Disarm Through Strategic Weakness and Vulnerability

Too much maneuvering on your part may raise suspicion. The best way to cover your tracks is to make the other person feel superior and stronger. If you seem to be weak, vulnerable, enthralled by the other person, and unable to control yourself, you will make your

actions look more natural, less calculated. Physical weakness— tears, bashfulness, paleness—will help create the effect. To further win trust, exchange honesty for virtue: establish your “sincerity” by confessing some sin on your part—it doesn’t have to be real.

Sincerity is more important than goodness. Play the victim, then transform your target’s sympathy into love.

The weak ones do have a power over us. The clear, forceful ones I can do without. I am weak and

indecisive by nature myself, and a woman who is quiet and withdrawn and follows the wishes of a man even to the point of letting herself be used has much the greater appeal. A man can shape and mold her as he wishes, and becomes fonder of her all the while.

—MURASAKI SHIKIBU, THE TALE OF GENJI, TRANSLATED BY EDWARD G.

SEIDENSTICKER

Hera, daughter of Cronus and Rhea, having been born on the island of Samos or, some say, at Argos, was brought up in Arcadia by Temenus, son of

Pelasgus. The Seasons were her nurses. After banishing their father Cronus, Hera’s twin brother Zeus sought her out at Cnossus in Crete or, some say, on Mount Thornax (now called Cuckoo

Mountain) in Argolis, where he courted her, at first unsuccessfully. She took pity on him only when he adopted the disguise of a bedraggled cuckoo and

tenderly warmed him in her bosom. There he at once resumed his true shape and ravished her, so that she was shamed into marrying him.

—ROBERT GRAVES, THE GREEK MYTHS

The Victim Strategy

That sweltering August in the 1770s when the Présidente de Tourvel was visiting the château of her old friend Madame de Rosemonde, leaving her husband at home, she was expecting to be enjoying the peace and quiet of country life more or less on her own. But she loved the simple pleasures, and soon her daily life at the château assumed a comfortable pattern—daily Mass, walks in the country, charitable work in the neighboring villages, card games in the evening. When Madame de Rosemonde’s nephew arrived for a visit, then, the Présidente felt uncomfortable—but also curious.

The nephew, the Vicomte de Valmont, was the most notorious libertine in Paris. He was certainly handsome, but he was not what she had expected:

he seemed sad, somewhat downtrodden, and strangest of all, he paid hardly any attention to her. The Présidente was no coquette; she dressed simply, ignored fashions, and loved her husband. Still, she was young and beautiful, and was used to fending off men’s attentions. In the back of her mind, she was slightly perturbed that he took so little notice of her. Then, at Mass one day, she caught a glimpse of Valmont apparently lost in prayer. The idea dawned on her that he was in the midst of a period of soul-searching.

As soon as word had leaked out that Valmont was at the château, the Présidente had received a letter from a friend warning her against this

dangerous man. But she thought of herself as the last woman in the world to

be vulnerable to him. Besides, he seemed on the verge of repenting his evil past; perhaps she could help move him in that direction. What a wonderful victory that would be for God. And so the Présidente took note of Valmont’s comings and goings, trying to understand what was happening in his head.

It was strange, for instance, that he would often leave in the morning to go hunting, yet would never return with any game. One day, she decided to

have her servant do a little harmless spying, and she was amazed and delighted to learn that Valmont had not gone hunting at all; he had visited a local village, where he had doled out money to a poor family about to be evicted from their home. Yes, she was right, his passionate soul was moving from sensuality to virtue. How happy that made her feel.

That evening, Valmont and the Présidente found themselves alone for the first time, and Valmont suddenly burst out with a startling confession. He

was head-over-heels in love with the Présidente, and with a love he had never experienced before: her virtue, her goodness, her beauty, her kind ways had completely overwhelmed him. His generosity to the poor that afternoon had been for her sake—perhaps inspired by her, perhaps something more sinister: it had been to impress her. He would never have confessed to this, but finding himself alone with her, he could not control his emotions. Then he got down on his knees and begged for her to help him, to guide him in his misery.

