Create a Need—Stir Anxiety and Discontent

A perfectly satisfied person cannot be seduced. Tension and

disharmony must be instilled in your targets’ minds. Stir within them feelings of discontent, an unhappiness with their circumstances and with themselves: their life lacks adventure, they have strayed from

the ideals of their youth, they have become boring. The feelings of inadequacy that you create will give you space to insinuate yourself,

to make them see you as the answer to their problems. Pain and

anxiety are the proper precursors to pleasure. Learn to manufacture the need that you can fill.

No one can fall in love if he is even partially satisfied with what he has or who he is. The experience of falling in love originates in an

extreme depression, an inability to find something that has value in everyday life. The “symptom” of the predisposition to fall in love is not the

conscious desire to do so, the intense desire to enrich our lives; it is the profound sense of being worthless and of having nothing that is valuable and the shame of not having it. For this reason,

falling in love occurs more frequently among young people, since they are profoundly uncertain, unsure of their worth, and often ashamed of themselves. The same thing applies to people of

other ages when they lose something in their lives

—when their youth ends or when they start to grow old.

—FRANCESCO ALBERONI, FALLINGIN LOVE, TRANSLATED BY LAWRENCE VENUTI

Opening a Wound

In the coal-mining town of Eastwood, in central England, David Herbert Lawrence was considered something of a strange lad. Pale and delicate, he had no time for games or boyish pursuits, but was interested in literature; and he preferred the company of girls, who made up most of his friends.

Lawrence often visited the Chambers family, who had been his neighbors until they moved out of Eastwood to a farm not far away. He liked to study with the Chambers sisters, particularly Jessie; she was shy and serious, and getting her to open up and confide in him was a pleasurable challenge.

Jessie grew quite attached to Lawrence over the years, and they became good friends.

One day in 1906, Lawrence, twenty-one at the time, did not show up at the usual hour for his study session with Jessie. He finally arrived much later, in a mood she had never seen before—preoccupied and quiet. Now it

was her turn to make him open up. Finally he talked: he felt she was getting too close to him. What about her future? Whom would she marry? Certainly not him, he said, for they were just friends. But it was unfair of him to keep her from seeing others. They should of course remain friends and have their talks, but maybe less often. When he finished and left, she felt a strange emptiness. She had yet to think much about love or marriage. Suddenly she had doubts. What would her future be? Why wasn’t she thinking about it?

She felt anxious and upset, without understanding why.

Lawrence continued to visit, but everything had changed. He criticized her for this and that. She wasn’t very physical. What kind of wife would she make anyway? A man needed more from a woman than just talk. He likened her to a nun. They began to see each other less often. When, some

time later, Lawrence accepted a teaching position at a school outside London, she felt part relieved to be rid of him for a while. But when he said goodbye to her, and intimated that it might be for the last time, she broke down and cried. Then he started sending her weekly letters. He would write about girls he was seeing; maybe one of them would be his wife. Finally, at

his behest, she visited him in London. They got along well, as in the old times, but he continued to badger her about her future, picking at that old wound. At Christmas he was back in Eastwood, and when he visited her he seemed exultant. He had decided that it was Jessie he should marry, that he had in fact been attracted to her all along. They should keep it quiet for a while; although his writing career was taking off (his first novel was about to be published), he needed to make more money. Caught off guard by this sudden announcement, and overwhelmed with happiness, Jessie agreed to everything, and they became lovers.

“What can Love be then?” I said. “A mortal?”

