A Weapon of Mass Seduction

Chemistry vs Compatibility

Let's focus for a moment today on the trap, the falsehood, the illusion that is chemistry.

How many times have you consoled a friend after (or even before) an inevitable breakup with some callous loser where she has cried into your shoulder declarations of "But I don't think I'll ever feel this way about anybody else ever again!" Or maybe you've been said friend. Either way it's a common scenario. Even though your relationship has turned so stressful as to be a total pain in the ass to be in, you're worried that the chemistry you feel with your partner is precious, irreplicable, a miraculous strike of lightning that couldn't possibly hit you twice.

Well, you're wrong. Chemistry is actually pretty easy to achieve, because mother nature is doing most of the work for you. You are biologically programmed to feel the attachment that you feel to your mate, because mother nature wants you to stick with him long enough for you to do your part in furthering the species.

Have I mentioned this before? I'm sure I have, but it's important, so I'll say it again. Mother nature doesn't give a shit about whether you're happy. She basically wants to pair you up with a guy whose pheromones are compatible with yours (that means that the two of you each have different genetic strengths and weaknesses so that your offspring will have the greatest chance of being physically healthy), and she doesn't care whether that guy is a jerk or a sociopath or an alcoholic or a pathological liar or a philandering cad. She cares whether his DNA and yours are a good match for healthy kids.

There are countless reasons why we fall in love with one person and not another. Pheromones have a good deal to do with it (you are attracted to the scents of men with whom you are the most genetically compatible), as do what scientists refer to as "love maps," what my hero Dr. Helen Fisher defines as "a template replete with brain circuitry that determines what arouses you sexually, what drives you to fall in love with one person rather than another." Things like mystery, timing, and your balances of estrogen vs testosterone and serotonin vs dopamine play key roles as well.

 

My love map looks something like this, apparently.

But once you find someone whom both you and mother nature deem to be a suitable partner, the attachment that grows from there, I'm afraid to tell you, is incredibly commonplace. Your feelings aren't terribly special. Even though it feels like you are the only person in the world and indeed in all the history of time who has ever even remotely felt this way about another human being... well, that's how everyone feels.

Researcher Dorothy Tennov (author of Love and Limerence) collected hundreds of responses from men and women in love and discovered remarkable similarities about their experiences. Subjects in love recounted viewing everything in their day-to-day lives through the filter of their experience of being in love (what would their loved one think of the book they're reading or the movie they just saw, for example). "Many informants said that, as the obsession grew, they spent from 85 to 100 percent of their days and nights in sustained mental attentiveness, doting on this single individual." For real -- 85 to 100 percent of their entire day spent obsessing over their crush! I thought I was the only one who did this, but apparently I'm not alone.

Your brain chemistry plays a huge role in all of this. When someone comes along with the right pheromones, who fits your love map, where the timing and receptiveness and all the other factors come together to work out just right, your brain has a chemical reaction. It releases this lovely little neurochemical called phenylethylamine (my favorite drug), which is a naturally occuring amphetamine, an upper that causes you to feel energized, giddy, happy, and in love with life in general. Basically your brain puts you on speed.

Then, once you become sexually active with your partner, your brain engages in something called pair-bonding. At the chemical level, during sex your brain releases a neurochemical called oxytocin (or, in guys, vasopressin) which is responsible for the bang-crazy that happens to you after you have sex with a guy a few times. Researcher Diane Witt puts it this way: "You first meet him and he’s passable. The second time you go out with him, he’s okay. The third time you go out with him, you have sex. And from that point on you can’t imagine what life would be like without him. Since the release of oxytocin can be classically conditioned, after repeatedly having sex with the same partner, just seeing that partner could release more oxytocin, making you want to be with that person all the more, and you bond."

Sound familiar? It is. And it happens to all of us.

Here's the real kicker though: Pretty much none of this science behind why we fall in love and with whom has anything to do with whether we have actual compatible values and lifestyles with the person we're falling for. Lord knows I've fallen for plenty of guys who looked like Edward Scissorhands or Nikki Sixx who smelled amazing to me when they were sweaty but who weren't actually suitable mates for me beyond their appealing pheromones and their consistency with my goth-rock love map.

So let's be clear on one thing. Yes, you will feel this way again about someone else. You're biologically programmed to! Mother nature is going to do all the work for you -- once you find someone basically passable, and then have consistent sex with him, your brain is going to go all haywire and make you feel crazy in love because that is what it is wired to do. Isn't that great? You're already set up for success where falling in love is concerned. Evolution desperately wants you to fall in love. It's got your back. You're good to go.

Where you really have to concentrate here is your vetting process (something I mentioned a few blog entries ago that I'm particularly terrible at). You are responsible for finding a partner with whom you share not chemistry, but actual compatibility.

I like to define compatibility as having similar values and similar lifestyles -- basically, the things that make a relationship work without too much forcing or compromise on anyone's part. For example, for me to feel real compatibility with someone, he has to keep similar hours (matching circadian rhythms are important as falling asleep together is a huge priority for me) meaning he's probably a night owl like me, meaning most doctors and lawyers and bankers and other guys my mom wishes I'd date are automatically crossed out. He also has to have similar life views, which means he's probably a bit of a free spirit, since I'm not the right gal for anyone looking for the mom of their 2.5 kids behind a picket fence, which means he's probably a little lenient where "monogamy" is defined but is steadfast where loyalty is concerned (psst -- loyalty and monogamy, not the same thing!). He has to be responsible with drugs and alcohol, or simply not use them at all, and he has to be if not completely mentally/emotionally stable at least on the path to self-awareness and improvement where that's concerned. And he has to value things like adventure and curiosity and picking things apart, and being creative and openminded and possibly spiritual but not in an organized religion kind of way, and he has to really, really like sex, a lot, and with great frequency and intensity. So it kinda falls naturally that I end up dating a lot of musicians and models and nightlife personalities, because they tend to match me where most of those values and lifestyle components are concerned (except for the responsible use of drugs and alcohol and the desire for emotional stability, which are harder to find in those social circles but not totally impossible). See? Not just because guys with guitars and cameras are hot. I mean, they are, but still.

Your values and your lifestyle are probably different from mine, but the fact remains: It is up to you to find someone who is compatible with you. Because mother nature isn't taking care of that part for you. She doesn't care if you end up with a jerk just so long as that jerk has good genes and is going to help you pop out a baby. Mother nature is kind of a bitch.