In a strategy (?) of seduction one draws the other into one’s area of weakness, which is also his or her area of weakness. A calculated weakness, an

incalculable weakness: one challenges the other to be taken in. • To seduce is to appear weak. To

seduce is to render weak. We seduce with our weakness, never with strong signs or powers. In seduction we enact this weakness, and this is what gives seduction its strength. •We seduce with our death, our vulnerability, and with the void that

haunts us. The secret is to know how to play with death in the absence of a gaze or gesture, in the absence of knowledge or meaning. •

Psychoanalyse tells us to assume our fragility and passivity, but in almost religious terms, turns them into a form of resignation and acceptance in order to promote a well- tempered psychic equilibrium. Seduction, by contrast, plays triumphantly with weakness, making a game of it, with its own rules.

—JEAN BAUDRILLARD, SEDUCTION, TRANSLATED BY BRIAN SINGER

The Présidente was caught off guard, and began to cry. Intensely embarrassed, she ran from the room, and for the next few days pretended to be ill. She did not know how to react to the letters Valmont now began to send her, begging her to forgive him. He praised her beautiful face and her beautiful soul, and claimed she had made him rethink his whole life. These emotional letters produced disturbing emotions, and Tourvel prided herself on her calmness and prudence. She knew she should insist that he leave the château, and wrote him to that effect; he reluctantly agreed, but on one condition—that she allow him to write to her from Paris. She consented, as long as the letters were not offensive. When he told Madame de Rosemonde that he was leaving, the Présidente felt a pang of guilt: his hostess and aunt would miss him, and he looked so pale. He was obviously suffering.

Now the letters from Valmont began to arrive, and Tourvel soon regretted allowing him this liberty. He ignored her request that he avoid the subject of love—indeed he vowed to love her forever. He rebuked her for her coldness and insensitivity. He explained his bad path in life—it was not his fault, he had had no direction, had been led astray by others. Without her help he would fall back into that world. Do not be cruel, he said, you are the one who seduced me. I am your slave, the victim of your charms and goodness; since you are strong, and do not feel as I do, you have nothing to fear.

Indeed the Présidente de Tourvel came to pity Valmont—he seemed so weak, so out of control. How could she help him? And why was she even thinking of him, which she now did more and more? She was a happily married woman. No, she must at least put an end to this tiresome correspondence. No more talk of love, she wrote, or she would not reply. His letters stopped coming. She felt relief. Finally some peace and quiet.

One evening, however, as she was seated at the dinner table, she suddenly heard Valmont’s voice from behind her, addressing Madame de Rosemonde. On the spur of the moment, he said, he had decided to return for a short visit. She felt a shiver up and down her spine, her face flushed; he approached and sat down beside her. He looked at her, she looked away, and soon made an excuse to leave the table and go up to her room. But she

could not completely avoid him over the next few days, and she saw that he seemed paler than ever. He was polite, and a whole day might pass without her seeing him, but these brief absences had a paradoxical effect: now Tourvel realized what had happened. She missed him, she wanted to see him. This paragon of virtue and goodness had somehow fallen in love with an incorrigible rake. Disgusted with herself and what she had allowed to happen, she left the chateau in the middle of the night, without telling anyone, and headed for Paris, where she planned somehow to repent this awful sin.

The old American proverb says if you want to con someone, you must first get him to trust you, or at least feel superior to you (these two ideas are related), and get him to let down his guard. The

proverb explains a great deal about television commercials. If we assume that people are not

stupid, they must react to TV commercials with a feeling of superiority that permits them to believe they are in control. As long as this illusion of volition persists, they would consciously have nothing to fear from the commercials. People are prone to trust anything over which they believe

they have control. • TV commercials appear

foolish, clumsy, and ineffectual on purpose. They are made to appear this way at the conscious level

in order to be consciously ridiculed and rejected….

Most ad men will confirm that over the years the seemingly worst commercials have sold the best. An effective TV commercial is purposefully

designed to insult the viewer’s conscious intelligence, thereby penetrating his defenses.

—WILSON BRYAN KEY, SUBLINHNAL SEDUCTION

It takes great art to use bashfulness, but one does achieve a great deal with it. How often I have used bashfulness to trick a little miss! Ordinarily, young girls speak very harshly about bashful men, but

secretly they like them. A little bashfulness flatters a teenage girl’s vanity, makes her feel superior; it is her earnest money. When they are lulled to sleep, then at the very time they believe you are about to perish from bashfulness, you show them that you are so far from it that you are quite self- reliant. Bashfulness makes a man lose his

masculine significance, and therefore it is a relatively good means for neutralizing the sex relation.