“Far from it.” “Well, what?” “As in my previous examples, he is half-way between mortal and immortal.” What sort of being is he then, Diotima?” “He is a great spirit, Socrates; everything that is of the nature of a spirit is half- god and half- man.” . . . “Who are his parents?” I asked. “That is rather a long story,” she answered, ”but I will tell you. On the day that Aphrodite was born the gods were feasting, among them

Contrivance the son of Invention; and after dinner, seeing that a party was in progress, Poverty came to beg and stood at the door. Now Contrivance was drunk with nectar— wine, I may say, had not yet been discovered—and went out into the garden of Zeus, and was overcome by sleep. So Poverty, thinking to alleviate her wretched condition by bearing a child to Contrivance, lay with him and conceived Love. Since Love was begotten on

Aphrodite’s birthday, and since he has also an innate passion for the beautiful, and so for the beauty of Aphrodite herself, he became her

follower and servant. Again, having Contrivance for his father and Poverty for his mother, he bears the following character. He is always poor, and,

far from being sensitive and beautiful, as most people imagine, he is hard and weather-beaten, shoeless and homeless, always sleeping out for

want of a bed, on the ground, on doorsteps, and in the street. So far he takes after his mother and

lives in want. But, being also his father’s son, he schemes to get for himself whatever is beautiful and good; he is bold and forward and strenuous, always devising tricks like a cunning huntsman.”

—PLATO, SYMPOSIUM, TRANSLATED BY WALTER HAMILTON

Soon, however, the familiar pattern repeated: criticisms, breakups,

announcements that he was engaged to another girl. This only deepened his hold on her. It was not until 1912 that she finally decided never to see him again, disturbed by his portrayal of her in the autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers. But Lawrence remained a lifelong obsession for her.

In 1913, a young English woman named Ivy Low, who had read Lawrence’s novels, began to correspond with him, her letters gushing with admiration. By now Lawrence was married, to a German woman, the

Baroness Frieda von Richthofen. To Low’s surprise, though, he invited her to visit him and his wife in Italy. She knew he was probably something of a Don Juan, but was eager to meet him, and accepted his invitation. Lawrence was not what she had expected: his voice was high-pitched, his eyes were piercing, and there was something vaguely feminine about him. Soon they were taking walks together, with Lawrence confiding in Low. She felt that they were becoming friends, which delighted her. Then suddenly, just

before she was to leave, he launched into a series of criticisms of her—she was so unspontaneous, so predictable, less human being than robot.

Devastated by this unexpected attack, she nevertheless had to agree—what he had said was true. What could he have seen in her in the first place? Who was she anyway? Low left Italy feeling empty—but then Lawrence continued to write to her, as if nothing had happened. She soon realized that she had fallen hopelessly in love with him, despite everything he had said to her. Or was it not despite what he had said, but because of it?

In 1914, the writer John Middleton-Murry received a letter from Lawrence, a good friend of his. In the letter, out of nowhere, Lawrence criticized Middleton-Murry for being passionless and not gallant enough with his wife, the novelist Katherine Mansfield. Middleton-Murry later wrote, “I had never felt for a man before what his letter made me feel for him. It was a new thing, a unique thing, in my experience; and it was to remain unique.” He felt that beneath Lawrence’s criticisms lay some weird kind of affection. Whenever he saw Lawrence from then on, he felt a

strange physical attraction that he could not explain.

Interpretation. The number of women, and of men, who fell under Lawrence’s spell is astonishing given how unpleasant he could be. In almost every case the relationship began in friendship—with frank talks, exchanges of confidences, a spiritual bond. Then, invariably, he would suddenly turn against them, voicing harsh personal criticisms. He would know them well by that time, and the criticisms were often quite accurate,

and hit a nerve. This would inevitably trigger confusion in his victims, and a sense of anxiety, a feeling that something was wrong with them. Jolted out of their usual sense of normality, they would feel divided inside. With half of their minds they wondered why he was doing this, and felt he was unfair; with the other half, they believed it was all true. Then, in those moments of self-doubt, they would get a letter or a visit from him in which he was his old charming self.

We are all like pieces of the coins that children break in half for keepsakes— making two out of one, like the flatfish—and each of us is forever

seeking the half that will tally with himself. And

so all this to-do is a relic of that original state of ours when we were whole, and now, when we are longing for and following after that primeval wholeness, we say we are in love.