While we're on this subject, let's talk about something not to do, shall we? Do not, when you feel a sudden panic set in on your life, or your career, or your youth, or whatever else you feel is being threatened at the moment, decide suddenly to settle down with that person you were just "kind of seeing" because they seemed a decent way to pass the time for a while. Granted, I have more often seen guys do this than girls, but I've been susceptible to it once myself. All of a sudden it begins to look like the carousel is slowing down, the roller coaster's pulling into the station, you're not as big a deal as you thought you were, people seem less interested in you personally and professionally, your big career move turned out to be a flop, and you panic and crave some stability in your life, so you settle down into a relationship with that person you were casually seeing because you know they're a sure bet. Because you crave the spurious feeling of stability that comes with the comfort of being in a relationship. However, the comfort of being in a relationship isn't actually comfortable if you're in a relationship with the wrong person, and when you're in that panicked and vulnerable phase, you are far more likely to gloss over your vetting process and fail to choose someone who is actually compatible with you. As my hero Dr. Helen Fisher writes, "Once an individual becomes receptive, he or she is in danger of falling in love with the next reasonably acceptable person who comes along." And then you have all that sex with them that releases all that oxytocin and vasopressin in your brains, and all of a sudden you're pair-bonded to them. And you're stuck in it. And trying to get out of it makes you feel like you're in a pit of quicksand, because that chemical attachment keeps bringing you back again and again. Sometimes for years. And it's only after you've been away from them for enough time that the chemical haze finally leaves your brain and you think to yourself Oh my god, what was I thinking? How could I have wasted so much time and never seen that person for who he/she really was? And then you feel like an idiot.

So yeah. Don't do that. Please, please, please, for godssake as I bang my head on the keyboard... don't do that.

When it comes to finding a suitable mate, you need to be your own lawyer and lobby for your own best interests. Biology will ensure that you fall for someone and feel that amazing chemistry that you swear each time you will never feel again with anyone else in your life -- but only you can look out for what kind of person is actually right for you and find someone who possesses the compatibility that will make your relationship one that is actually good for you and not a total pain in the ass to be in.

poster courtesy of Karen Salmansohn

Jealousy: The March of Folly

"If 'too much jealousy' is a bad thing, why not play it safe and just have 'no jealousy'? Wouldn't that be so much simpler?" - Jon Johnson

I'm subtitling this blog entry after Barbara Tuchman's book "The March of Folly," in which she defines folly as "the pursuit of policies contrary to self-interest." In her acclaimed work, Tuchman discusses examples of folly in government, such as the Trojan War or America's involvement in Vietnam. But since this is a seduction blog, I'm going to talk about my favorite relationship folly: jealousy.

Jealousy is an ugly, destructive force. It is also a very stupid force. I have seen far more relationships torn apart from the inside by jealousy than relationships that ended from the outside as a result of cheating. Jealousy is therefore a perfect example of a pursuit that is inherently contrary to one's self-interest.

I should hope that it would go without saying by this point that when you select a boyfriend for yourself, you should aim to select one that you trust. That's pretty obvious, right? If you're the kind of person who's unable to stomach the thought of her partner ever being with someone else, then it should naturally follow that you would choose to put yourself in a situation where you feel the odds of that happening are pretty slim, no? That you would choose for yourself a boyfriend whom you feel is loyal, trustworthy, and totally into you? Seems logical to me, anyway. If monogamy is a big issue for you, then go for a guy who has a history of being monogamous. Duh.

There should only be one conversation during the entire course of your relationship where the issue of jealousy over other women gently comes into play, and that conversation is this:

"Are we exclusive?"

That's the one time where you get to tell your guy that you're not okay with his being with other women. Once you and your man agree on exclusivity, then any jealousy that follows is an insult to his integrity. He's already agreed that he's not going to sleep with anyone else, and to express doubt about that at that point is to question his character. Why would you want to be with someone whose character you feel you have to question?

And sure, some guys do cheat. I've seen that happen too, believe me. But here's what makes an expression of jealousy particularly stupid: If a guy is enough of a scumbag to cheat on you, he will also be enough of a scumbag to lie about it. The percentage of guys who will cheat on you, and then, when later interrogated, will say, "You're right honey, I did sleep with that girl," is remarkably slim. Most guys either fall into the category of those who will cheat and lie, or those who will neither cheat nor lie. So interrogating your partner really serves little use, unless you're just looking to continue living in distrust or denial.

Your degree of jealousy has to come in during your vetting process, way early on, before you even consider exclusivity with someone. You have to be able to look at him and ask yourself, "Will I feel safe with this person?" (Or hey, if you're just looking for some excitement, you can ask "Do I care whether I will feel safe with this person?") And you have to be able to give yourself a satisfactory answer before you proceed.

You must know a man's character before you attempt a relationship with him, and don't expect him to deviate too much from his already-established patterns. I once had a brief affair with a man who was a notorious player, and when I was considering dating him, I knew I would have to be totally okay with the fact that he was going to pursue sex with other girls. I thought about it and decided I'd be willing to give it a try. Unfortunately, before I even got to take a chance at it, I discovered he actually already had a girlfriend -- a girlfriend he was lying to about me and all his other conquests. But here's what was so crazy: when his girlfriend (of over a year!) finally found out the truth about him, she was shocked. I remember discussing the situation with a friend who knew everyone involved: "Uh, did she even meet her boyfriend?" he exclaimed. "How could she not know that's what he would be up to?" And it was true. Even I, having only been on like two dates with him, already knew his nature would require a girlfriend who was extremely permissive about open relationships. You have to know what you're getting into with a guy before you date him. It's that simple. If you can't stand being with a guy who gives a ton of flirtatious attention to other women, then don't date one. Or at least don't date one and then be surprised about it.

