Seduction as Gift of the Self

This started out as a discussion about ethics.

Late last night, someone facebook chatted me asking if I thought I could seduce him.  I'd never met him before.  So I replied, "If you inspired me to, I believe that I could."  He then dared me to seduce him, and told me he thought my "techniques" wouldn't work on him.  I declined politely, telling him that I had no interest in expending the effort necessary for a seduction on someone who had not yet inspired me.  He countered that if I claimed to have a skill set, I should be able to prove it.  "The problem with that," I replied, "is that with seduction there is collateral damage.  There are ethics involved.  If I were a well-trained sniper, would I shoot someone in the head just to prove it to you?"  He asked me then if I would tell my students to put ethics before desire.

"You don't understand me," I replied. "The presence of desire is what makes seduction ethical."

There are a lot of great things about being a seduction coach.  Everyone wants to talk to you at parties and ask you questions about your work and get your advice on their love lives and it all makes for a lively and exciting time.  What's not so great about being a seduction coach -- especially now that I'm single -- is sitting down on a first date with someone you kinda like and getting asked what you do.  Trust me, it's an awkward moment.  Not only because you get the feeling that you're suddenly being watched, but also because you were right in the middle of trying to establish trust with this person, and now he's looking at you as though you're about to stick a pin in him, put him under a glass case and give him a Latin name.  What reason does he have to believe that he's not just another moosehead I'm planning to hang on my wall, or a social experiment I'm planning to blog about later?

The only answer that I have to this is my integrity.  My ethics.  My reputation.

I've never cheated on anyone, nor do I intend to.  I've never broken up a happy relationship.  (Come to think of it, I don't think I've even broken up an unhappy relationship -- maybe once?  I don't know if I can take credit for that though, seemed like it was coming anyway.)  I've never led someone to believe that I felt something about them that I didn't actually feel.  I've never offered something I couldn't deliver.  Can I always tell how things are going to play out?  No.  But I do my best to manage expectations and be congruent in my intentions.

In part, my reputation is self-serving.  If I were to operate unethically in my seductions, the trail of hurt and anger left behind me would catch up to me very soon.  People would have good reason not to trust me, and not to get involved with me.  This would then dramatically decrease my number of available targets.  Therefore, I keep a polished reputation because it keeps my range of options wider.  Yes, self-serving.

But by another turn, my reputation is altruistic.  And this is where I get into the main thrust of this blog entry, about seduction being ultimately the gift of oneself.

I watch what I do and how I operate because when I do meet the next person that I fall in love with, I don't want that person to have to be with someone who's done a lot of bad things.  I know that I am going to think the world of that person, and I am going to believe that he deserves someone wonderful, someone kind, generous, and loving.  Someone who's brought good into the world rather than harm.  And that's who I want to be, because that's what I want to be able to offer him.

There's a lot of badassery on the surface of what I do with Sirens.  There's a lot of selfishness in the language, about getting what you want, about wrapping men around your little finger, about lining 'em up and shooting 'em down like some sort of Bond girl in a hot catsuit.  I joke about being called evil and being called a predator, because hey, if it comes your way, use it.  Because in marketing it's always smart to appeal to people's self-interest rather than their sense of generosity.  And it's not untruthful -- yes, I can help you attain that skill set, and I guess it's up to you how you use it.  But for me -- and maybe for you too, I hope -- at the root of seduction there has always been a deep altruism.  (You're going to have to follow me on this one.)

When I love, I love hard.  And I believe that the person I love deserves the very best that I and the world have to offer him.  And so when I seduce him, when I am essentially offering him the gift of myself, I believe that he deserves to have the very best Arden Leigh possible.

I've been called a narcissist, and there are certainly more inaccurate things that have been said about me.  But sometimes I believe that it's this altruism that is at the root of what could be called my self-obsession.  Yeah, I worry about whether I'm too heavy or too skinny at times, or I compete a bit too hard in driving myself toward success, or I obsess about how much I've got in the bank, or I agonize over how I'm perceived, or I constantly study myself and search out things about me that could be improved upon.  And who knows if it's always healthy, and sure, it's partially self-serving too -- since we only get one go-round at this life as far as we know, why not spend my time on earth as the best me possible, for my own satisfaction?  But I can't deny that much of this comes from the drive to offer the person I love the best gift I can possibly give him when I give him myself.  Even if I haven't met him yet. 