—ARISTOPHANES’S SPEECH IN PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM, QUOTED IN JAMES MANDRELL,

DON JUAN AND THE POINT OF HONOR

Don John: Well met, pretty lass! What! Are there such handsome Creatures as you amongst these Fields, these Trees, and Rocks? • Charlotta: I am as you see, Sir. • Don John: Are you of this Village? • Charlotta: Yes, Sir. • Don John: What‘s your name? • Charlotta: Charlotta, Sir, at your Service. • Don John: Ah what a fine Person ’tis!

What piercing Eyes! • Charlotta: Sir, you make me ashamed. • Don John: Pretty Charlotta, you

are not marry’d, are you? • Charlotta: No, Sir, but I am soon to be, with Pierrot, son to Goody Simonetta. •Don John: What! Shou’d such a one

as you be Wife to a Peasant! No, no; that’s a

profanation of so much Beauty. You was not born to live in a Village. You certainly deserve a better Fortune, and Heaven, which knows it well, brought me hither on purpose to hinder this Marriage and do justice to your Charms; for in short, fair Charlotta, I love you with all my Heart, and if you’ll consent I’ll deliver you from this miserable Place, and put you in the Condition you deserve.

This Love is doubtless sudden, but ‘tis an Effect of your great Beauty. I love you as much in a quarter of an Hour as I shou’d another in six Months.

—MOLIÈRE, DON JOHN; OR, THE LIBERTINE, TRANSLATED BY JOHN OZELL, IN

OSCAR MANDEL, ED., THE THEATRE OF DON JUAN

Now they saw him differently. Now they were weak and vulnerable, in need of something; and he would seem so strong. Now he drew them to him, feelings of friendship turning into affection and desire. Once they felt uncertain about themselves, they were susceptible to falling in love.

Most of us protect ourselves from the harshness of life by succumbing to routines and patterns, by closing ourselves off from others. But underlying these habits is a tremendous sense of insecurity and defensiveness. We feel

we are not really living. The seducer must pick at this wound and bring

these semiconscious thoughts into full awareness. This was what Lawrence did: his sudden, brutally unexpected jabs would hit people at their weak spot.

Although Lawrence had great success with his frontal approach, it is often better to stir thoughts of inadequacy and uncertainty indirectly, by hinting at comparisons to yourself or to others, and by insinuating somehow that your victims’ lives are less grand than they had imagined. You want them to feel at war with themselves, torn in two directions, and anxious about it. Anxiety, a feeling of lack and need, is the precursor of all desire.

These jolts in the victim’s mind create space for you to insinuate your poison, the siren call of adventure or fulfillment that will make them follow you into your web. Without anxiety and a sense of lack there can be no seduction.

Desire and love have for their object things or

qualities which a man does not at present possess but which he lacks.

—SOCRATES

Keys to Seduction

Everyone wears a mask in society; we pretend to be more sure of ourselves than we are. We do not want other people to glimpse that doubting self within us. In truth, our egos and personalities are much more fragile than they appear to be; they cover up feelings of confusion and emptiness. As a seducer, you must never mistake a person’s appearance for the reality.

People are always susceptible to being seduced, because in fact everyone lacks a sense of completeness, feels something missing deep inside. Bring their doubts and anxieties to the surface and they can be led and lured to

follow you.

No one can see you as someone to follow or fall in love with unless they first reflect on themselves somehow, and on what they are missing. Before the seduction proceeds, you must place a mirror in front of them in which

they glimpse that inner emptiness. Made aware of a lack, they now can

focus on you as the person who can fill that empty space. Remember: most of us are lazy. To relieve our feelings of boredom or inadequacy on our own takes too much effort; letting someone else do the job is both easier and

more exciting. The desire to have someone fill up our emptiness is the weakness on which all seducers prey. Make people anxious about the

future, make them depressed, make them question their identity, make them sense the boredom that gnaws at their life. The ground is prepared. The

seeds of seduction can be sown.