Once you've selected a guy you trust, and the two of you have agreed to exclusivity, jealousy ought to become a moot point. If you lash out at your guy in jealousy after that, it is likely to do far more harm than good. Even if your man is surrounded by hot women on a daily basis, your jealousy and the insidious way it will fester between you will do far more damage to your relationship than any of those women would be able to do on their own. It doesn't matter how hard some other hot chick pursues your guy, even if it's somewhat annoying -- if you trust your man, she should be able to walk up to him naked with a "FUCK ME" sign around her neck, and his response should be "Flattered, but no thanks." Neither is it your man's fault if some other girl is pursuing him -- while he shouldn't encourage her, he certainly can't control her behavior. If she laughs and tosses her hair and wears low-cut tops every time she sees him, that's her doing, not his, and you're an idiot if you get mad at him for it. It's one thing to say "I really get annoyed by the way that girl acts around you;" it's another thing entirely to say "I can't believe you would be such a jerk as to even allow yourself to be in the same room with her!" Do you see the difference here? It's okay to express discomfort at a situation, but it's not okay to get angry at your guy for something that will never be under his control.

Never mind the fact that social threat is almost entirely a matter of perception. If you ignore some girl who's being flirty with your man, he probably won't even remember her the next day, but if you harp on about her forever, he's far more likely to wonder why you felt threatened by her. I often like to say that telling your boyfriend "Don't talk to that girl" is the best possible advertisement you can give her.

But the real bottom line is that your jealousy and insecurity won't affect the attractiveness of the girl (or girls) you're threatened by; it will affect your attractiveness and make you entirely unfun to be around. There's only so much of that that any self-respecting man will put up with until he starts to wonder if maybe the girls you're on about are perhaps less crazy than you are.

And if your guy does cheat on you? Well, that sucks -- a lot -- but it's a risk any of us take going into a relationship, and your trying to control the outside factors was never going to prevent that from happening. A guy who is going to cheat will find a way to cheat regardless of how many women you vainly attempt to swat away from him. The odds are still more likely that your having a controlling nature will do your relationship more harm than good, because it's still futile to try to control a guy who's probably going to cheat anyway.

At any and every point in your relationship, you have to ask yourself whether you trust your partner. If you do, then great -- you should have no worries and no need to try to control any of the surrounding circumstances. If you don't, then leave the relationship, because a relationship without trust isn't worth being in at all.

January Blog Contest: Win a Phone Coaching Session!

Hello Sirens!

I'm announcing an exciting contest for all you bloggers out there. Because I want to get the word out about The New Rules Of Attraction to as many people as possible, during the month of January I am offering FIVE chances to win a 30-minute phone coaching session with me to anyone who blogs a review!

Here's how it works:

1. Read The New Rules Of Attraction.
2. Write a review of the book and post it on your blog, making sure to include links to the book's Amazon page as well as a link to my blog here (www.ardenleigh.typepad.com).
3. Email me (ardensirens@gmail.com) a link to your review. Deadline for submissions is January 31st!
4. I will randomly select five winners and contact them by email to let them know they've won a 30-minute phone coaching session with me, and we'll take it from there! (You must use your session within the month of February, unless there are extenuating circumstances that you let me know about, in which case we'll work it out somehow.)

Ready... set... GO!!

 

Where To Find Me in January 2012!

Happy new year, fellow sirens! This year is shaping up to be an exciting one, and I have jam-packed January with a whole bunch of exciting events -- book parties, club nights, concerts, and more -- so you will have more opportunities than ever before to come out and say hello! Be sure to click on the links provided below for full event details.

Here's where you can find me this month:

January 6th:
Seduction
I'll be giving a seduction seminar and signing books for this event filled with terrific speakers and performers.
8-11:30pm
House Of Virtue
322 S. Los Angeles Street
Los Angeles, CA
www.house-of-virtue.com

January 7th:
Bar Sinister
I'll be gogo dancing at this weekly goth party, but I'll have books available for purchase/signing.
11pm-2am
Boardner's
1652 North Cherokee Avenue
Hollywood, CA

January 13th:
The Wild Ones
I'll be doing an informal book signing at this weekly rock party featuring excellent DJs and gogo dancers.
12-4am
White Noise
225 Avenue B
New York, NY
www.whitenoiseny.com

January 14th:
Incantation: A Goth Extravaganza
At this goth musical event featuring a stellar band lineup, I'll be doing a burlesque performance and will have books for signing/purchase.
8:30pm-4am
Uncle Mike's
57 Murray Street
New York, NY
www.absolutionnyc.com

January 26th:
Evan Russell Saffer
I'll be hosting Evan Russell Saffer's live concert and world premiere of the band's music video "Dream Of Love's Last Dying Breath" (in which I am a featured dancer!) and will have books for purchase/signing at the merch table.
8:30pm
Tammany Hall
152 Orchard Street
New York, NY
www.evanrussellsaffer.com

January 27th:
Wendigo Presents: Killcode - Star Killer - The Compulsions - Stoned Fire - Vajra
I'll be co-hosting this amazing lineup of some of my favorite bands with Jo Schuftan of Horns Up Rocks. Books available for purchase/signing at the merch table after the show.
***Also it is my BIRTHDAY so everyone bring cake and presents!!!***
8pm
Mercury Lounge
217 E. Houston Street
New York, NY

Afterparty hosted by Dana Frank
1-4am
Chrystie 141
141 Chrystie Street
New York, NY

January 29th:
Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School
I'll be art modeling as the famous seductress Madame Recamier, and will have books available for purchase/signing during intermission and after the show.
4-6:45pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
New York, NY
www.drsketchy.com

 

Hope to see you all there!!

xo.
A.

Sex With Timaree Podcast Interviews

Hey everyone!

For those of you who are aurally inclined (no homonym intended), check out the two interviews I recorded for the Sex With Timaree podcast. Timaree is a very smart and sexy lady, and I had a blast talking with her about seduction, pick-up, long-distance dating, social media, heteroflexibility, and being yourself times ten. Click on the links below, and then you can get the direct mp3 link or download it on iTunes if you wish.

Part 1: Sex With Timaree Ep. 54

Part 2: Sex With Timaree Ep. 55

Enjoy!

If Lovin' You Requires Me To Be A Bitch, Then I Don't Want To Be A Bitch

Him: Ohh but hell isn't that fucking complicated... there's too many layers to question everything. Happiness and comfort go to war.
Me: "Happiness and Comfort Go To War." I'm going to make that into a children's book. Start 'em early on the sad facts of life.

----

If there is any weakness in my game, it is my vetting process.

