As always, voice matters

I’ve written it before. I’ll write it again. There is nothing more determinative of my attraction to you than your voice. It has something to do with tone, with timbre. Confidence, openness, prosody. It all matters.

I’ve tried, repeatedly, to describe just what it is about a voice I find sexy, what it is about one I don’t. I guess I’ll keep trying, until I feel like I’ve nailed it.

When I hear you talk, I want to believe you’re smart, knowledgeable, and confident. But I also want to believe you’re open to learning you’re wrong, gracefully. About anything. And, I want to believe you always want to learn more, about anything.

Confidence is hot. Certainty is not. Openness is hot. Curiosity is hotter.

I’ve said this bit before, and it’s definitely… complicated. Up-talking, of the teenage girl sort (“Is what I said ok? Do you understand? Do you agree?”), is repulsive. But up-talking of the adult, “I’ve just said something I genuinely believe to be true and interesting, but, do you have a reaction?”  sort is seriously sexy. In men and women.

I am guilty, far too often, of the downward-inflected (“I am speaking the truth, and you have just been privileged to hear the truth, from me!”) boy-voice. I fight it. My voice may belie my claim that I don’t genuinely feel that, but I do claim that I don’t genuinely feel that. In my bones, I feel that what I say is provisional, always, subject to further information and input, from you, from the world. And/but… as unattractive as I find that trait in me, in you it’s an outright disqualifier of sustained attraction.

I recently met a woman who should have been attractive to me. Smart, interesting, experienced, fit, pretty, sexual. I should have wanted to shove my tongue, my cock, down her throat. But her throat carried her voice to me, and she hasn’t finished one sentence before I knew: she wasn’t for me.

Many people are this way with looks, and I confess, I do have a big bias in favor of the conventionally attractive. But I’m old enough to know that there are possibilities for exceptions to my rules, and voice is the biggest driver of such exceptions. In both directions.

Wicked Wednesday

17 comments

  1. I couldn’t agree more, especially where regional accents (UK) are concerned. He (or she) may look attractive, on paper and in words he may entice you, but then you hear the voice…and all is lost

    1. Here in the U.S., regional accents (and class) are far less pronounced than in the U.K. For me, it’s really not at all about accent, and entirely about intonation, prosody.

  2. I am also a sucker for voice. There’s something so powerful there, and since it’s something that carries well past looks that change with age, it’s imperative in my book. Thanks for sharing this great reflection! XX

  3. I have never really thought about how voice influence what I think of a person, but you are right. It is a huge thing indeed. It can literally make or break ‘it’.

    Rebel xox

  4. I, sadly, class myself as a bit of a voice snob. There are certain accents and voice inflections I simply cannot abide, nothing turns me off faster than someone who isn’t aware of how their speech projects.

    1. Interestingly (?), I don’t think myself a snob. My issue is not accent, or class, and I don’t judge those whose voices don’t turn me on. I’m LESS judgmental about voice than I am, say, about looks, which, it turns out, are less important to me. I’m not situating people on any sort of a notional hierarchy of objective attractiveness. It’s all about ME….

  5. I completely get where you are coming from. The first interaction I ever had with @domsigns was voice only… I was hooked from the first word

    Mollyxxx

  6. Voices are powerful. My love of phone sex started thanks to someone with a fantastic voice. I also realize how lucky I am to have a voice that gets to men who might pass on my looks alone. I have a love of voices and vocabulary and the certain cadence to speech some men have.

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