For I stand tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch three

thousand miles behind me, the pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort, and sometimes their

lives to build a new world here in the West. They were not the captives of their own doubts, the

prisoners of their own price tags. Their motto was not “every man for himself”—but “all for the common cause.” They were determined to make that new world strong and free, to overcome its

hazards and its hardships, to conquer the enemies that threatened from without and within. •

Today some would say that those struggles are all over—that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier. • But I trust that no one in this vast assemblage will agree with those sentiments. . . . • I tell you the New Frontier is

here, whether we seek it or not. It would be

easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to

the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric—and those who prefer that course should not cast their votes for me,

regardless of party. • But I believe that the times demand invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be new

pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age.

—JOHN F. KENNEDY, ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AS THE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, QUOTED IN JOHN HELLMANN, THE KENNEDY OBSESSION: THE

AMERICAN MYTH OF JFK

In Plato’s dialogue Symposium—the West’s oldest treatise on love, and a text that has had a determining influence on our ideas of desire—the courtesan Diotima explains to Socrates the parentage of Eros, the god of love. Eros’s father was Contrivance, or Cunning, and his mother was Poverty, or Need. Eros takes after his parents: he is constantly in need, which he is constantly contriving to fill. As the god of love, he knows that

love cannot be induced in another person unless they too feel need. And that is what his arrows do: piercing people’s flesh, they make them feel a lack, an ache, a hunger. This is the essence of your task as a seducer. Like Eros, you must create a wound in your victim, aiming at their soft spot, the chink in their self-esteem. If they are stuck in a rut, make them feel it more deeply, “innocently” bringing it up and talking about it. What you want is a wound, an insecurity you can expand a little, an anxiety that can best be relieved by involvement with another person, namely you. They must feel

the wound before they fall in love. Notice how Lawrence stirred anxiety, always hitting at his victims’ weak spot: for Jessie Chambers, her physical coldness; for Ivy Low, her lack of spontaneity; for Middleton-Murry, his lack of gallantry.

Cleopatra got Julius Caesar to sleep with her the first night he met her, but the real seduction, the one that made him her slave, began later. In their ensuing conversations she talked repeatedly of Alexander the Great, the hero from whom she was supposedly descended. No one could compare to him. By implication, Caesar was made to feel inferior. Understanding that beneath his bravado Caesar was insecure, Cleopatra awakened in him an anxiety, a hunger to prove his greatness. Once he felt this way he was easily further seduced. Doubts about his masculinity was his tender spot.

When Caesar was assassinated, Cleopatra turned her sights on Mark Antony, one of Caesar’s successors in the leadership of Rome. Antony loved pleasure and spectacle, and his tastes were crude. She appeared to him first on her royal barge, then wined and dined and banqueted him. Everything was geared to suggest to him the superiority of the Egyptian way of life over the Roman, at least when it came to pleasure. The Romans were boring and unsophisticated by comparison. And once Antony was

made to feel how much he was missing in spending his time with his dull soldiers and his matronly Roman wife, he could be made to see Cleopatra as the incarnation of all that was exciting. He became her slave.

This is the lure of the exotic. In your role of seducer, try to position yourself as coming from outside, as a stranger of sorts. You represent change, difference, a breakup of routines. Make your victims feel that by comparison their lives are boring and their friends less interesting than they had thought. Lawrence made his targets feel personally inadequate; if you find it hard to be so brutal, concentrate on their friends, their circumstances, the externals of their lives. There are many legends of Don Juan, but they often describe him seducing a village girl by making her feel that her life is horribly provincial. He, meanwhile, wears glittering clothes and has a noble bearing. Strange and exotic, he is always from somewhere else. First she

feels the boredom of her life, then she sees him as her salvation. Remember: people prefer to feel that if their life is uninteresting, it not because of

themselves but because of their circumstances, the dull people they know, the town into which they were born. Once you make them feel the lure of the exotic, seduction is easy.

The normal rhythm of life oscillates in general between a mild satisfaction with oneself and a slight discomfort, originating in the knowledge of one’s personal shortcomings. We should like to be as handsome, young, strong or clever as other

people of our acquaintance. We wish we could achieve as much as they do, long for similar

advantages, positions, the same or greater success. To be delighted with oneself is the exception and,

often enough, a smoke screen which we produce

for ourselves and of course for others. Somewhere in it is a lingering feeling of discomfort with

ourselves and a slight self-dislike. I assert that an increase of this spirit of discontent renders a person especially susceptible to “falling in love. ”

. . . In most cases this attitude of disquiet is unconscious, but in some it reaches the threshold of awareness in the form of a slight uneasiness, or a stagnant dissatisfaction, or a realization of being upset without knowing why.

