Transcript for:
Understanding the Art of Seduction

A seduction is you're taking somebody into something different, heightened, more dramatic, more interesting. It preys on a very elemental part of human psychology. She's hooked.

The moment she pursues you in any way, it's over. You've seduced her. Robert Green, welcome to Women of Impact. Thank you for having me, Lisa.

My pleasure. Now, you wrote a book called The Art of Seduction. And while it teaches men how to seduce women, it also reads as a warning manual for women to know and learn the tactics that men actually use on us.

And so you say it all starts with number one, which is choose the right victim. So the question I have is what makes for a good victim? In a kind of a cold seduction, where you're looking at a victim who's got vulnerabilities and insecurities that you can take advantage of. Now that's not the kind of seduction. I'm trying to promote in the book, but as you say, I'm revealing the secrets that a lot of men use.

And there are men out there who have a radar for picking on women who have just the right kind of insecurities, just the right kind of vulnerabilities that they can prey upon. And for them, that would make the perfect victim. Seduction depends on the fact that people lack something in their life, right? And you are going to be the one supplying them. They're missing something.

okay? The word for love, eros, and the erotic comes from the God who shoots an arrow into someone and wounds them and poisons them, right? So falling in love and seducing is creating a wound in the other person.

They need you. You're going to feel what they can't get on their own. So somebody who is completely happy in their life, who's got everything they want, is very hard to seduce. Now, if you're a great seducer, you know, a top level seducer, you will always find something that people are missing.

Nobody is completely happy. Even the very happiest person actually is probably covering up something. And so you'll be able to find that.

But the woman who reveals that she's unhappy, that she's got vulnerabilities, that she's been wounded before, and there's something missing in her life, that's like, I can ride right through that. I can be the one to supply. I can be the one to make her happy.

They're much easier to seduce. Okay, and you also say that people with imagination. Talk to me about what the impact of having an imagination, if a woman has one versus if she doesn't. So the trick in seduction, male or female seduction, is when you're not there, the other person is thinking about you. That is when you've succeeded.

That is the game that you're trying to play. Because when you're there, they're seeing you and things are going on, they're thinking about you. But when you're absent and they're thinking about you, then you've gotten under their skin.

If you're not there and they're not thinking about you, then your seduction isn't working, right? So the whole point is to create a fantasy in which they're going, hmm, one of the things I talk about is creating mixed signals. Like people seem to be good, but they also show a little bit of an evil sign. And so the woman is thinking, Who is this man?

Do I really know him? What is he really about? I'm intrigued. And he's sort of touched on certain fantasy and points, and her imagination now takes over.

She starts thinking about him. She starts imagining him as if he could be playing one of these great archetypes of the male seducer, right? He could be the rescuer. He could be the hero.

And so because she has an imagination, a vivid imagination, she's enveloping him in all of these fantasies. from her point of view. And so if the male seducer knows how to feed a little bit her imagination, so that when he's not there, she starts enveloping him in this. There's the great writer Stendhal, the French writer who wrote a book on love.

He compared it to these limbs of trees that have been dropped into this mine, this crystal mine in Germany. And when they pull them out, they're full of crystals. And he calls falling in love this crystallization. method where in your mind crystals are forming, where you're imagining this person is fantastic and has all these fantasy elements.

Well, if the woman has no imagination, is so matter-of-a-fact and so business-like, you could do all of the tactics in the art of seduction and she won't be thinking about you. She won't be enveloping you in these fantasies. What's interesting then in that imagination, I wonder if it's even worse in today's society because you've got social media People look online before they go on a date and they see photos of somebody and then they have this whole imagination of what that person looks like. If that person then that's got this wild imagination where they see, let's say, a guy with a dog, and they're like, oh my God, he loves dogs, we're going to come together, we're going to have this dog family, like he's my person. And that whole idea of the imagination before you've even gone on a date is even more dangerous now.

Probably. You're talking to somebody a little bit older, I mean, a lot older. But so I'm back in the day where I had to go to a bar, I had to go, actually had the cojones to go pick up a woman, right? I didn't have all this crap.