—SØREN KIERKEGAARD, THE SEDUCER’S DIARY, TRANSLATED BY HOWARD V. HONG

AND EDNA H. HONG

Interpretation.The character of Valmont in Choderlos de Laclos’s epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons is based on several of the great real-life libertines of eighteenth-century France. Everything Valmont does is calculated for

effect—the ambiguous actions that make Tourvel curious about him, the act of charity in the village (he knows he is being followed), the return visit to the château, the paleness of his face (he is having an affair with a girl at the château, and their all-night carousals give him a wasted look). Most

devastating of all is his positioning of himself as the weak one, the seduced, the victim. How can the Présidente imagine he is manipulating her when everything suggests he is simply overwhelmed by her beauty, whether physical or spiritual? He cannot be a deceiver when he repeatedly makes a

point of confessing the “truth” about himself: he admits that his charity was questionably motivated, he explains why he has gone astray, he lets her in on his emotions. (All of this “honesty,” of course, is calculated.) In essence he is like a woman, or at least like a woman of those times—emotional,

unable to control himself, moody, insecure. She is the one who is cold and cruel, like a man. In positioning himself as Tourvel’s victim, Valmont can not only disguise his manipulations but elicit pity and concern. Playing the victim, he can stir up the tender emotions produced by a sick child or a wounded animal. And these emotions are easily channeled into love—as the Présidente discovers to her dismay.

Seduction is a game of reducing suspicion and resistance. The cleverest way to do this is to make the other person feel stronger, more in control of things. Suspicion usually comes out of insecurity; if your targets feel superior and secure in your presence, they are unlikely to doubt your motives. You are too weak, too emotional, to be up to something. Take this game as far as it will go. Flaunt your emotions and how deeply they have affected you. Making people feel the power they have over you is immensely flattering to them. Confess to something bad, or even to something bad that you did, or contemplated doing, to them. Honesty is

more important than virtue, and one honest gesture will blind them to many deceitful acts. Create an impression of weakness—physical, mental, emotional. Strength and confidence can be frightening. Make your

weakness a comfort, and play the victim—of their power over you, of circumstances, of life in general. This is the best way to cover your tracks.

You know, a man ain’t worth a damn if he can’t cry at the right time.

—LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON

Yet another form of Charity is there, which is oft times practised towards poor prisoners who are

shut up in dungeons and robbed of all enjoyments

with women. On such do the gaolers’ wives and women that have charge over them, or châtelaines who have prisoners of war in their Castle, take

pity and give them share of their love out of very charity and mercifulness. • Thus do these

gaolers’ wives, noble châtelaines and others, treat their prisoners, the which, captive and unhappy though they be, yet cease not for that to feel the

prickings of the flesh, as much as ever they did in their best days. • To confirm what I say, I will

instance a tale that Captain Beaulieu, Captain of the King’s Galleys, of whom I have before spoke once and again, did tell me. He was in the service

of the late Grand Prior of France, a member of the house of Lorraine, who was much attached to him. Going one time to take his patron on board at Malta in a frigate, he was taken by the Sicilian galleys, and carried prisoner to the Castel-à- mare at Palermo, where he was shut up in an exceeding narrow, dark and wretched dungeon, and very ill

entreated by the space of three months. By good hap the Governor of the Castle, who was a

Spaniard, had two very fair daughters, who hearing him complaining and making moan, did one day ask leave of their father to visit him, for the honor of the good God; and this he did freely give them permission to do. And seeing the

Captain was of a surety a right gallant gentleman, and as ready- tongued as most, he was able so to win them over at this, the very first visit, that they did gain their father’s leave for him to quit his

wretched dungeon and to be put in a seemly enough chamber and receive better treatment. Nor was this all, for they did crave and get permission to come and see him freely every day and converse with him. • And this did fall out so well that

presently both the twain of them were in love with him, albeit he was not handsome to look upon, and they very fair ladies. And so, without a thought of

the chance of more rigorous imprisonment or even death, but rather tempted by such opportunities, he did set himself to the enjoyment of the two girls with good will and hearty appetite. And these

pleasures did continue without any scandal, for so fortunate was he in this conquest of his for the

space of eight whole months, that no scandal did ever hap all that time, and no ill, inconvenience, nor any surprise or discovery at all. For indeed the two sisters had so good an under- standing

between them and did so generously lend a hand to each other and so obligingly play sentinel to one

another, that no ill hap did ever occur. And he

sware to me, being my very intimate friend as he was, that never in his days of greatest liberty had he enjoyed so excellent entertainment or felt

keener ardor or better appetite for it than in the said prison—which truly was a right good prison

for him, albeit folk say no prison can be good. And this happy time did continue for the space of eight months, till the truce was made betwixt the

Emperor and Henri II., King of France, whereby all prisoners did leave their dungeons and were released. He sware that never was he more grieved than at quitting this good prison of his, but was exceeding sorry to leave these fair maids, with

whom he was in such high favor, and who did express all possible regrets at his departing.