I have dated a lot of guys who, in retrospect, looked terrible on paper. If I'm attracted to someone, I would rather give it my best shot and find out firsthand if a relationship is going to work than put them through some sort of screening that likely won't give me nearly as much accurate information as actually dating them would. And I'm generally okay with this -- at least, I am much more okay with dating someone because I feel passionate about him than being the kind of woman who has a checklist for every potential suitor she encounters. I mean, being hit with a checklist on the first date just isn't all that seductive. Similarly, I am all too non-judgmental about a guy's history of failed relationships or string of messy breakups and trail of broken hearts, because I give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't dating a seduction coach before, and that's it's possible that his exes simply didn't know their way around a decent relationship. Theoretically this is a bad idea, because it falls under that Oh But I'll Be The One Who's Different fallacy that so many women are tempted by. But then again, I'm rarely one to shy away from something just because it's a bad idea. And maybe the truth is that I'm egotistical enough to think that I am different, and insatiably curious enough to be okay with finding out the hard way.

If there is a second weakness in my game, it is my inability to treat people poorly.

You may think I'm tooting my own horn here -- like Oh, Arden's just trying to spin her generosity as some sort of pious flaw -- but I'm not. I actually sometimes believe that I might be more likely to get what I want out of some guys if I played nasty games, manipulated them, and made them feel bad about themselves. I see other women do it all the time, and the guys inexplicably crawl back to them again and again. Even Robert Greene (author of The Art of Seduction and one of my all-time favorite writer/philosophers) agrees that it's effective to be nasty sometimes:

"The greatest mistake in seduction is being too nice. At first, perhaps, your kindness is charming, but it soon grows monotonous; you are trying too hard to please, and seem insecure. Instead of overwhelming your targets with niceness, try inflicting some pain. Lure them in with focused attention, then change direction, appearing suddenly uninterested. Make them feel guilty and insecure."

The trouble with Greene's thesis in The Art of Seduction (and mind you, I love this book, so my admitting any flaw in it is not to be taken lightly) is that he didn't write it with the intention of helping people build relationships. He dedicates roughly ten pages at the end of the book to what happens after a seduction is culminated, in a chapter titled "Beware the Aftereffects," which is not exactly the most enticing way of describing the embarkment of two people into a healthy relationship after they've succeeded in their initial seduction. Half the examples he cites in the chapter are actually about how to break up with someone after you've seduced them -- and the art of the breakup is important too, but hopefully it's not actually part of the initial goal.

I wrote in an earlier entry about the fact that I choose to call myself a seduction coach rather than a relationship coach, because my area of expertise lies in getting the guy you want, not in how to sustain the passion for years thereafter. (That's important too, but there are plenty of other relationship authors and marriage counselors out there who are probably more qualified than I am -- I mean, come on, if ANYONE in their 20s is trying to tell you how to sustain a longterm relationship, they're either talking out of their asses or regugitating something they read from someone else.) But this doesn't mean that I believe that the purpose of your best and noblest seductions will be anything other than to explore the relationship potential you have with another human being that you truly believe you may be able to love for the rest of your life. I mean, once you've caught your big fish, you don't just throw him back! You work to keep, enjoy, and savor what you've won.

So the goal for me and for my readers of The New Rules of Attraction is to set your sights on a guy you want and be able take the steps you need to be able forge a relationship with him. I wrote this book so that people could learn to be better to one another and so women could create meaningful relationships with the kind of men they desire. Certainly I make sure to teach women how to make their value known, to ensure that their guy doesn't take them for granted, and to adhere to their bottom lines when they feel their needs aren't being properly met -- I don't advocate being stepped on. But I don't see the point in going out of your way to create a relationship that makes you both miserable. So, maybe I end up being a little too nice for my own good: I would rather compliment than criticize, prefer positive reinforcement to negative, get as much joy (perhaps more) from giving as from receiving, and have no desire to have a fight when I could choose instead to have a calm and rational discussion.

I don't think these are bad qualities. But I have met guys -- many of them -- who were confused, wary, or ultimately unsatisfied by my inability to be baited into fights and my reluctance to nag and complain. It baffled me. But I watched them slip away and inexplicably return to relationship patterns that instead kept them in a state of comfortable misery. I caught them, sometimes, in the middle of a fight with some romantic partner on the street or embroiled in some Twitter drama with some love interest trash-talking them to all their followers. And all I could think was, "Well, I see why things didn't work out now." Because like Meatloaf, I will do anything for love, but I won't do that.

(I had to find an excuse to put this in somewhere.)

It's just that I am not willing to pay the price required to be in a relationship with someone who needs constant drama, who needs his flaws pointed out and his wounds continually picked open, because the price of that is who I end up becoming. I don't want to be that girl. I have said this time and time again and again but I cannot say it enough: so much of this work is about working toward your own good opinion of who you want to be when you love someone. And keeping any one guy, no matter how great he is, is not worth the price of my becoming a nagging bitch.

Is this so weird? Really, I mean, is this so bizarre? And this brings me back to what I said in the beginning about the weakness of my vetting process. My eternal optimism and adamant unwillingness to back away from a challenge may simply bring a stronger ratio of these kinds of people into my dating life than might be normal. I acknowledge that possibility.

And if there is yet another weakness in my game -- perhaps my greatest weakness -- it is that I somehow think that my partner's issues will all resolve if I just love him enough.

And that sounds so dumb when I say it out loud and even worse when I write it, but goddamn it I am fucking picky and if I love you, if I Arden Leigh fucking fall in love with you, I believe you deserve to be happy and I believe you should believe it too. It all seems so simple from where I am: if something makes you happy, do more of it; if something makes you upset, try to avoid doing it again. There: happiness explained. The trouble here is that there is this awful, insidious thing that sneaks in called comfort -- and comfort and misery can go hand in hand more often than you might think. Our brains are horribly, tragically, prohibitively, self-destructively resistant to change (remember that post I wrote about your amygdala?), and it is more likely that we will stay in a situation or pattern we are used to even if it makes us miserable than it is that we will leave it to pursue happiness in the great big scary unknown. Happiness and comfort go to war.

This shit is what really breaks my heart -- not the ends of my own relationships (I mean, come on, I'm a seduction coach, I'll get over it and date someone else), but watching people I have come to love continue to run on a hamster wheel of their own misfortune and knowing that there is no more that I can do about it than I have already done. I can't come down out of the sky and arrange someone else's puzzle pieces for them. I can give support and guidance, but ultimately they've got to do it on their own. And knowing they might never step up to that plate is by far the worst part of letting go.