—THEODOR REIK, OF LOVE AND LUST

Another devilishly seductive area to aim at is the victim’s past. To grow old is to renounce or compromise youthful ideals, to become less spontaneous, less alive in a way. This knowledge lies dormant in all of us. As a seducer you must bring it to the surface, make it clear how far people have strayed from their past goals and ideals. You, in turn, present yourself as representing that ideal, as offering a chance to recapture lost youth through adventure—through seduction. In her later years, Queen Elizabeth I of England was known as a rather stern and demanding ruler. She made it a point not to let her courtiers see anything soft or weak in her. But then Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, came to court. Much younger than the queen, the dashing Essex would often chastize her for her sourness. The queen would forgive him—he was so exuberant and spontaneous, he could not control himself. But his comments got under her skin; in the

presence of Essex she came to remember all the youthful ideals— spiritedness, feminine charm—that had since vanished from her life. She also felt a little of that girlish spirit return when she was around him. He quickly became her favorite, and soon she was in love with him. Old age is constantly seduced by youth, but first the young people must make it clear what the older ones are missing, how they have lost their ideals. Only then will they feel that the presence of the young will let them recapture that spark, the rebellious spirit that age and society have conspired to repress.

This concept has infinite applications. Corporations and politicians know that they cannot seduce their public into buying what they want them to buy, or doing what they want them to do, unless they first awaken a sense of need and discontent. Make the masses uncertain about their identity and you can help define it for them. It is as true of groups or nations as it is of individuals: they cannot be seduced without being made to feel some lack.

Part of John F. Kennedy’s election strategy in 1960 was to make Americans unhappy about the 1950s, and how far the country had strayed from its ideals. In talking about the 1950s, he did not mention the nation’s economic stability or its emergence as a superpower. Instead, he implied that the period was marked by conformity, a lack of risk and adventure, a loss of our frontier values. To vote for Kennedy was to embark on a collective adventure, to go back to ideals we had given up. But before anyone joined

his crusade they had to be made aware of how much they had lost, what was missing. A group, like an individual, can get mired in routine, losing

track of its original goals. Too much prosperity saps it of strength. You can seduce an entire nation by aiming at its collective insecurity, that latent

sense that not everything is what it seems. Stirring dissatisfaction with the present and reminding people about the glorious past can unsettle their

sense of identity. Then you can be the one to redefine it—a grand seduction.

Symbol: Cupid’s Arrow. What awakens desire in the seduced is not a soft touch or a pleasant sensation; it is a wound. The arrow creates a pain, an ache, a need for relief. Before desire there must be pain. Aim the arrow at the victim’s weakest spot, creating a wound that you can open and reopen.

Reversal

If you go too far in lowering the targets’ self-esteem they may feel too insecure to enter into your seduction. Do not be heavy-handed; like

Lawrence, always follow up the wounding attack with a soothing gesture. Otherwise you will simply alienate them.

Charm is often a subtler and more effective route to seduction. The Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli always made people feel better

about themselves. He deferred to them, made them the center of attention, made them feel witty and vibrant. He was a boon to their vanity, and they grew addicted to him. This is a kind of diffused seduction, lacking in tension and in the deep emotions that the sexual variety stirs; it bypasses people’s hunger, their need for some kind of fulfillment. But if you are

subtle and clever, it can be a way of lowering their defenses, creating an unthreatening friendship. Once they are under your spell in this way, you can then open the wound. Indeed, after Disraeli had charmed Queen

Victoria and established a friendship with her, he made her feel vaguely inadequate in the establishment of an empire and the realization of her ideals. Everything depends on the target. People who are riddled with

insecurities may require the gentler variety. Once they feel comfortable with you, aim your arrows.