I mean, when love comes knocking at my door, I don't want it to catch me getting fat on the couch in a coffee-stained tracksuit.  It's like the parable of the twelve virgins with the oil lamps.  (Anyone else go to Catholic school for twelve years?)  I want to be prepared.  When I meet that person, I want to look great and have amazing things going for myself.  I want to have interesting things to talk about.  When we go out, I want to know several great restaurants where I can take him and have plenty of great dresses I can wear.  I want to know how to be a good listener and how to make him feel understood.  I want to be able to understand.  When he undresses me for the first time, I want to be wearing spectacular lingerie.  When he comes to my house, I want to have my wine rack stocked with the good stuff and eggs in the fridge for breakfast.  I want my bathtub sparkling clean and stocked with really good shower gel.  I want 600-thread-count sheets on my awesome bed with my killer mattress.  And I want to have left any imprints of past wounds or wrongdoings behind me so that I can treat him fairly and be present when I'm with him.  I want to greet him into my life in the best way possible.  I mean, fuck.  Yes.  Welcome.  I've been waiting.

Why does it matter?  Maybe it doesn't, to him.  Maybe he'd love me anyway, maybe he wouldn't even notice the difference.  But I will.  And until he proves otherwise, I will work under the assumption that it's what he deserves, if he's going to one day be the person I love.  Because why not be optimistic about it while we're in it?  Why not assume that everything's going to go beautifully?  And if it doesn't turn out that way, oh well.  Better to have been prepared even if the circumstance didn't present itself.

But most importantly, far more importantly than the sheets on my bed or the lingerie I'm wearing, when I love, I want to be able to offer someone the love of a good person.  Someone who hasn't gone around breaking hearts just because she can, or slept with scores of people out of boredom, or used the validation of others just to feed her own ego.  Someone to whom love, to whom sex, to whom seduction, really means something.  If I seduce someone, I want him to think of it as the highest praise he could receive from me.  Because like I said, when I love, I love hard. 

I don't know, guys.  Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age.  I sliced my arm open (as you likely read in my last blog) and that sort of outer vulnerability has crept inward like a big metaphor.  I feel like a lot of my seduction work lately has evolved into this kind of thing, where it's not just about tiny tactical moves but rather about big things like risk, acceptance, love, transcendence.  About kicking fear in the ass and living as big and as fully as you possibly can.  About beating the self-sabotage impulse and not letting stupid things like pain or loss get in the way.  About embracing it all and coming after the life that you want.  I dread going back and reading over my manuscript again -- I've evolved so much since I started writing it two years ago.  And maybe the publishing world just wants a book about lingerie and eye-accessing cues and embedded commands.  Maybe they're all waiting on me so they can pull on their Bond girl catsuits and run off on a seduction shooting spree.  That would be even scarier.  Well, we still need the tiny tactical moves, I suppose.  It's just about how we use them.

So in the meantime, guys, remember in all your pursuits to actually be the kind of person that you want people to fall in love with.  You can go around with your seductress ray gun and take everyone down, but that stuff will stick to you if you don't watch out, and when you meet that person who really matters, it'll come back to haunt you.  So make your seduction truly mean something.  Seduction is, after all, a gift.

Comments

[Nix Nepenthe]

Thats a disturbingly sexy photo. But how in heavens name did you manage that during a performance???

[Arden Leigh]

There's a video of the whole thing on bodymod.tv (episode #14), but it is really gruesome. The basic story is I was ripping out sutures onstage with a seamripper and the lighting was a lot darker than I would have liked it. Who knew cheap seamrippers were capable of cutting through muscle tissue.

[Nix Nepenthe]

Dear Christ! I'm glad you're ok! And let me know the next time you perform.... Sounds not to be missed!

[Arden Leigh]

Haha thanks! Well I'm doing two shows back to back at Slipper Room tomorrow, one at 8:30 and one at 10:30. If you're around, come out for either, or both! :)

[Captain Scorpio]

First off, the cut is mad sexy. Okay, yes, this is from a guy who's written cannibal love poems, but still.

Second, I am so on with every word of this. Love caught me fat, coffee-stained and locked in the bathroom. I'm now treating it like zombie apocalypse: not looking for it to happen, but not gonna be caught unprepared.

[Charlie]

I really appreciate the Candor of this entry. Your passion for love and romance run much deeper than what most people see as (a sexy vixen bending the wills of mortal men haha). In this entry you deal with Karma, the interplay of personal and universal energy, and the integrity you strive for in confident social interaction. I would not hesitate to say that you are far more enlightened than people believe you to be (or than most people are). Highly sensitive and emotional attune, I don't think you slicing your arm opened has softened you or made you re-think your ways. You, like everyone else on the planet (whether they are MINDFUL OF IT OR NOT) are multi-faceted with the potential for great emotion capacity. Maybe people who don't understand you saying or thinking "WHAT a manipulative predator, what a heartless bitch" has effected you on a empathic level. Either way you must admit there can be no aggression without softness. No fire without water. it's a balance :) that's what makes the human experience so fascinating; so exciting!
The depth of your work continues to intrigue me! :)

[Arden Leigh]

@Scorp -- Haha totally! Thank you!