So, yeah, if you're a male seducer, you know how to create that fantasy by having a picture of holding a little cat, oh, he's so sensitive and wonderful, or a dog, you know, and creating this kind of image that's going to feed women's imagination. She's hooked. He's got the little hook in her.

You can take her wherever he wants. So using that and being very clever with how you present yourself with the image and the words that go with it, you know, you can feed that imagination factor. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so what I've done is I've actually pulled out, so you have a seduction process in your book, and I've pulled out some of the ones that I just find utterly fascinating that I would love to really talk about. So number two, actually, I only got to number two. We've got 24 to go. I know. I was going to go through all of them, Robert, and I was like, if only I could keep you here for multiple hours, I would, because I adore you so much.

But what we've done is I've just pulled out the ones I think my audience would love. really find powerful. So you've got number two, which is create a false sense of security.

So when a man's trying to seduce a woman, the woman is a wariness. Women have much more to lose in a seduction than the man, right? Men, they'll sleep with anybody practically, right?

We all know that. A woman has much more to lose in that process. So women are wary, right? And so you have to overcome.

their wariness, you have to create some trust. And if you're an honest seducer, you're creating honest trust. But if you're a dishonest seducer, you're creating a false sense of trust. And one of the strategies that I talk about is you become their friend.

And when you're their friend, and you know, this is a long restriction, it'll take several months because you can't do it in a couple of days. When you become their friend, you don't seem so threatening, you know, the trust. element comes into play, right? You see them as someone who genuinely likes, you know, for a woman, for a man who wants to be their friend.

Well, on one hand, it might be insulting that he doesn't see me as attractive. But on the other hand, he wants to be my friend. And it's very kind of flattering. Well, you get that friendship going, and then you inject something else.

You start bringing in some of that sexual element, some of that erotic element, and the trust element that has been established. Makes it very difficult for the woman, she becomes very confused. And because she's been emotionally connected as a friend, it's like a bridge to creating a connection sexually.

So starting off by lowering their wariness of you, their suspicion, by trying to be their friend means, oh, he's not just interested in sex, but he might be just interested in sex, but he's using this tactic. to kind of lower your suspicions about him? I hate to say that it's genius, but it's actually genius.

As a woman, as you're talking, I'm literally thinking to myself, yeah, you would trust him. Because in all honesty, Robert, if I went out, let's say I wasn't married and I went out with a guy and I was like, I'm not sure if it's a date, you know, it's a group of us. As a woman, you absolutely have one eye open the whole time. You're like, is he going to make a move?

Like, you're just aware of that. constantly. If he doesn't then make a move a week later, two weeks later, and he's genuinely asking me about my family.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I actually completely understand why as a woman, you were like, wow, he actually likes me. Yeah. Me for me, not me as a potential object, not me as a one night stand.

And then that does allow you to lower your guard. Yeah. The way to see through that tactic is, is this attempted friendship genuine or not?

And that's a tricky question, right? But that opens up the whole thing about being much more sensitive to the nonverbal cues that you pick up from a person. Because what often happens with women is that they sense something is wrong with a man from the first time they meet him. But then they drop the suspicion very quickly.

They think, oh, he's not so bad, or I had it all wrong. But actually that first instinct was very right. So you have to trust your instincts, and you have to trust that this person that is Trying to become your friend, they're giving off signs that there's something kind of cold about it. It doesn't feel genuine.

Right? It feels like a tactic. And we can get into that later because it's...

I would love to actually, if you don't mind just giving us a few now. So, one thing that a man will do if he's using this kind of tactic is, he's in a bit of a hurry. Right? Because, Jesus Christ, I don't have six months to become friends with this woman. I want to sleep with her tomorrow.

Right? So he's in a bit of a hurry. So his effort to be a friend is kind of rushed. He really likes you. Right?

But texting you, he's talking about, asking you questions and all these other things. But it's all in a, seems kind of rushed in a period of like a week or so, he's suddenly your friend now. That is a sure sign that something else is going on. Because if you genuinely want to be a friend of someone, you're willing to take your time, right? So the calculating seducer is probably after sex fairly quickly, right?

