204 Part III: Opening the Toolkit
✓ Visual: You make the effort to look good. Perhaps you wear the colour
you’ve discovered the object of your interest likes. You look deeply into
those gorgeous blue/green/brown eyes.
✓ Auditory: You speak in dulcet tones and say the words you think the
person wants to hear.
✓ Kinaesthetic: You hold hands. You stroke the other person.
✓ Olfactory: Mmmm! Hope the perfume isn’t too overwhelming. Oops!
Forgot the mouthwash!
✓ Gustatory: Candle-lit dinners with herbs and spices to prove that this
someone is really special.
The person you desire is hooked and you walk into the sunset hand-in-hand.
But then – after some time – you experience rumblings of discontent. ‘What
went wrong?’ you cry. Nothing really. Perhaps you and your partner just
reverted to the modality you operate most naturally. So, where the wife may
be craving physical contact with hugs and cuddles in order to feel loved, the
husband may be proving his love by doing all he can for her, like keeping the
house in good repair and washing the car and keeping it topped up with fuel.
To find a person’s strategy for feeling loved, try saying words to the effect,
‘You know I love you, don’t you?’ and ‘What would make you feel even more
loved?’ As you do, pay attention to the eye movements we show in Figure
12-4. ‘Uh, I’m not sure’, with the eyes going to their bottom right (K), gives
the clue that more cuddles are in order. Test your hunch. If the eyes move to
the horizontal left (Ar), try asking what the person may like to hear you say.
Figure 12-4:
The eyes
reveal the
strategy.
Vr Ar Ad K
Here are a couple of things to bear in mind:
✓ Ask your questions in a special, quiet time when just the two of you are
present, and not at moments of high stress, such as in a traffic jam – we
guarantee you won’t like the response you get.
✓ Calibrate the response you get when you do something for the other
person. For example, does bringing home a bunch of roses get you that
special response?