@Charlie -- Thanks. Yeah, I do feel a touch misunderstood at times. What a lot of people don't realize is that to devote so much time to studying seduction in the first place, you have to really love love. It's not so much that I think my arm-slice made me re-think my ways so much as just broaden my focus a bit (though admittedly it was happening even before the arm-slice incident occurred, when I was out in LA the week before). I don't think there's anything wrong with my material so much as it's just the trees, and this is the forest.

The evil predator comments have always kind of amused me. I'll use 'em, because in a way they're kinda hot, but it also shows me that whoever's saying them doesn't know much about me. At the same time, being evil is ultimately not going to be that seductive. A touch of danger, sure, but if you're really a bad person at heart, no one's going to want to be with you. There's really not even utility in it beyond facetious playful marketing language. Though as Carla Bruni-Sarkozy said, "I'd rather be called a predator than an old flea-bag. Predator -- it's not that bad for a woman."

Thanks again for all the nice words. :)

[Elizabeth]

Hello,

I've just recently begun reading your blog and I find it to be a rare wealth of well-written information. I was wondering if you could write a post for those who have zero experience with seduction? I find this all very intriguing, but honestly don't know where in the least bit to begin! Thank you, Elizabeth.

[Arden Leigh]

Wow Elizabeth, Im not sure where to start... I do have a book that will likely be coming out next year (its in talks still but looks optimistic), which details everything from start to finish.  Im not sure what you mean by begin, since I believe that seduction begins every day when you wake up in the morning, and maybe even before that, when youre still asleep.  Plus, you say you have zero experience with seduction, but thats probably not true -- we all have experience seducing people, we just might not know it.  When you were a small baby that needed to be fed, you devised a way to get your parents attention -- whether you cried, or maybe you cried and it didnt work, so you tried something else... not exactly the sexiest thought, but that was your first experience trying to get what you wanted from someone.  Since then, its all been different versions of the same thing.  Figuring out what works.  Discarding what doesnt.  Getting back on the horse and trying again.  Trying better.

Im not sure if that was helpful.  Im a little scattered and depressed today about Alexander McQueens death, so I might not be making the most sense.  But I would say just be where you are, read and learn what you can -- the information will assimilate, and youll catch up eventually.  If youd like some more personalized attention we can talk about that too, but in the meantime just be where you are and being thinking about the kind of life you want for yourself, and how to go about building it. 

[Neo]

What are your thoughts on using techniques like hypnotic suggestion to get someone to break up with you? This post argued that the presence of desire is what makes seduction ethical, but does a lack of desire make it okay to "un-seduce" someone?

Specifically, I don't think my girlfriend and I have a long-term future, but if I break up with her the way things are now it will leave her in a terrible state of low self-esteem. I really subscribe to the idea of "leave her better than you found her," but I'm not sure how to do that here, or whether to try and do it without her knowledge of what I'm doing.

[Arden Leigh]

@Neo -- I've heard stories of guys using boyfriend destroyer patterns on their own girlfriends in order to get them to break up with them. Never tried this myself, but the idea is kind of hilarious.

I don't know. The idea of doing this doesn't sound like the kind of thing I would do, not because I think it's wrong, but because I just can't be at all deceptive at that point in a relationship with someone. If anything, I am probably too blunt about why things didn't work out. I don't want any illusions when the best thing for them is to move on.

The "leave them better than you found them" thing is really hard to start doing at the end of a relationship. The person you're with should feel better off for having known you, on a grand scale -- that they're in a better place in their lives, that they're more confident, that they believe in themselves more for having seen your own belief in them, that seeing themselves through your eyes gave them the courage to live up to their own potential, that you inspired them to be the person they wanted to be, that you gave them permission to be great in the way they were always afraid to, that you supported them and their vision when they were afraid they would fail. I think if you've loved someone this way, somewhere in the backs of their minds they will always know they were better off for having known you, even if they feel hurt at being left.

The last person I dated ended things in a manner that was anything but gentle and considerate. But with him I got to live some amazing experiences, and by showing me what was possible, he gave me the courage to leave a dead-end relationship that wasn't fulfilling me. Because of that, I can say I am far better off for having had him in my life.

And by the way I am also far better off for having been in that dead-end relationship too. FAR better off. I guess I've been lucky. Or maybe I'm just able to find the utility in nearly any situation.

I think what's underlying all of this is that you just don't want to feel like a jerk. Tough. You're going to have to deal with feeling like a jerk. Let her think you're a jerk. Be a jerk. It'll make her feel better. But for crying out loud, let the poor girl find someone out there who DOES want her and stop wasting her time. Your trying to be the nice guy is really just another form of selfishness.

If you've done well by her during the time you were with her, when the hurt and anger subsides, she will still be grateful that she knew you.