How to impress a girl and stay on her mind

When you like a girl in today’s busy dating world, you want to stand out from the crowd and leave an impression that lasts. But the question is how to impress a girl without coming across as fake or desperate. How do you make something that feels so conspicuous and possibly awkward feel organic?

Ultimately, there’s no way to control a woman’s feelings or effectively predict how she’ll react to your efforts to win her over. This is why grand gestures and overly obvious attempts to impress girls can often fall flat. 

When you’re wondering how to win a girl’s heart, the most reliable way is simply to present the best version of yourself authentically, and make the right impression at key moments in your courtship and dating journey. Let’s explore how to do that.

First impressions matter when exploring ways to impress a girl you like

As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. So, if you’re stuck on how to impress a girl. make sure your first impression counts and sends the right message about you. A very easy way to influence this is how you choose to physically present yourself. This includes maintaining a good level of hygiene, ensuring you’re well-groomed and wearing clean clothes that match your style. Smiling is also very important, as it advertises being socially open and cooperative. Genuine, full-face smiles – often referred to as a Duchenne smile – have been strongly connected in research to perceptions of altruism and the formation of positive human relationships.¹

You can never go wrong with a simple, but crisp outfit when figuring out how to impress a woman. For most people, clothing is an important marker of identity, and it’s thankfully a highly malleable message you can alter based on the impression you’re trying to make. As one study put it, clothing “effectively protects or destroys symbolic boundaries and starts from how the individual wants to reflect her/his identity.”²

Here are some basic tips to attract a girl on the first impression:

• Smile confidently, but genuinely. Research suggests we unconsciously telegraph deception by using certain smiles³
• Speaking of telegraphing, try to use positive body language as well. This includes maintaining eye contact, keeping good posture during conversation and displaying affirming gestures – like nodding your head when they talk.
• Dress well but make sure your clothes are still sincerely reflective of who you are.

Building emotional connection

Piquing their interest is just the first stop on your journey of how to impress a girl. While initial attraction is very important, creating emotional attraction is how you go from a girl being interested in you to her actually liking you.

The first way you can achieve this is through active listening, which is generally a good tip in all social interactions. This involves hearing someone and critically interacting with their words in conversation to decode their deeper meaning. An effective way to do this is to probe further when they say something by asking meaningful open-ended questions. A University of Central Florida study found that active listening responses can cause people to find you more socially attractive.⁴

When you ask yourself, what do women look for in a man? Part of the answer is the same as what they’d look for in any close friend: someone who shows empathy and understanding of their perspective. Support and validate their points of view, offer open-minded advice and even provide physical comfort through empathetic physical gestures – if it feels appropriate. This can trigger the release of various touch-based reward chemicals in the brain, including dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin.⁵

Sometimes though, as you figure out how to impress a girl, it’s not just about getting close, but is also about paying attention to whether that closeness and pace is comfortable for the other person. Respecting boundaries, both explicitly and non-verbally communicated, is important in fostering trust and intimacy.

Some guidelines for building emotional connections:

• Use the power of humor. It doesn’t even have to be your humor. Studies show the act of laughing together has a very positive impact on perceived closeness.⁶
• Earn their trust by being emotionally consistent with them every time you meet them.
• Don’t be afraid of giving compliments to her. But make sure it’s the right compliment that shows you see past the superficial.

Thoughtful gestures make a difference

Now onto how to impress a girl with simple yet thoughtful gestures. Sometimes a grand gesture can’t compare to tiny actions that make someone feel seen and cared for. Remembering to pick up their favorite coffee order, or sending them a thoughtful message are subtle but effective ways to impress a girl you like. A study survey of relationships found that the gestures that made women feel most appreciated included: showing gratitude and giving compliments, being listened to and shown physical affection, firmly beating out concepts like sexual intimacy and creating quality time.⁷

Beyond affection, these small actions help demonstrate active interest, effort and emotional intelligence because they show that your positive relationship behaviors are baked in rather than affected. They’re that nexus between conscious and unconscious affection. It also shows how easy – yet deceptively multi-layered – it can be to impress a girl without money, status or lavish gifts being involved.

However, the gestures should be relevant and well-timed to have the best impact. Just like there’s an inopportune time of day to receive your coffee order (even if it’s your favorite), certain gestures can come across as forced or awkward if they don’t contextually match up to meet an emotional need.

Some practical tips on how to impress a girl through thoughtful gestures:

• Hold their hand while walking together without prompting.
• Increase emotional closeness by literally being close to them. For instance, sitting close when you’re together.
• Take care of a small problem or concern they’ve vocalized in the past.

Communicate clearly and confidently

While we’ve covered some aspects of how to make a girl fall for you, at some point you’re going to have to take the leap and make your intentions plainly known. But it’s both the right and smart thing to not apply any social or emotional pressure on her when you do. Research reveals proven factors in improving your chances of success. These include avoiding artificially prolonging the pursuit, mindful text exchanges, trusting your instincts, partaking in shared interests, frequent interactions, personal appearance maintenance and disclosing in person.⁸

What you say to her should be very clear and conveyed confidently. Confidence is a big part of what women are attracted to.  A good way to approach this would be asking her out on a date (have an enticing date idea prepared and lead with it) – making it clear that a date is what it would be.

One eventuality you must consider is they might not return your feelings. Rejection is never fun, but it can be a learning experience and help out in how to build confidence around girls, by realizing rejection really isn’t the end of the world,. Always accept their answer as final and show grace, even if it hurts inside. Leave a lasting impression of emotional maturity.  

Some tips to follow:

• Pick a location you both feel comfortable in to tell them, to make you less nervous.
• Don’t expect an answer right away. If they say they need time to think it over, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
• Make sure you disclose respectfully. Don’t be pushy or aggressive when you confess. If they’re too nervous to respond it could be one of the signs you’ve scared her off.

Dos and don’ts for impressing a girl