Or an abusive relationship. So they're not willing to take their time in that area. But also, as I said, people who are narcissists, and that's a pretty broad category, but a big category of the cold male seducer, you can kind of pick up the signs in there.

So they're asking you questions, but they don't seem genuinely interested. There's a kind of coldness in their eyes. I say the classic nonverbal cue.

of a narcissist is there's a disconnect between their eyes and their mouth. So they smile. Oh, yes, it's so interesting, Lisa. Yeah.

But the eyes are dead. Their eyes are not. When someone's genuinely interested, the whole face lights up. You can't fake that. But what you can fake is a kind of a smile, but the eyes reveal.

So there are signs of the narcissist isn't really emotionally involved. But the problem with a lot of women. in this situation is they're not attentive.

They're thinking about themselves. They're projecting onto the man images from their childhood, their father figures, previous men who've hurt them. They're not in the moment. They're not reading the fine grain nonverbal cues that the other person is getting. They're thinking about their problems, their history, their fantasies.

But you have to be in the moment. You have to look at them and see if that interest that they're showing to be your friend is actually genuine or not. and the face will often reveal that.

That's so good. One thing I'd like to add, as a woman though also, as an adult woman, I feel like I have neglected and ignored my gut intuition. And so I think a big part of it is we have the gut intuition. We've been told our whole lives or we feel like we've ignored it.

We've told not to trust it. And so now I think it actually is useful to start to learn and trust your gut intuition again so that when that sort of thing happens, you don't go, well, it must be great. I must be crazy.

Just believe what they say. You actually listen to it and you're like, what is it that my body or my mind is trying to tell me? And if it's I don't trust this person, then the next question is why? And I love you being able to give that tactic of look at their eyes and look at their mouth. And if this feels like there's something out of alignment.

Notice it and trust it. I think that's really powerful. Well, you know, in the past, before the internet, when people were more social, and women were a little bit warier than they are now about men, right? Because becoming pregnant outside of marriage was a huge deal. They had that instinct.

It was very, very strong. A woman could pick up the signals of a cold seducer. pretty quickly.

But that skill has been degraded in the modern era, right? And so when you're spending so much of your time on your phone and you're judging people, the virtual thing, you're losing the sense of how to look at somebody in the moment and feel. It's not just this thing I told you about the eyes.

Some of it I can't even communicate in words. It's that gut feeling that something isn't right about this person. Something is disconnected. I can't say exactly what it is, but it's giving me a feeling that he is not who he pretends to be.

There's a fine line between that and paranoia where you're doing that to every man. Because if you become like that, then you can never have a good relationship. You can never let down your guard. So you can go too far with that. But you should have, in the initial stages of a relationship, a woman should have a little bit of suspicion, a little bit of wariness that has to come down.

He has to earn your trust. It can't just be this instant thing that happens. Oh, God, I love the earning the trusting.

I think that's super important. First, just give your trust over. One thing I started to do was really start to learn my own intuition and almost train it.

and think of it like a skill set because I've been ignoring it for so long and it keeps showing up and it's like I need to start listening to it. So instead of just taking it for fact what I started to do is every time I had the gut intuition I would write it down. Can you give me an example? Yes somebody gave me some signals where I'm like I don't know if I can trust that person there's something and I don't know what because on paper if it was a script it would read very normal people would be like there's nothing wrong but there were certain things that they said that made me think they weren't trustworthy and they were a flake.

I had zero proof. And every time I tried to articulate it, I was like, I think I'm just imagining it, but it feels real. And within a month, of course, it completely played out the way that my gut had anticipated and they were proven to not be trustworthy.

So that allowed me to encourage myself to listen to nonverbal cues more. That's right. That's right.

It's very important. Yeah. All right, I want to go on to the next one now. Number three.

So number three, it is number three. I was like, I was like, I've got to reduce it. They're just so good, Robert.

They're so good. You mentioned this earlier, but you said mixed signals. So talk to me about mixed signals. Well, it's a very powerful seduction technique. It preys on a very elemental part of human psychology.

It's something that I don't think people are so good at anymore. But the example I give in the book is of this woman who was a fantastic seductress in the beginning of the 19th century. I believe it's Madame Recomier. She was so angelic.