—-SEIGNEUR DE BRANTÔME, LIVES OF FAIR & GALLANT LADIES,TRANSLATED BY A.

R. ALLINSON

Keys to Seduction

We all have weaknesses, vulnerabilities, frailnesses in our mental makeup.

Perhaps we are shy or oversensitive, or need attention—whatever the

weakness is, it is something we cannot control. We may try to compensate for it, or to hide it, but this is often a mistake: people sense something

inauthentic or unnatural. Remember: what is natural to your character is inherently seductive. A person’s vulnerability, what they seem to be unable to control, is often what is most seductive about them. People who display no weaknesses, on the other hand, often elicit envy, fear, and anger—we want to sabotage them just to bring them down.

Do not struggle against your vulnerabilities, or try to repress them, but put them into play. Learn to transform them into power. The game is subtle: if you wallow in your weakness, overplay your hand, you will be seen as angling for sympathy, or, worse, as pathetic. No, what works best is to

allow people an occasional glimpse into the soft, frail side of your character, and usually only after they have known you for a while. That glimpse will humanize you, lowering their suspicions, and preparing the

ground for a deeper attachment. Normally strong and in control, at moments you let go, give in to your weakness, let them see it.

Valmont used his weakness this way. He had lost his innocence long ago, and yet, somewhere inside, he regretted it. He was vulnerable to someone truly innocent. His seduction of the Présidente was successful because it

was not totally an act; there was a genuine weakness on his part, which even allowed him to cry at times. He let the Présidente see this side to him at key moments, in order to disarm her. Like Valmont, you can be acting and sincere at the same time. Suppose you are genuinely shy—at certain moments, give your shyness a little weight, lay it on a little thick. It should be easy for you to embellish a quality you already have.

After Lord Byron published his first major poem, in 1812, he became an instant celebrity. Beyond being a talented writer, he was so handsome, even pretty, and he was as brooding and enigmatic as the characters he wrote about. Women went wild over Lord Byron. He had an infamous

“underlook,” slightly lowering his head and glancing upward at a woman, making her tremble. But Byron had other qualities: when you first met him, you could not help noticing his fidgety movements, his ill-fitting clothes,

his strange shyness, and his noticeable limp. This infamous man, who

scorned all conventions and seemed so dangerous, was personally insecure and vulnerable.

In Byron’s poem Don Juan, the hero is less a seducer of women than a man constantly pursued by them. The poem was autobiographical; women wanted to take care of this somewhat fragile man, who seemed to have little control over his emotions. More than a century later, John E Kennedy, as a boy, became obsessed with Byron, the man he most wanted to emulate. He even tried to borrow Byron’s “underlook.” Kennedy himself was a frail youth, with constant health problems. He was also a little pretty, and friends saw something slightly feminine in him. Kennedy’s weaknesses—physical and mental, for he too was insecure, shy, and oversensitive—were exactly what drew women to him. If Byron and Kennedy had tried to cover up their vulnerabilities with a masculine swagger they would have had no seductive charm. Instead, they learned how to subtly display their weaknesses, letting women sense this soft side to them.

There are fears and insecurities peculiar to each sex; your use of strategic weakness must always take these differences into account. A woman, for instance, may be attracted by a man’s strength and self-confidence, but too much of it can create fear, seeming unnatural, even ugly. Particularly intimidating is the sense that the man is cold and unfeeling. She may feel

insecure that he is only after sex, and nothing else. Male seducers long ago learned to become more feminine—to show their emotions, and to seem interested in their targets’ lives. The medieval troubadours were the first to master this strategy; they wrote poetry in honor of women, emoted endlessly about their feelings, and spent hours in their ladies’ boudoirs, listening to the women’s complaints and soaking up their spirit. In return for their willingness to play weak, the troubadours earned the right to love.

