Women love playful men. Playfulness, broadly defined, is nonverbal teasing. Or it’s the physical and verbal working together as an insincere form of taunting. Not many men are naturally playful, especially with attractive women. Men tense up in the presence of sexually enticing women, and this discomfort is anathema to cultivating a playful demeanor. Playfulness is lost with age, as well. Boys are breezily playful, but their effortless joy and naughtiness eventually succumbs to moodiness and the grind.
Not in all men, though. Natural Lotharios have a gift for retaining much of their youthful playfulness, which they love to display in the company of women. For example:
This girl buries her face in her hand and laughs because she has experienced a pleasant sensation: the mischievous flirtation of a cocksure cad.
Playfulness is attractive to women because it’s a type of humor. Women love funny men, and all that spazz. You don’t need to be jacked or ripped to tease a girl into a swirl of charged hormones. A six pack is great, but you know who’s going to get the girl more often, and be adored in loving honorarium by more girls?: The guy pulling playful stunts like the one above.
This is not to say playfulness has unlimited use. All play and no lay makes Jack a null void. Playfulness is like an indirect opener where the romantic intention is hidden under a layer of funnyman obfuscation. At some point, you have to drop the act and break the Fourth Wall, giving due to the sexual tension in a less joking manner. Excessive joking can quickly come to be perceived as emotionally distancing.
There’s one other reason women love playful men, and it’s the most crucial ingredient in the dynamic between the performer (man) and audience (woman). Playful men appear to suffer no worldly burden. They seem at ease, living in the moment, stress-free and unconcerned with public opinion. Leaders and charismatics share these traits, and women are powerfully drawn to such men. If we understand that women are attracted to certain male personalities that suggest an easy, worry-free life full of material comfort (and resources to be mutually enjoyed or effortlessly gathered), and bountiful choice in mates, then it makes sense that playful men trigger limbic love pulses in women.
Playfulness, then, is best seen as an indirect signal of female preselection (“he’s done this before with women and knows from experience it works”), outcome independence (“he doesn’t fear rejection or social opprobrium”) and self-assurance (“he’s not nervous or supplicating”). Playfulness is the opposite of desperation.