She was just so pure and so chaste. She played the harp. You know what?

That's the instrument that angels play, right? There would be salons where she would be playing the harp and there would be other musicians there. And she was very beautiful and the men would like... going crazy about her.

But then what she would do is she'd be playing the harp and then she would shoot this man a look that said something else, something a little bit sexual, something a little bit naughty. But then it was gone and she was playing the harp again. And he'd be going, what the hell was that?

Did I just pick up like some kind of interest in me that was physical? But then she went back. She's such so angelic.

She's so unlike that, right? What is it? Well, that.

triggers the fantasy element, right? The person is a puzzle. And the problem today, and people are so obvious, they're so goddamn obvious. They're on the internet, they're saying, here's what I have for breakfast.

Here's what I love. You know, I'm just opening myself up. And this is who I am, right? But seduction involves a little bit of mystery, a little bit of fantasy.

It's not like everyday life. It's not like things on Instagram, something different. It's theater. That's what's exciting about it, okay? So if you're the male seducer, he will be someone who seems very trustworthy, very honest, very solid.

He's got an MBA. He's working for Goldman Sachs. But then he reveals something a little bit rock and roll, a little bit rebellious, a little bit like he takes something else about him that doesn't quite click.

Wow, I didn't know who this guy is. Maybe he's more interesting than I thought. Maybe he's not so buttoned up and so controlled as I thought. There's another aspect to him. The element of surprise that you don't know who someone is, is what fascinates us about a movie.

When you create a character and suddenly on screen they reveal a trait that seems out of character. Wow, that's exciting. That's what makes you, that's how movies work, right? It's the same thing in real life. You create a sense of...

You don't know who I am, but it has to be subtle. It's not like you're not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You're not half evil and half button-down banker.

You're 95% banker and you're 2% or 3% or 4% of this other thing. It's a little peak of something else that intrigues, that creates a fantasy element. Now, how a woman could sense that that is a tactic, it comes back down to that nonverbal element. Or the other thing is analyze what it is that's intriguing you, what it is that's making you think about the person.

So from the woman's point of view, the ability to stand back and analyze the situation instead of getting emotionally, immediately rushing in emotionally is probably the best thing overall for all of the whole thing that we're talking about today. Okay, so number five. See, I ditched number four.

I ditched number four. We got... create a need. So you put stir, anxiety, and discontent.

Well, that's one of the more evil tactics. I don't deny that. I hate to say it because I'm not I'm really into the whole, I'm certainly not into the pickup artist scene, right? And people have associated my book with that. Because I want my book to be something a little more elevated than that.

But in the pickup artist world, they have the thing called negging. Negging? Negging.

Negative. where you tell the woman something negative about them. Well, that creates a kind of a wound in them that gives you now room to like, now your next step is sort of kind and interested in them.

But they're feeling like they want to kind of satisfy what you were criticizing. So creating a wound, creating a need, a need for you, is what a classic seducer will do. So you're pinpointing a vulnerability that they have, something that's missing in their life, and you're going to be the one that provides it.

So if you actually create the need in them by something you say, and then you're the one to satisfy it, it's... It's a very, very potent seduction technique. Now, the thing that happened with the game and the pickup artist scene in Los Angeles is that so many men were using these tactics, were using that negging tactic, that the moment a woman heard that, she knew this guy's a pickup artist, and they weren't interested in it. So it stopped working after a while. But if you see a man doing that, if he's like kind of criticizing you in subtle ways, way, but then it's covered up by other things going on.

Maybe be feel like that was a tactic, that that wasn't genuine, that he was doing that to kind of make me feel insecure. Because an insecure person is more vulnerable to being seduced than a totally secure person. The problem is when you're insecure, if they touch on your insecurity in that moment, I don't think you think they're trying to touch on my insecurity.

You almost think, ouch, that really hurt. God. I knew that I was bad at that.

See, I told you so. And it almost reconfirms what you're thinking instead of highlights that they're trying to seduce you. That's very true. Coming up.

