Most people fall in love practically by chance. We all meet people over the course of a week, a month or a year. We like some of them and not others. Some like us and others don’t. Today we’re talking about the art of seduction.
Some people give us the chance to get to know them better (a second and third date), and others, because of their circumstances at the time, aren’t the right people to “make a move” on even though we like them, because they wouldn’t be ready to start a “romance”. In the end a whole series of filters comes into play, and we either seduce or are seduced by one person when it could just as well have been another.
If one thing became clear to me after reading Robert Greene‘s masterful The Art of Seduction, in which he reviews the greatest seducers of all time, from Cleopatra to Casanova by way of Salomé and Valentino, it’s that seducers don’t leave this to chance.
The art of seduction
They choose their “victim” and set the whole machinery of seduction to work, devising all kinds of strategies and techniques. And they don’t care whether the victim is going through a bad patch, or whether she is single or married. The best part? They always ended up winning the victim over.
We often talk here about how to influence people and gain persuasive power. Well, there is no influence without seduction, and persuasion is achieved through seduction: just as a seducer can win over a woman, he can seduce the masses. One of the greatest seducers of the masses was John F. Kennedy.
If Salomé were a saleswoman today
When we talk about Sigmund Freud or Friedrich Nietzsche today, I imagine we picture two clear-headed geniuses. Yet not even they could escape the power of a great seductress named Lou Salomé, who managed to make both Freud and Nietzsche lose sleep, and drove the philosopher Paul Rée to suicide.
How much power can a manipulative person wield when they know exactly what they’re doing?
Salomé could have succeeded in any field, because she was able to bring the most intelligent men of her time to their knees. Consciously or unconsciously, this woman used various seduction techniques. It wasn’t that she made men fall in love with her; she made them literally lose their heads. And the most dangerous thing of all is that her techniques can be learned.
1. The secret of great seducers: they don’t seduce the person, they seduce the brain
It sounds like the same thing, but it isn’t. Today, when neuroscience is applied to sales, people often say “don’t sell to the customer, sell to their brain”. Cleopatra already knew this technique, and so, of course, did great seducers like Giacomo Casanova, who left nothing to chance and used a whole series of manipulative techniques to break down the barriers inside the victim’s own brain.
If you’re a woman and you’ve ever wondered why you always end up with unfaithful men or jerks, the truth is I already knew this, but Robert Greene confirms it: you end up with that kind of man because he’s the kind of man your brain likes.
See also: When our mind brings about the outcome we least want because of how we focus our thinking
Most women think they want a romantic, faithful man who notices every little detail and pays attention to them. A woman may like that, but her brain doesn’t, because what keeps desire alive is the fear of not being certain that the man will stay by her side. In other words, creating insecurity is a form of seduction in itself, and womanisers have that talent for seduction built in.
Put another way, you don’t end up with jerks by accident. You were actually looking for a jerk, and since we find what we’re looking for…
The seducer’s reputation
In fact, great seducers usually had a reputation for exactly what they were: conquerors who only wanted to get their victim into bed and then forget about her. Put like that, no woman would want to be just another piece in these scoundrels’ collection. Her friends would also warn her to be careful.
At that point, the seducer’s bad reputation (let’s call him Casanova) seemed to make it very unlikely that a decent married woman, warned of the danger, would fall into the clutches of someone she considered a cad, a scoundrel and a womaniser. But she was already in Casanova’s sights, so she didn’t yet know she was going to be seduced without realising it.
So our Casanova would ignore her, being pleasant to everyone else and charming the other guests at the party, while making sure he stayed close to his victim so she could see that he didn’t match what she’d been told about him.
There comes a point when the woman clearly sees Casanova having fun talking to other women, and them having fun with him, and our poor victim asks herself the obvious question:
“If this guy has slept with every woman he ever wanted, why is he ignoring me? Doesn’t he like me?” And later on: “Why wouldn’t he like me?” The victim’s own vanity means she can’t stop thinking about the man she should be avoiding, because our brain doesn’t like us to be less than other people.
And the seducer knows when he’s producing that effect, because he’s watching the way she looks at him. That’s when a slight suggestive glance from the seducer, a slight move closer, will lead the victim to come up to our Casanova with some pretext of a question. You can imagine the rest of the story.
2. Appear to be an object of desire
Many cognitive biases come into play here, but basically we could say that we’re attracted to people whom others find attractive.
Nobody likes a person whom everyone rejects, because if everyone rejects them, our brain unconsciously thinks “there must be a reason”. But we’re attracted to people everyone likes, because if everyone likes them, “there must be a reason”.