This post ended up being more depressing than it should have been, considering it's the first post I've made since celebrating the release of my book (which has been awesome, by the way, and thanks to all of you who have come out to celebrate with me). Part of me thinks that for the next few months while I garner new readers here from the book's publicity I ought to just stick to cute posts about personal branding and how wearing red is scientifically proven to make men find you more sexually attractive. But I think one thing you guys like about me and the reason you would buy the book in the first place is that I've always been honest with you. And this is something I feel I need to talk about because chances are you are going to run into it at some point and it really sucks -- I mean it really, really sucks so fucking hard -- but there's not a lot you can do if like me you are unwilling to provide the emotional sadism or overall instability some people require.

I wrote on my Formspring earlier tonight a little bit about how we must not lose ourselves within the comfort of a relationship. And it's true that we must not lose ourselves in the generosity of a relationship, but we must also not lose ourselves in the selfishness of a relationship. And by that I mean that at the end of the day you must be able to look at yourself in the mirror and think "I am fucking awesome, and I did a great job at this." No one is ever worth sacrificing your own integrity. If you fail in a seduction, fail like a fucking champ. When it's all said and done, lovers may come and go, but you're stuck with you, and you had better be someone you like.

Divorcing the Outcome: The Manhating Epidemic, The Fallibility of Advice, and When To Not Give a Shit About a Dude

I have a few related things to rant about today, so I'm going to tie them all together into one blog entry.

1.

A longtime dating advice columnist recently joined Twitter. I started following her and about 60 percent of the time I immensely enjoy what she writes. The trouble is that her smart and insightful commentary is often lamentably peppered with insults directed at the male half of the populace:

"A man who can't think for himself makes a good husband."

"If men's penises looked more like shoes, women would ask to take them out more often."

"We need to attach 'motion sensors' to men's lips. Really."

"The best boyfriend is ALWAYS the one with more money."

These would be funny quips from a comedian. But they're not from a comedian; they're from a popular dating advice columnist.

Allow me also to point you toward an excerpt from the terribly antiquated but somehow still popular tome "Why Men Love Bitches" by Sherri Argov:

"If that fateful day ever does arrive when he tells you that you are a bitch? Stop, and take a deep breath. Then enjoy the moment. Smile internally as you say to yourself, 'Okay. Now I know he truly does love me.'"

So if a guy is unhappy enough with you to call you a bad name, that's a good thing? Another example from her follow-up book, "Why Men Marry Bitches" (which, for the record, consists 90 percent of information already laid out in its predecessor, so save your money):

"Let's rewrite the fairy tale, shall we?... The storybook ending should read like this: Once upon a time there was a princess. Along came a prince who asked her if she'd like to ride on his white horse. She said, 'I'd like to take a ride on your horse, but I can't right now because I'm a little busy getting on my own horse. Go ride off into the sunset without me, and I'll catch up to you a little later.' Suddenly, the prince is dumbfounded. He's never heard anything like this before. Something clicks inside him, and it starts a fire within him that he can't put out, because she doesn't need him. And then he says, 'I have to be with her for the rest of my life.' Then they fall in love, marry, and ride off into the sunset. And then she tortures him... lovingly ever after."

And that's the end of the book. Not a supposedly lighthearted joke somewhere in the middle -- the fifth-to-last word in the book is tortures. This is a New York Times bestseller. Are we serious here? Is it just me, or has relationship advice become sorrily saturated with manhating?

This girls' club misandric mentality has trickled down and infiltrated the vernacular of the average woman too. A guy friend of mine made a Facebook post the other day about how women often go crazy after a guy has sex with them, and one woman responded, "Eat a dick. Some of us fuck like men. I.e., fuck. Get dressed. Never call again. No truly independent woman has time for the bullshit. Careers are time consuming."

The intentions behind these philosophies are well-meaning. Too many women act desperate, clingy, and needy around the men they want, and this behavior ends up chasing them away. So authors and coaches push women into believing that they don't need men by framing guys as worthless creatures secondary to more important things like careers and shoes and pink martinis, hoping this will at least sway the pendulum far enough away from neediness that maybe they'll attract a guy at some point merely by not doing what doesn't work.

But if the only cure for needy desperation that these so-called relationship gurus offer is an attitude that reviles men and glorifies their supposed stupidity and worthlessness, that really doesn't seem at all useful, especially when our goal is, y'know, to actually build relationships with these creatures. Furthermore, it's insulting to women that rather than trust them to implement advice that actually works, we offer them fables to keep them from fucking up. Why do female advice gurus assume that the members of their own gender are too dumb to understand what proactive steps they can take toward building a satisfying relationship? Why do we simply give them the lovelife equivalent of telling them not to cross the street so they don't get hit by a car?

If what you wanted was a life filled with girls'-nights-out and manhating trash talk, you wouldn't be reading this blog. You're here because what you want is a fulfilling relationship with an awesome guy who makes you happy. And that's totally okay -- that is what you are biologically programmed to want, and it doesn't make you weak or anti-feminist to admit you want a great guy.

2.

I received a negative comment or two on my Formspring a few weeks ago complaining that my advice didn't work (and calling me a bitch -- well, actually, a bith -- making me question both the geniality as well as the intellect of the anonymous questioner). It seems pretty bold in my eyes to complain about the quality of the free advice I offer to anonymous seekers limited in their question-writing to something like 500 characters (though that doesn't stop some from submitting one question written out over four or five different character-limited entries). I mean, sure, I do the best I can with the limited information I'm given over the internet, but if you're really serious about wanting to strategize for the best possible outcome in your situation, maybe it might be a better idea to book an in-person coaching session where you'll have ample time to describe the details of your predicament and I'll be able to give you a full assessment that is informed by seeing your deportment firsthand.

But more to the point, the best and most accurate advice in the world is still never a guarantee of success when it comes to romance. Why? Because nobody is obligated to love you just because you did everything right. Furthermore, even if you do everything right and you do win the love of your desired object, there is no guarantee that he is going to do everything right just because he loves you. In fact, love is a scary thing that often makes people run away, get defensive, or screw up royally because the stakes are so high (see my recent post The Loneliness Epidemic for more on this phenomenon). I laugh when I see other coaching companies sprinkle their badly copywritten websites with words like "Today!" "Right Now!" "Get Any Guy/Girl You Want!" "100% Chance of Success!" It's like, do these people have such a failed understanding of human relationships that they actually forgot about this pesky little thing people have that's called free will?