A seduction is you're taking somebody out of that world and you're taking them into something different, heightened, more dramatic, more interesting, more theatrical. All right, guys, we're going to get right back to the conversation with the amazing Robert Greene. But first, I want to talk directly to the badass content creators watching right freaking now.

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All right, now back to the episode. Which is why sometimes you have to be able to, like, withdraw from your emotional responses and analyze what's going on. Now, I talk about this in all of my books. It's very, we're emotional animals. We're not rational creatures, despite what we might think.

So in the moment, you're always going to be emotionally involved. You're going to be upset, but also you want to show the other person that they're wrong about the insecurity they created, which is a seduction technique. So in the moment, as you say, you're feeling that, there's no way you're going to get over it.

It's going to embroil you in a thought process that's going to make you even more insecure. What you need to do is the next day, you need to look back at what happened and think about it and analyze it. When they're not in your presence and go, what really went on?

So that would be a tactic I would really, really emphasize. On like a first date particularly, the next day. Mentally review what they did and what they said and think about whether it seemed like it was genuine or natural or if there might have been some kind of manipulative game going on and kind of analyze it a little bit because it's hard to do that in the moment. Do you find that it's harder to even do that when you're like the closer you are to the person? So on the first day, I think it may be a little easier to disconnect yourself to be like, hang on a minute, that was a little rude.

versus if you're doing it, let's say, to a parent or a sibling, where you're like, that was really offensive. Do you think it's harder? And then if so, are there any tactics that you have seen or used where it's like, even if you care about them and you love them, like if it was my husband or your wife, like how do we still look at that without emotion and still be able to identify that maybe it was a tactic? Well, it's not always a tactic.

I mean, I've known... I've known... situations where a parent will make a comment about a woman's weight, kind of a bitchy comment.

And it's not like the person doing that has some kind of nefarious thing involved. They just don't know how to control their mouth. They're being passive aggressive in some way, right? And as you say, if it's like a parent or somebody you've been involved with for several years, it's much, much harder to take that distance.

But it's very important. Now, I know people in my life who know how to trigger me like that and say something like that. And I do get upset, even though I've written all the books about not getting upset because I can't bloody well help it, right? And then I might react and do something that I kind of regret.

And then I analyze it. And then I go, what went on here in this situation? And I unspool it.

Now, it's easy for me to say that because I've been doing this for years. It's why I write. books.

I understand that having a distance when a parent says a comment that's kind of biting or cruel, it's very hard to like the next day to think about that and see. But in general, I try to promote this philosophy that what people do to you is not personal. Now, people have a very hard time with that going, well, what do you mean it's not personal, Robert?

Well, what I mean by that is when somebody says something malicious or cruel or bitchy. They're not really aiming it at you. They're having problems from their own past. They're aiming it at their parent. They're aiming at a sibling.

They're aiming at a previous boyfriend or girlfriend. They're aiming it at a colleague at work that did something to them. It really isn't personal about you in particular. It's about them and their problems. So if you take the angle that I'm not going to get emotionally involved with this because it really has nothing to do with me.

That is an incredibly liberating thing to develop. I'm not saying it's easy, but that should be like the end game of a lot of our kind of self-help. I tried to do that recently, actually. It really worked.

So I got a very negative comment in my YouTube channel. Oh dear. What do you mean? You read your YouTube comments?

Yeah, I do! I read my guys at home, I read your comments. I really do. Because here's the thing...

But they're cruel, they're mean, they're awful. Actually, not in my community. They're amazing.

On YouTube? YouTube? Yeah.

It's kind of like the wild, wild list. I know. Okay, okay. But like because this community is women who actually want to do better, like we all really support, I'm not to say we don't have those negative Nancy's, but we've got this community where everyone wants to uplift each other.

Now every so often though, I do get a negative comment. And so it's usually when a video goes viral, unfortunately. But I got this negative comment and it was so... rude. It was so dismissive.

It was so insulting. And I just paused. First of all, I thought, What has happened to that person in their life?

They don't know me. So what has happened where they've had such a visceral, negative emotion towards me? I went back to what happened in their past. What was it that I've done that potentially triggered them to make them think of their past? And then instead of fighting, like I definitely got a strong backbone, I just met them with grace.

