Adding music to your dates is a simple strategy to strengthen your dating style. Science backs the Concerts are a popular choice because they’re easy, a segue before intimate solo ones, and they’re fun, but there is more to music than just being a crowd-pleaser. Music sets the mood. It’s a central theme in strip clubs, BDSM Dungeons and of course, romantic venues, too. Certainly, the playlist you’ll find at a sex club is different than a candlelight cocktail lounge, but the premise is the same.
Music provides a bonding element and by the end of this article you’ll know
- why (the science) behind how music can enhance your next date
- you’ll be able to turn knowledge into technique to apply to your dates moving forward
- you’ll put together a playlist for your next date based on the style of the date and what you’re trying to achieve
Three reasons it’s worth your time to understand how music can enhance your dating style
- It’s an easy add on – Music is readily available in a range of forms: from $ (logging into Spotify) to $$$$ (a bucket list concert)
- You can engage with your date but have a buffer if the conversation stalls and a backup if it downright becomes a fail
- Music is offered in a group-ish setting, so if your date is taking it slow and prefers non-solo settings (common for the first few dates) a public music venue is a noble compromise.
Some examples: a live coffee shop performance, local weekend bar band, weeknight restaurant show.
Music strengthens and enhances social bonds
If you’re on a date, your chances of bonding increase when music plays in the background. Studies show music unites people and across cultures. This article in Music and Medicine: An Interdisciplinary Journal, examines how music impacts the brain circuits involved in empathy, trust and cooperation, thus strengthening inter individual attachment.
By choosing to make music a main, or side, feature of your next date you’ll gain an instant advantage fostering, encouraging, and accelerating a connection process.
Music creates harmonization & synchronization
Listening to the same music leads to positive social feelings toward one another through harmonization. You may be familiar with the term marching to the same beat. There is an innate tendency to synchronize to the rhythmic beat which activates neural networks or “mirror neurons” creating a transient bond. Numerous studies show this forms a mental cooperation followed by the release of pleasure endorphins in the brain which increases trust and paves the way for even more trust.
Additional ways to do this? Increase the bonding quotient a step further by creating music together. If you’ve watched A Star Is Born, you’ve seen exactly how well this works.
Translate this to real life – plan a karaoke date.
Music naturally creates social cohesion
Meaning you don’t have to really work at it to make it work – so if you’re out of practice or feeling antisocial – go to a concert, even solo, or join a meetup group concert outing. There is an unmistakable a social buzz when listening to music in a group, even when most of the crowd are strangers there will be a shared energy. Music is a common denominator, a social glue that brings a congregation together. Similar music communicates belonging and indicates similar shared values which scientifically increases social attraction.
Endorphins & love drugs
Oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, and serotonin are the ultimate cuddle cocktail. If you’re dating or in a relationship one of the best things you can do to enhance your connection is cultivate oxytocin (the others are a bonus). I’ve discussed numerous ways to do that, a few of which you can watch here, and read here.
Adding music to your date is one more way to boost oxytocin.
You may have noticed music can put you in a mood, send you on a trip down memory lane, inspire a random dance, make your mood feel like it dropped out of site or shot through the roof. Studies show music therapy can effectively treat depression even short-term listening is beneficial in reducing anxiety.While more vigorous exertion such as dancing and singing leads to greater endorphin release, it doesn’t matter that strongly which form is used, so putting on a playlist can be just as beneficial as a live performance.
The primal collective identity
Music dates back 35,000 years to primate hunting and gathering stages of human life. A flute found in a German cave suggests early humans made time for this type of casual socializing even when it competed with survival-based chores. Enjoying music together indicates a shared value system, approval that we ‘belong’, another shared human desire and universal motivation. When people feel accepted by their social group it increases emotional well-being and bonding, observed in studies of adolescent social behavior.
Music is a social lubricator
It can provide more than background filler or a mood enhancer. There is a reason it’s a common denominator in everything from movies and theater, corporate branding, religious ceremonies, sporting events, and concerts, elevators, restaurants… it’s because it generates and magnifies emotions. Music and related activities are central to ritual, courtship, identity and human expression cross culturally.
Use these emotions to increase likability and bonding on your dates.
Some basic practical ways
- See a concert venue
- Make specialized playlists for your date
(picnic, road trip, spa date, holidays) - Gift a personal playlist
MUSIC PLAYLISTS to help you plan your date:
A general date playlist
Marco Ibanez Boudoir on Spotify covers a wide array of sexy music to set the mood.
If you want to incorporate some BDSM flavor
This collection might be of interest – 25 BDSM Songs – Music with a Sexy Dungeon Theme
It’s also worth refining or narrowing down what style, type or level of BDSM inspires you, which this article does nicely – 3 BDSM Scene Music Playlists For The Dungeon and Bedroom
On a more romantic note
Bossa Nova is an easy no-fail Brazilian style of music to add to your library that infuses jazz, blues, sultry samba, and electronic elements. You’ll find a good introduction here https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/brazil/articles/top-15-bossa-nova-songs-to-add-to-your-playlist-right-now/
If you know you’re ready for some elevated energy to inspire your own personal strip show
This reddit user made his strip club DJ mixes available on spotify