So why do this at all? Because when it comes to building the kinds of relationships you want, you will want to know that for your part you did absolutely everything you could to stack your odds in favor of things working. You can look back on a failed relationship and say, "That guy acted like a dick," or "He wasn't who I thought he was" or even "I guess he just didn't have feelings for me," but there is nothing more heartbreaking than having to say, "I fucked up. I made a big mistake. I could have done some things a lot better."

And when you know that you did everything you could possibly do and things still didn't work out, it makes moving on that much easier. In that way, you are able to divorce yourself from the outcomes of your seductions because you know that whatever didn't work wasn't something that was in your control. I once attempted to seduce a man who lied and told me he was single when he wasn't; obviously my seduction didn't succeed because it was based on misinformation. Not my fault. I once attempted to form a relationship with a man who had such a problem with drugs and alcohol that in his incapacitated state he would start fights with me that he wouldn't remember the next day and get mad at me for having left in the middle of the night; obviously that didn't work out so great either. Again, not my fault. And after a brief period spent being mildly irritated about what happened each time, I moved on, knowing that there was nothing else I could have done in either of those situations to have effected a better outcome.

This is what the study of seduction will do for you. It won't guarantee you a stable and happy relationship with every single guy you want, because some guys are douchebags who are incapable of stable and happy relationships. It will help you weed out said douchebags by process of elimination and feel satisfied knowing that you at least gave it a shot and found out their true natures, and it will allow you to stack your odds that when a good guy comes along who is actually capable of treating a woman well, he will choose you, because you will also know how to treat him well.

3.

This is the point in your life when you get to manhate a little bit like all these so-called relationship gurus advise you to do -- when it is directed toward a specific man who is actually deserving of your disdain. When I knew I was done with the alcoholic, I told him I needed space, and then I texted him telling him I was going to Vegas for a week with a girlfriend. And I did go to Vegas, and my girlfriend and I drank all sorts of overpriced sugary pink drinks and danced atop tables to Britney songs and got men to spend money on us in the casinos and shopped for shoes and trash-talked all the guys in our lives for all the stupid shit they had done. Because at that point I had earned the right to not give a shit about the dude in my life and to chant into the heavens how better off I was without him.

Here's the difference: When I was done, I went back home, reassessed things, and said to myself, "Okay, so now that I've moved on, what kind of man do I want in my life and how am I going to go about finding him and attracting him?" Because I had faith that if I expected the next guy in my life to not be a worthless, incompetent asshole, I would have a far greater chance of finding someone who was not a worthless, incompetent asshole. And I knew that if I treated him like someone who was not a worthless, incompent asshole, he would be more likely to behave like someone who was not a worthless, incompetent asshole.

And for the record I did find another guy two months later, and he was not a worthless, incompetent asshole. In fact he's been pretty awesome so far.

Manhating -- even the seemingly subtle (but perhaps more insidious) joking variety -- is no way to live your life. If you set up a human being in your life to fail, they will. Yes, some guys are going to be douches. I'm sure you've met plenty of them by now; I know I have. But if the only consolation you hold for your loneliness and desperation is clinging to a belief that guys are worthless and can't add anything of value to your life, you're not only knowingly lying to yourself, but you're not helping yourself find actual happiness. If you didn't want a guy in your life, you wouldn't have to go out there and talk shit about them so much. You'd be talking about your career instead, instead of talking about the idea of "talking about your career instead of talking about a guy." Please, write to these so-called gurus, and tell them that gender-hating isn't cool from either side of the divide. Yeah, I know, we women put up with it for a long time and we're just doling out some long-awaited payback. But we're never going to be happy with one another if we don't call a truce at some point and acknowledge the fact that we do, in fact, need each other. You know, for that little task at hand we have, called furthering the species.

So once you're done purging last year's jerks from your system, take a deep breath and start afresh. And give the next guy in your life the benefit of the doubt that he might actually be a decent person with whom you could build a beautiful and successful way of life.

photo by Emily Strange

Oh and have I mentioned you can preorder my book now? You should go do that.

Do It Now: Seduction and the Grand Gesture

“I'm not sentimental -- I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last -- the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

"Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power."
-- Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

"Give me everything tonight
For all we know we might not get tomorrow
Let's do it tonight."
-- Pitbull & Ne-Yo, Give Me Everything

 

So I just got back from an amazing vacation in Cancun that I took with an amazing boy and I feel really terrific. I can't tell you how grateful I am that we decided to take this trip together, despite how kind of ridiculous it may have been as an idea.

That it happened at all was kind of a fluke; we didn't have the idea to take a vacation together and then start looking up hotels and travel deals. We were sitting in a surf-themed bar in midtown one night, sipping rum drinks with names like "Mermaid" and "Sandy Ass" while flatscreen tvs on the walls played scenes of ocean waves, and I was thinking how nice it would be to take a tropical vacation together. Almost immediately an email came in on my blackberry from a travel deal site I signed up for, offering an all-inclusive deal to a five-diamond resort in Cancun. (This is also a noteworthy example of the principle that you get what you ask the universe to give you, a concept I'll be expounding upon more in another upcoming post.) It was a great price and the resort looked beautiful. I showed it to the boy sitting next to me and said, "This looks like a great idea. We should go." And we did.

Too many people, when dating, try not to make any sudden moves or offer up anything that might ruin their air of nonchalance. There's certainly something to be said for an easygoing nature that doesn't rock too many boats, but here it might be prohibitive. I don't see many people my age and in my social circles enjoying grand romantic gestures together. It's too much of a risk to end up seeming uncool. Heaven forbid they do something too early on that makes it look like they're getting too serious.

Here's the thing, though. The nature of the seducer is such that he or she knows that nothing in this world is meant to last. And rather than turn nihilistic over this fact and come to the conclusion that therefore nothing is worth trying, the seducer believes that therefore everything is worth trying. They suck each love affair dry because they know that the odds are overwhelming that their passion won't last forever.

