in relationships; secondly, the study actually showed that men and women were equally interested in sexualrelationships, but differed over the time they would wait before suggestingsex.Let us consider cultural norms first. Men are almost neverpropositioned by a woman verbally (unless she is
selling
sex, in which casemen are propositioned all the time by other means
11
). So if an attractive woman verbally offers sex without payment, it is an extremely rare
opportunity. That is probably why 75% of the male respondents said „yes‟.
B
eing offered coffee, however, is more common so saying „no‟ simply 
reflects supply/demand dynamics of the situation. Women, on the otherhand, are verbally propositioned more frequently. As one of my woman
friends used to joke, “if I put a picture of a c
an of baked beans on my 
internet page, I would probably still get propositioned!” Saying „no‟ does
little to diminish her chances of finding a sexual partner so women preferto check out a man first to see what else is on offer and this explains why few female r
espondents quickly said „yes‟.
 
To get a feel for this, it might be interesting to do a survey to see how willingly university age men and women would accept the offer of a ride in a Porsche to eat in an expensiverestaurant when the car is driven by an unattractive looking 40-year-old member of the
opposite sex …
 
 
Friendship and Flirting 3
Interestingly, Robert Winston fails to mention one of the mostimportant findings in the original study 
12
. An
equal 
number of men and women responded positively to the offer of a date (50%). The differencesemphasised in the popular media ignored the findings regardinglong-term sexual relationships and focussed on casual sex. It tells us moreabout who has power in sexual matters than who is more interested in sex. Another way to consider this question is why do women impose
preconditions when their interest in sex is as great as a man‟s? The
answer is that women are taught, most often by other women, that sex is asource of considerable power
13
. As Nancy Friday found, men and women both fantasise by a ratio of 4:1 that the other sex will take the lead in aromantic encounter (i.e. be the first to risk rejection). The culturalarrangement that men should make the first
 public
declaration of interestis an indicator of where power really lies. Where does it lie? Women get their wish three-quarters of the time; men get their wishone-quarter of the time (and only then, if the man actually prefers to takethe lead and risk rejection). As men usually have to play their hand first,power over courtship passes mainly to the woman who can accept or rejectthe man. Men do exercise this choice, but much more rarely. As a result,the issue of how women use this power is one of the topics discussedthroughout this book. With th
is „balance of power‟ in mind, let us consider stories of fun,
friendship and flirting in the workplace. As will be illustrated, the view 
that “flirting always leads to trouble” is not born out by research or
personal experience. Different studies claim that between 40-70% of people find their partner in a workplace setting so clearly many peopleflirt successfully at work 
14
. In one recent study, 40% of married womenclaimed they had changed jobs to increase their chances of finding ahusband. The workpl
ace, therefore, remains a primary „hunting ground‟
for husbands, despite the fall in the numbers of men and women gettingmarried
15
. In only 10% of cases does flirting lead to serious problems forthe parties involved, and only 20% of people in an international survey 
reported that others‟ close relationships caused them problems at work 
16
.In this chapter, we will look at seduction success stories, how friendshipcan be built through fun, and how sometimes this evolves into flirting anda relationship. After this, I will discuss a much misunderstood aspect of seduction
–
its roots in equality 
–
and how these techniques can beobserved in same-sex relationships, or during sales, marketing,recruitment, induction and socialisation.
What is Seduction?
Come with me on a journey with Ben, Hayley and Diane and see thegroundwork that they lay before Hayley and Ben develop a flirty relationship in the workplace. The following interview and journal notes were made during an anthropological study of a medium sized company.The principal benefit of this approach (over retrospective interviews andstories) is the insights that can be derived from observing events as they unfold. Only Ben gave information about the development of the
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Rory Ridley-Duff (Dr)

HTML, PRINT and KINDLE VERSIONS OF THIS BOOK NOW AVAILABLE FROM LIBERTARY.COM - http://www.libertary.com/book/emotion...

reply12 / 05 / 2010
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