And I said, if you just took that minute that you just wrote this negative comment, and told someone in your life how much you love them, how good they're doing. Could you imagine what kind of world we would live in? And so that's kind of my new approach of that.

It's not personal. Greet them with grace. And then the final thing is, I don't think men get this as much as women, but the second as a woman you get emotional, all of a sudden you get dismissed. If you have an emotional response to something, even if it's a rightful emotional response to a negative comment, If you get your back up, it's just you're seen as like now defensive, a bitch. And so that was like kind of my new strategy of just...

I think that's very smart. That's very smart. I'm going to go to your next point now.

Sure, please. All right. You somewhat covered this of number nine, which is keep them in suspense when you don't have any idea what's coming next.

So seduction is like a story that you're telling, right? So when you're... When you... What interests us about a story...

is, I don't know what's going to happen next, therefore I've got to turn the page. I'm watching this movie, I don't know what's going to happen to this character. All right, I'm going to keep watching it, right? So a seduction operates on that same dynamic.

The person doesn't know where you're going to take them on the next date. They don't know maybe how you're going to appear, what you're going to wear, what you're going to... But the surprises are positive, they're interesting, they're exciting. There's gifts involved, there's...

places you're taking them to. But it's not predictable. It's unfamiliar. It's theater.

Because let's face it, for most of us, our day-to-day lives are rather banal and rather boring. I can say that my life is very boring. I just sit in my office writing all day, right?

But for us also in this world, for men in the 18th century, they were going on ships, they were crossing the ocean, they were... Killing people with swords, they were battling, they're going off to war. It was adventure, it was excitement.

Now they're sitting in cubicles and they're typing all day. It's leading these boring, banal lives. Everything is familiar, everything is predictable. A seduction is you're taking somebody out of that world and you're taking them into something different, heightened, more dramatic, more interesting, more theatrical.

Okay, so that means you're creating surprises. And so when I'm... Telling men how to seduce, I say that you have to kind of create these little moments where the woman is caught off guard. She doesn't know where you're taking them, what the next step is. There can be sometimes slightly negative things where it might be, hmm, that wasn't good.

And then you immediately catch it up with something good, you know, kind of a roller coaster ride, very calculated. And is that slightly off? guard then?

Because you said sometimes a little bad, sometimes good. Is that part of it as well? Because if it was always good, would it not be as effective?

Yeah, exactly. So I mean, it's the classic coquette strategy where you're kind of going hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold. Maybe the hot is 70% and the cold is 30%.

But when you're cold, you're like, oh my God. What's wrong? Did I do something wrong? Because the first thing that you do is, what did I do that was wrong that made them kind of withdraw from me? Then the next moment they're smiling, they're taking you somewhere else.

Oh, oh, relief. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Okay, it's okay now. That's how you get involved on that kind of emotional roller coaster and they kind of hook you that way. Because the whole game, besides getting the other person to think about you when you're not there, is to get them emotional about you.

Even if they dislike you, that's okay, because that can be overcome. What you cannot overcome is indifference. So getting them to be upset, which is the whole thing about that wound, getting them to be suspicious, angry, that gives you room to turn around and seduce them, because they're emotional, they're getting emotional in your presence. That emotion in your presence can now be turned into something else. Oh, that's so true.

There's actually lyrics in the song. They go, I'd rather you hate me than forget me. And it's a love song about a woman basically saying, I'm over you. And she's like, he says, I'd rather you actually hate me. So I always found that like super fascinating.

because it still means that you care right whereas the indifference is like you literally don't exist in their lives and they have zero feelings towards you um and then the other thing that you said that really hit me was with the hot and cold i was with before i met tom i had a very turbulent toxic relationship with a guy for four years and what i remember is on the good days i would say oh my god thank god you stayed with him because then you wouldn't have This is the moments that you love, Lisa. And then you go through the bad moments. And then you get back to the good moment. And in the good moment, you're always like, oh, phew. OK, we're back here again.

Thank God. The thing about that is I don't know this person. So I don't know what this relationship is. You wonder, is it conscious or unconscious?

It's both. We don't realize that things can be both. So that people may not be totally aware that they're doing that.