I don't say this as some noncommital, philandering maneater trying to justify a hedonistic lifestyle -- this is actually scientifically documented fact. In her book The Anatomy of Love, anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher describes a phenomenon she calls the four-year itch. Putting together data of couples from sixty-two different cultures around the world, she found that divorces tended to happen most often during or around the fourth year of marriage. "Among these hundreds of millions of men and women frm sixty-two different cultures," she writes, "individuals speak different languages, ply different trades, wear different clothes, carry different currencies, intone different prayers, fear different devils, and harbor different hopes and different dreams. Nevertheless, their divorces regularly cluster around a four-year peak."

Why does the feeling of love seem to occupy such a ubiquitous timeframe? Fisher theorizes that we evolved to fall in love for four years at a time because in primitive human societies that was the amount of time needed to rear a child through infancy. "Like pair-bonding in foxes, robins, and many other species that mate only through a breeding season," she postulates, "human pair-bonds originally evolved to last only long enough to raise a single dependent child through infancy, the first four years."

The universal love timeline runs deeper than societal constructs, however. Emotions of love, as unromantic as it may seem, are dictated by chemicals in the brain. That rush of electricity you feel in your chest as you catch sight of your object of affection is actually just a surge of a naturally occurring amphetamine called phenylethylamine (PEA for short) saturating our limbic systems. The rush of PEA you feel with your lover lasts about eighteen months to three years, because your brain can't sustain a state of basically being on speed for any longer than that amount of time, so either it stops releasing the amphetamines or its receptors become desensitized to them over time. Following that time, your brain instead starts to release endorphins, or endogenous morphines, which are natural opiates that produce feelings of attachment, security, and peace, so that you and your loved one fall into a comfortable routine.

Psychologists theorize that we evolved to feel this way because in order to propagate the species, we needed to feel enough attraction to each other (PEA) to be interested in having sex with each other long enough to effect a pregnancy, and to stay comfortable with each other (endorphins) long enough to raise a child. After that, we're kind of on our own.

Depressing truth: We were not programmed to live happily ever after. We were programmed to further the species. After the time deemed necessary to pop out a kid, mother nature doesn't really care what else goes down in our relationships.

Certainly there are plenty of cases where couples have stayed together for decades, and we can assume that they are happy enough, seemingly in some marriages more than in others. But the overwhelming trend is that if we want to keep romance exciting through the years, we are bucking our own biological system.

I'm far too young to call myself an expert on marriage or longterm relationships (my longest relationship lasted -- surprise! -- four years), which is why I prefer to call myself a seduction coach or a dating coach rather than a relationship coach, despite the obvious crossover there. Here is what I will say on the subject:

You cannot count on your relationships, or even your feelings about them, to last. Unexpected change can happen at any moment. You could fall out of love, your partner could inexplicably leave you, either one of you could get hit by a bus when crossing the street. Therefore, if there's something you want to do with that person, do it now. Not five minutes from now. Now. NOW NOW NOW.

Socially, this attitude isn't the norm. As I mentioned earlier, people generally want to seem nonchalant about their relationships early on, and things like spontaneous romantic vacations seem to clash with those notions. There's a way around this, however.

For seducers, adopting the attitude of the grand gesture is completely normal. And one thing I have learned over the course of my studies in seduction is that you can make just about anything seem normal as long as you hold the frame that it is normal. For example, if a wealthy man started dating you and wanted to take you to Ibiza for a weekend after only knowing you for a few weeks, you might think of that as being completely normal on his part because his wealth allows him to travel all the time. As a seductress, you must incorporate the grand romantic gesture into your everyday life so that when you make one, it's completely normal for you.

Casanova was known for this. He had a reputation as a seducer with an adventurous nature, so when he suggested to a young woman that she come along on a trip with him (chaperoned, of course, in order to placate her parents), it seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary to him. Once he took a young woman and her two sisters on a surprise visit to Milan. Once there, he gave the girl a beautiful dress to wear and took all of them to dinner. In his world, things like this happened all the time, and if you had the good fortune of being seduced by him, they would happen to you too. It said more about the experience of being with him than it did about his feelings for you. In this way, he avoided any lack of coolness while still having amazing romantic adventures.

When I first got out of my aforementioned four-year relationship, I didn't have the reputation as a seductress that I do today, partly because I was entering a new social circle in which I was mostly unknown, and partly because I had just been mostly monogamous for the past four years and was in the process of getting my dating sea legs back. The first man I started dating happened to be celebrating his birthday exactly two weeks after our first date. Conventionally speaking, it was probably too early in the dating process to make a big fuss over it, but what he didn't know about me is that if I give a shit about someone, I'm going to make sure they have an awesome birthday. So when he asked me if he could hold his party at a burlesque show where I was performing, I set him up with a table, performed to one of his songs (he was a musician), and baked him a birthday cake which I had all the dancers bring out at the end of the show. He loved it -- but the detrimental part of it, for me anyway, was that although it seemed normal in my head, it wasn't yet enough a part of my routine and reputation to look completely normal to the outside world. He left me shortly after -- not, he later told me, for lack of interest, but rather because he was afraid I was going to go back to my ex. He didn't believe that the way I was with him was sincere, because at the time I had no known precedent for it. He was afraid it might have somehow been a fluke.

Nowadays it's known that that kind of thing is completely normal for me. Since then I've thrown all kinds of birthday parties for my friends, performed burlesque to many musicians' songs for their birthdays, and I have a reputation for baking cakes and cookies for birthdays, concerts, and any other occasion that in my mind seems likely to benefit from baked goods. I do it because I like it, and it's fun. And now it's no longer weird. It may still be a grand gesture, but like Casanova's trips around Italy, it's generally considered pretty normal.

That's the sucky part -- is that any change in your behavior, such as taking lovers on exciting vacations or throwing people extravagant birthday parties, is going to feel slightly weird and out of character for you the first couple of times you do it, and you will probably encounter some bumps in the road like I did with my lover who doubted my initial grand gesture. That is the small price you are going to have to pay in the beginning for the excitement of assimilating these behaviors into your everyday routine. Don't get frustrated if it feels weird at first. Just keep doing it and after a while it will become what you do, and moreover it will become who you are.

