The Love Island 2021 couples are doomed already: Body language expert Judi James explores the first recoupling

The guys don’t stand a chance in this year’s Love Island (Picture: ITV/Shutterstock)

Forget all the toe-sucking, lobe-nibbling and mouth-to-mouth clamping from Love Island’s opening night show, behind all those sexual signals that were really just prompted by a party game of ‘dare’ to provide the usual front-page shock pics today, the real story of Love Island 2021 is that it was riddled with some hilarious, industrial-strength rejection signals on a scale I’ve never seen in the villa before.

Did anyone ever hear Laura needing to yell out ‘You can touch one another, you know!’ to the contestants in a bid to prod them into some action?

This year’s bunch sounded sex-mad on paper but their spatial behaviours on this first night suggested many of them were still socially distancing.

The best and only real mating call was the endless screeching between Kaz and Liberty as they entered the villa first. This was real aquatic mammal stuff that could possibly have brought on ear-bleed.

Jake ran in super-keen but ground to a halt after picking Liberty. Anyone would have put these two together as an ideal match (on paper) but after putting one very wary and tepid-looking arm around her shoulders for their greeting kiss, Jake suddenly kept his distance, standing behind Liberty with his hands on his hips rather than her.

These two have a tendency to speak at the same time but does that form of mirroring mean love or just problems for the mic team?

Shannon was clearly underwhelmed by Aaron (Picture: ITV/Shutterstock)

Shannon was clearly underwhelmed by Aaron, performing a long-distance hug and then standing wringing her hands in a gesture of anxiety. She only complimented him to camera to get to the word ‘but’ and to explain that he was ‘not my type’.

Shannon went in as the sexpot but she was well off the boil after pairing with Aaron. As he lay splayed out on the bed Shannon self-diminished beside him until she was curled into a ball.

Faye is not a woman who takes rejection well as she showed with a hand-swat after Aaron picked Shannon. Faye’s ‘speak my mind’ behaviour is making her the most watchable one in the villa so far and when she was paired with Hugo her despair was obvious.

When Toby picked her, her hands went into a praying clasp to suggest she was still not impressed and a tongue-poke of rejection sealed the deal. In the end she got the ‘ideal’ guy Brad but later we saw several signals of utter boredom as he spoke to her, including a metronomic foot tap and distracted eye-movements.

Another ‘but’ moment, as in: ‘He’s fit, but…’

Kaz and Toby paired by default but still managed to show the keenest body language, using some flirt signals and signs of appreciation plus some strong eye contact. They were lying together on the lounger like an established couple but I fear a friend-zone moment coming on, sadly.

Sharon and Hugo look like a match made in Love Island hell. Sharon has a very expressive face and it fell very early on in the pairing-off. Hugo seems like a nice guy which is going to make this coupling even more painful.

A new girl is clearly arriving tonight. This normally makes the other girls act possessive and wary but I have a feeling some of them might be offering their men up for the taking voluntarily. If they feed some alpha males in like they did last year none of the guys in there will currently stand a chance of keeping their women.

Love Island airs tonight at 9pm on ITV2. Catch Judi James speaking to Metro.co.uk for the return of Love or Lie Island this Thursday.

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