But there's a part of them. in the back of their minds that know that they are kind of creating this hot and cold game. They're creating a push and pull. So it's never completely natural or unconscious. There's an element where they kind of know that this is a very effective thing to use on the other person.

A thousand percent. And I think that I'm so glad that you said that because when I look back at that relationship, I realized I was just as manipulative, right? He would verbally abuse me and so I used my sexuality, I used flirting, I used the seduction, some of the tools that we're talking about, in order to make him less angry. But nothing, none of it was deliberate.

It was all I had a feeling, I knew that this worked and so okay cool he's mad with me let me use this. So I'm so glad that you said that because I didn't do it deliberately, it got the result I wanted. Okay, we're going to move on now to number 13, which is disarm through strategic weakness and vulnerability. A woman is going to be suspicious of a man because she will think that he's more powerful, he's more male, he's more masculine, he's more aggressive than I am, right? So she's a little bit afraid.

Women can be a little bit afraid of men, and rightfully so. So a very nefarious tactic on the male side is to kind of make it feel like the woman is the one in power. The woman is the one who's in control, right? I'm under her claws.

She's the one that's operating this. I'm actually kind of weak. I'm actually kind of vulnerable. Well, that takes all the trust element and goes, well, yeah, I feel fine in this person. To feel like you're the one controlling the man, that he's like weak and he's the more emotional one, that he needs you more than you need him, is going to make all your suspicions, you know, disappear.

But it has to happen at the right moment. That's why this is in order. That's why this is number 13. If you did that at number one or two, it's like, oh, this guy's kind of weak.

That's so true. He's too nice. I don't know.

I'm not interested in him. Yeah. But if he's been.

kind of leading you along and he seems like he's sort of in control and he's taking you through these these this kind of certain this theater and he seems like you have maybe a little bit of fear about him the whole thing is to reduce that fear and at that moment halfway through the seduction as we are to show that you are the one who's weak and vulnerable will will have a very powerful emotional effect on the other person oh that was so strong and specifically the order thing that's fascinating because you're so right i had dated guys before tom where day one they're bringing flowers they're doing poetry now what's interesting is when i was with my narcissistic ex i was like i just want a guy that's kind and then i get a guy that's kind and i'm like well he's a bit of a pushover yeah right like and so understanding it you've said theater quite a few times in this interview as one that really does hit me that feels like there is a theater behind like a theatrics behind this whole thing Yeah, yeah. It's a trap for a man in seducing to always try and be so nice. Because sometimes a woman doesn't want somebody who's so nice.

Because that kind of signals weakness. And so, you know, our sexes are different. Biology does play a role in things.

And women may be afraid of, but they're also intrigued. by the male, by the masculine element in a man, right? And if your first signal is, eh, poetry and flowers, I'm so sensitive, I do yoga, blah, blah, blah, the nice thing is kind of a trap.

Although for some women, it could work if they've been in a total... abusive relationships, right? And you sense that. I'm talking about a very cold seducer here. And you sense that, well, being very kind and nice in the first few weeks will really have them eating out of your hand, right?

Okay, so not everything is so... cut and dry in the seduction world. You have to kind of tailor your strategies and tactics for the woman and her vulnerabilities.

So the number one quality for a seducer, male or female, is authenticity. authenticity but to appear authentic right yeah so you know if you are genuinely nice then that can work but if you are being nice because you know you're insecure then that won't work oh my god that's so true and uh the authenticity piece is super interesting but it's it's very complex because it's they want you we want you to be authentic but we still want you to have a backbone And I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of pushback for women that don't feel like this. I want to very much caveat this is how I feel and how a lot of women I have spoken to have felt. I'm not making a general rule, but this is very true to me and my friends and people around me. As a woman, I want a man that is very kind, that hears me, that nurtures me, that takes care of me when I'm sick.

But if someone's robbing my house, I want him to be a hardcore motherfucker. And I want him to stand in front of me and take a bullet. And that is the truth. And so I think that's the problem these days where it's like we don't just say what is actually true.