Little has changed since then. Some of the greatest seducers in recent

history—Gabriele D’ Annunzio, Duke Ellington, Errol Flynn—understood the value of acting slavishly to a woman, like a troubadour on bended knee. The key is to indulge your softer side while still remaining as masculine as possible. This may include an occasional show of bashfulness, which the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard thought an extremely seductive tactic for a man—it gives the woman a sense of comfort, and even of superiority.

Remember, though, to keep everything in moderation. A glimpse of shyness

is sufficient; too much of it and the target will despair, afraid that she will end up having to do all the work.

A man’s fears and insecurities often concern his sense of masculinity; he usually will feel threatened by a woman who is too overtly manipulative, who is too much in control. The greatest seductresses in history knew how to cover up their manipulations by playing the little girl in need of

masculine protection. A famous courtesan of ancient China, Su Shou, used to make up her face to look particularly pale and weak. She would also walk in a way that made her seem frail. The great nineteenth-century courtesan Cora Pearl would literally dress and act like a little girl. Marilyn Monroe knew how to give the impression that she depended on a man’s strength to survive. In all of these instances, the women were the ones in control of the dynamic, boosting a man’s sense of masculinity in order to ultimately enslave him. To make this most effective, a woman should seem both in need of protection and sexually excitable, giving the man his

ultimate fantasy.

The Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, won dominance over her husband early on through a calculated coquetry. Later on, though, she held on to that power through her constant—and not so innocent—use of tears. Seeing someone cry usually has an immediate effect on our emotions: we cannot remain neutral. We feel sympathy, and most often will do anything to stop the tears—including things that we normally would not do. Weeping is an incredibly potent tactic, but the weeper is not always so innocent. There is usually something real behind the tears, but there may also be an element of acting, of playing for effect. (And if the target senses this the tactic is doomed.) Beyond the emotional impact of tears, there is something seductive about sadness. We want to comfort the other person, and as Tourvel discovered, that desire quickly turns into love. Affecting

sadness, even crying sometimes, has great strategic value, even for a man. It is a skill you can learn. The central character of the eighteenth-century French novel Marianne, by Marivaux, would think of something sad in her past to make herself cry or look sad in the present.

Use tears sparingly, and save them for the right moment. Perhaps this might be a time when the target seems suspicious of your motives, or when you are worrying about having no effect on him or her. Tears are a sure

barometer of how deeply the other person is falling for you. If they seem annoyed, or resist the bait, your case is probably hopeless.

In social and political situations, seeming too ambitious, or too controlled, will make people fear you; it is crucial to show your soft side. The display of a single weakness will hide a multitude of manipulations.

Emotion or even tears will work here too. Most seductive of all is playing

the victim. For his first speech in Parliament, Benjamin Disraeli prepared an elaborate oration, but when he delivered it the opposition yelled and laughed so loudly that hardly any of it could be heard. He plowed ahead and gave the whole speech, but by the time he sat down he felt he had failed miserably. Much to his amazement, his colleagues told him the speech was a marvelous success. It would have been a failure if he had complained or given up; but by going ahead as he did, he positioned himself as the victim of a cruel and unreasonable faction. Almost everyone sympathized with him now, which would serve him well in the future. Attacking your mean- spirited opponents can make you seem ugly as well; instead, soak up their blows, and play the victim. The public will rally to your side, in an emotional response that will lay the groundwork for a grand political seduction.

Symbol: The Blemish. A beautiful face is a delight to look at, but if it is too perfect it leaves us cold, and even slightly intimidated. It is the little mole, the beauty mark, that makes the face human and lovable.

So do not conceal all of your blemishes. You need them to soften your features and elicit tender feelings.

Reversal

Timing is everything in seduction; you should always look for signs that the target is falling under your spell. A person falling in love tends to ignore the other person’s weaknesses, or to see them as endearing. An unseduced, rational person, on the other hand, may find bashfulness or emotional

outbursts pathetic. There are also certain weaknesses that have no seductive value, no matter how in love the target may be.

The great seventeenth-century courtesan Ninon de l’Enclos liked men with a soft side. But sometimes a man would go too far, complaining that she did not love him enough, that she was too fickle and independent, that he was being mistreated and wronged. For Ninon, such behavior would break the spell, and she would quickly end the relationship. Complaining, whining, neediness, and actively appealing for sympathy will appear to your targets not as charming weaknesses but as manipulative attempts at a kind of negative power. So when you play the victim, do it subtly, without overadvertising it. The only weaknesses worth playing up are the ones that will make you seem lovable. All others should be repressed and eradicated at all costs.