And as a seductress, you owe it to yourself and your targets to make the grand romantic gesture part of who you are. Today of all days I am so grateful that this is what I do with my life, and that I am the kind of girl who throws up her hands and says fuck it and goes to Cancun with a boy she's only been seeing for maybe eight months whom technically she doesn't even call her boyfriend (see my eyerolls over dating semantics in my blog post The Failing Love Lexicon), because goddamn, I had such an amazing time and I couldn't imagine not doing something like that just because I was afraid of being seen as giving too much of a fuck. The experience of being with you should be something that is known to be remarkable and is breathtakingly anticipated by those who desire you. Make it part of your reputation. Be known for having amazing adventures.

This quality will not only attract more targets to you, but will probably also help you in the odds of overcoming the four-year itch. Going back to the topic of brain chemistry, it is also a scientifically documented fact that doing exciting and even dangerous things with someone will cause you to fall for each other more deeply and more quickly than you would have otherwise, due to the release of a chemical in your brain called dopamine that bonds you together when that happens. If you do want to beat the odds, have adventures together.

And even if you don't beat the odds -- which, as a romantic realist, I realize is the more likely scenario (after all, the majority of relationships end at some point) -- hey, at least you milked your time together for all it was worth. There is little that's more heartbreaking than looking back at a failed relationship and wishing you had done more, said more, or allowed yourself to feel more. Whenever I'm not sure what's the right course of action to take, I often ask myself how I would want to live today if I knew the world were ending next week. Right now I feel pretty good about that.

But most importantly, you owe it to yourself to be the kind of person who does exciting and out-of-the-ordinary things with her lovers. This is the kind of life you should be living, and the kind of life I wish for you all. Don't wait for someone else to come along and do it for you -- for all you know, they're already out there waiting for you to do it for them.

Respect the Game

Not too long ago I attended a party where an occasional lover of mine happened to be. As the evening waxed into the late hours and I found myself sitting next to him off to the side on the fringes of the action, one of his friends approached us. Amidst the blur of latenight party histrionics I can't recall the exact words that were spoken, but the friend pointed to me and instructed me not to leave the party anytime soon, and then spoke to the man I was with and implied that if he was planning on sleeping with me, it was only fair that he himself should get to do so as well. "I mean," he said, "I was thinking this could be like a community thing."

The man I was with looked at his friend coolly and said, "Hey, I worked for this. I waited a long time and put in a lot of effort. I was the hunter here, so I reap the rewards."

The baldfaced desire for sex is an ugly thing. That's why seduction is so critical -- it allows us to smooth the edges around baseness of our desires and present them in a way that is tempting and palatable. Without seduction and the patience that necessarily comes with it, we are telling our targets that our desire for intercourse with their physical bodies is more important to us than their feelings about it. The simple, physical act of sex itself becomes the priority, when what ought to be tantamount is the mutually shared desire for sex.

My occasional lover was correct in his reply -- mostly, at least; I might argue instead that it was I who was the hunter and put in the work as I had had my sights set on him for a long time -- but either way, we did make each other wait. Over the span of many months, we teased each other, put each other off, exchanged playful kisses, stole a few moments together in semi-public, and then finally capitulated. It was important to each of us that when the sex happened, we knew it was sex we each definitely wanted to have. Without that mutual desire, there would have been no point.

I mean, what IS the point, really? If all you want is the physical act of sex with someone, why not hire a prostitute? I suggest that with no derogatory implications, by the way -- by the very nature of engaging in her industry, a prostitute is willingly advertising a desire for paying clients and for simple, transactional sex, and she (or he) knows what she is getting out of it, even if it is different (but of equal value perhaps) than what her client is getting out of it. In that way, at least you are honoring her industry and the value of the pleasure she provides instead of simply foisting the crudeness of your sexual covetousness on someone (like me at the party) to whom you are offering neither financial compensation nor the less morphous compensation of mutually assured desire.

I heard a story from a stripper friend once about an interaction she had with one of the hosts at her club. She pulled him aside one night and asked how she could earn her way into more introductions to high-paying clients -- she was attractive, responsible, and tipped the hosts well, and was wondering why she was often being passed over for more lucrative private rooms. According to her, the host replied, "Every girl wants those rooms. There's not a lot you can do other than show up and look good and compete with the rest of the girls on the floor. Or... you could take me home and fuck me against every wall of your house."

What kind of man wants to have sex with a woman knowing she is only doing it to get ahead in her industry? Where's the joy in that? My friend said that what made her sad about it is that prior to his remark, they had been flirting a bit and she had found him at least somewhat intriguing. But that comment killed any potential attraction. Worse, when she related the story to another dancer at her club, her colleague replied, "Oh, well that doesn't work. Because I totally fucked him and he still doesn't introduce me to his clients."

I have no respect for people who don't honor the game of seduction. Impatience is a selfish and highly unattractive trait. If you want to have sex with me, I am all for it. In fact, I am rooting for you! Being seduced is an immensely pleasurable experience, and I would love for you to succeed with me, to cause me to crave you and then sweep me away into pleasure. But you need to put in the kind of work that I myself put in when I want to have sex with someone. Any less says that you don't really care about how I feel about it; that your main priority is simply the act of sticking your dick in me. And your appetite for that is not really a huge compliment.

Seductions can be swift, resulting in sex within just a few days. Some of the best sex I've had this year has been with a man whom I slept with for the first time just three days after meeting him. Some seductions can be sloppily hasty, resulting in same-night onetime sex, and while seductions of that ilk rarely create desire that lasts any longer than that one night, at the very least I still respect them as seductions. At least they're not bribes or acts of haggling with friends for access to their hard-won conquests.

The sad thing about the incident with my occasional lover's friend is that he is tall, attractive, and talented, and I would not have entirely ruled out the possibility of sleeping with him at some point. But by showing his ass with such a brazen act of impatience and selfishness, he's pretty much eliminated himself as a candidate for my bedroom. You have to play the game with me and prove yourself a kindred spirit. There are no shortcuts.

Back at the party, when I sensed what was going on between the two men, I raised my hand and said, "Excuse me, do I get a say in this?" The friend looked at me and said, "Sure, what's your say in this?"

"I'm way too tired to handle both of you," I replied to him. "But if you guys wanna hook up with each other, I'll totally watch."

Moral of the story? If you don't want your attempt at sex with me to result in my making a gay joke about you boning your buddy, don't skip the seduction.

My Book's New Title and Cover!

 

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