OpinionAugust 16, 1993

W omen don't give Dennis the eye the way they used to before he got married and it's not because he has gone to pot. He hasn't.

Well, maybe a little pot around the middle. There's nothing like the regular rations of marriage to bend your belt.

But it's not the belly. Women have stopped giving Dennis the eye now because his ''Married!'' sign is lighted.

We all have more signs out front than we realize. Our body language and our conduct send signals to other people about our availability. When you're available, it shows to the right people. When you aren't, that shows, too.

Dennis, for instance. Women used to go for him, an affable, handsome, kindly man a bit of a catch. He was popular. And being popular made him slow to settle down. He tended to frolic out there in the night. And he learned the ways of courting. Without even realizing it, he developed the ability to signal his singleness.

Most men and women tend to notice members of the opposite sex, whether married or not. We married people still look. We are in harness but we aren't wearing blinders.

However, it's just a discreet glance here and there, just a quick clinical examination of what's on the market. You now have the best pickup truck you've ever owned and you intend to drive the wheels off. But that doesn't mean you don't glance at the new models on the market, just to doublecheck and congratulate yourself on how much better you have done than what's available now.

But men and women who have yet to find their pickup don't just glance at those across a crowded room. They stare. Sometimes they vamp and leer. They even wink. A few openly slobber.

And of course they strut and preen. The pickup truck is an inept analogy in that respect because, when you are mate shopping, the pickup is looking you over, too. So you kind of circle each other at a crowded party in a series of drive-by flirtations.

You can tell by a person's posture whether he is available or whether he is not. When you are contented, that shows as well. The body language of a happily married person is more relaxed, less frantic than that of a courter. You stroll into a room with the smug little smirk on your face of the Lucky Ones.

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You don't invade the room with your throbbing hormonal presence, the way a single person does.

A married person enters the room with his body language saying, ''Howdy.''

An available single person sweeps into the room with his body language saying, ''God's gift to women has arrived!''

You don't do that deliberately. But when you are in heat, your body just acts up on its own. It sends signals without telling you. It starts flashing a garish neon ''Vacancy!'' sign above the Motel You.

But once you find a marriage or some other permanent arrangement, all that public clamor about your person closes down and your signals turn inward on your family. Your flirting becomes focused. You put away the scatter gun of your essence and the world notices you less than it once did.

That's what's happened to Dennis. He has been out of circulation and well married for some months now. And it dawned on him the other day that women who once reacted to him now walk right on by.

Women used to hit on him. Today, they nod and smile, looking at him in kindly rather than passionate ways.

He doesn't mind at all, now that he understands. But it did have him looking in the mirror at first.

He saw no changes. But the changes are not for him to see. These are signals to the female of his species and he is incapable of recognizing them.

The sign on his singleness has been turned off. He is monogamously happy. So it's not that there is something suddenly wrong with him. It's that there is something suddenly right with him.

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