And our vanity wants what others want. This doesn’t only apply to wanting a luxury car like our brother-in-law’s or a big house like our neighbour’s. It also applies to desiring our neighbour’s wife.
That’s why one of the seduction techniques best supported by neuroscience is provoking jealousy, whether with an ex-girlfriend who wants to get back together or with several women or men who are eager to have a relationship with us. Basically, a seducer makes sure the other person knows he has plenty of options to choose from, but is choosing you.
If many people have succumbed to our charms, there must be a reason. And very few people can control their vanity enough not to try to find out what that reason is.
As Robert Greene puts it, the sentimental nonsense of desire is in the end only about vanity and greed.
Desirability is a social illusion
A man standing alone in a nightclub usually seems unattractive, because… why is he alone? Your brain has already come up with an answer. And the answer isn’t very seductive, even if it isn’t the real reason.
A man who walks in greeting everyone, and who receives a constant stream of women inviting him to dance or to sit at their table, is attractive from the outset. And if he also turns down every single invitation, then in the eyes of the woman watching, that man is an object of desire.
3. The contrast bias in seduction
Just as the contrast bias (choosing not according to what we want, but according to the options we have) works in sales, it also works in seduction.
A man or woman of ordinary looks will stand out in a group of truly ugly, unattractive people.
In other words, if the only men in a group are Danny DeVito and me, I’m going to seem more attractive than DeVito from the start, and so the halo effect will also make me more seductive.
But if the men in the group are Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and me, the demand would be split between Pitt and me. Sorry, Cruise, but you’re going home alone tonight 🙂
Many men use this technique the wrong way
Often, when a man is getting to know a woman and sees the typical “jerks” come over to talk to her (men who aren’t her type, or who are very dull and tiresome), he tends to get jealous and quickly tries to get her away from that group to keep her to himself.
The true seducer won’t do that; quite the opposite. He would step aside so that they bore her and fill her head with superficial remarks, even try to chat her up in their sometimes crude and tasteless way.
The contrast effect is at work, and when you go back to her (although most likely she’ll come to you), she’ll compare you with them. You’ll have scored points without doing anything. If you let them make her night unbearable, when you turn up to rescue her you’ll be like Prince Charming. And this works for men and women alike.
4. Be desirable, but not easily attainable
The secret of great seducers, as Greene explains in The Art of Seduction, is that they seduce by making the victim believe it was she who seduced the seducer.
The moment the seducer’s intentions become too obvious, the seduction loses steam. The moment someone knows you’d sleep with the first person who offered, you become undesirable.
That’s the difference between the Don Juan who has a long list of potential candidates but whom few manage to land, and the attractive Don Juan who would sleep with the first woman to come along. And the same goes for women.
In seduction, as in other areas, what is rare and scarce fetches a higher price. On top of that, the desire to conquer grows exponentially when the person seems unconquerable.
That unconquerable person is paying attention to us, talking to us, and even seems to have sent us some suggestive signal, although we’re not sure. “I think I have a chance if I don’t mess it up too much and try hard enough.” That’s how you make a man or a woman lose their head.
Market value in seduction
On the other hand, if every day or every weekend you let anyone win you over, whether you’re a man or a woman, your market price is pretty low. And this isn’t about morality: I believe everyone should enjoy their body however they see fit.
But regrets may well follow afterwards, when you feel treated as disposable or aren’t taken seriously when it comes to a relationship.
Just remember this. When it comes to seduction, there are two kinds of people: the special one (who is usually hard to get) and the easy one. Seducers were never attracted to the easy ones, precisely because there was no merit in picking up someone who goes with anyone.
Put another way, nobody feels proud of taking the lift to the first floor. Climbing to the summit of Everest, on the other hand, is a story worth remembering.
Cleopatra’s secret was to seem like a dream come true, an unattainable desire that at moments seemed within her victim’s reach.
5. Finally, the art of seduction is like the art of selling
A seducer’s “job” is like a salesperson’s. He has to find a need in his victim and know how to meet it with his product. And if there is no need, he creates one. Seducers know that happy people are less prone to being seduced. But they also know that a happy person’s brain still needs adventure and a sense of controlled danger.
Rarely is anyone so completely happy as to be immune to the seduction of an expert seducer. Even some of the expert seducers ended up meeting their match, losing their heads over one of their victims, who ended up seducing the seducer with the aim of destroying him out of revenge.
See also: 8 mistakes we make in relationships, from the point of view of neuroscience
Featured image: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