And so you don't, again, just speaking for myself, I don't want a guy who's just verbally abusive to me, treats me like crap, doesn't care about me and still protects the and still goes after the robber. I'd rather be alone than have that guy. And then somebody who is nice, kind, sweet. And then a robber comes and they look at me and they're like, OK, honey. Like, no, that doesn't jive with me either.

So I think that there's like, we just need to be honest. And that's what I really do love about you and your work is that you're able to be that honest about the realities of human behavior. Well, thank you.

I try. That's my quest in life. All right.

We're going to move on now to number 15. Isolate the victim. And I've got a quote. Even the strongest can be made vulnerable if you isolate them from their nest and safety nets.

Okay. So this is a. manipulative tactic.

There's no doubt about it. People have their own kind of context, their family, their friends, their workplace. And sometimes if you can isolate them from that context, they become much more vulnerable to you, right? They don't have any friends, they don't have any support anymore. So they only can rely on you.

And it's something that is done over time, right? So if somebody, if you're confronting with a male seducer who is trying to turn you off from your friends, who is making it so that your best friend, oh, I don't think you should trust her. I think she's up to something, right?

He's trying to do things like that. He's trying to alienate you from your family. I think your parents were really awful to you, etc.

It's a very classic technique because in your sense of isolation, you're much more vulnerable to getting support from this. from this particular person. And so one of the tactics that I talk about in the book is taking the person to another country, to another place, even on a holiday or vacation, where they feel unsupported, where they feel a little bit alone and isolated for several weeks, kind of break down that element and make them want to turn to you for trust and support. So if you feel that a man... He's trying to isolate you in the subtlest ways from your friends, from your family, from the place where you live, and is criticizing that and trying to make you feel like, maybe I don't like these things, maybe that friend isn't really somebody I can trust.

This is somebody you should be very, very suspicious of. It's a terrible tactic. It's trying to isolate you socially from the things that support you, and you should be very, very suspicious, and you should not give in to that. One of my favorite analogies is have you ever seen like water that drips on a rock and if it goes over and over over years and years the rock ends up changing its shape. I think of narcissistic tactics as that analogy because as you were describing it imagine you have the person that's subtly giving you these negative comments about your family, subtly giving you these negative comments about your friends.

Over time you end up starting to... question it. You start to look at something you never would have looked for.

And before you know it, that slow dripping effect that your toxic partner has had on you has eventually changed the way that you see it. see the world in the way you see people around you. Right, right. I've also had on my show some, a cult expert, and it was a guy who literally assesses cults and tries to help rescue people from cults.

And one of the tactics is they remove you from your family. Oh, completely, completely. They become your family, yeah.

And they put you in an environment where everyone believes the same thing. That way, if you go to speak up, everyone looks at you like you're the outlier. Like you're the crazy one. And so that isolation where you don't have anyone to turn to, to kind of like, you know, like, is this normal? Is this right?

Like you don't have those people around you to ask. And so now you end up feeling like it's all on you or like you're going crazy. And also, as you kind of alluded to, they kind of isolate you mentally where they make you question your own values and your own ideas.

So there are values and ideas now are the only ones you can rely upon. So one of the isolations is from the things that you and your brain kind of use to support you, that you rely upon, the values that you hold dear. If they can chip away at that, then you're even more isolated and you're even more vulnerable.

How would they chip away at a value? Can you give me an example? Let's say you're a religious person, right?

And you believe very strongly in your belief in God. something very important to you and they start kind of chipping away at that about that's so irrational how can you in the 21st century believe that somebody changed water into wine and walked on water how ridiculous and they're being more subtle than that but they're solely chipping away at a very important value that you have which is your faith in God right and then just thinking about like if they did it in a mocking tone yeah like I think that would be even more insulting because It's this like little comment. And then if you say, well, hang on a minute, that was really offensive. Then again, that person can come back and say, oh, you're so sensitive.

Exactly. And they just keep turning it back. Yeah, it just keeps turning it back on you.

That's one of the strategies about insinuation. You insinuate doubts into the other person. God, that's unfortunately powerful. So we're going to go to number 18 now, which is stir up the transgressive and the taboo.

I actually was shocked to see that. So talk to me about why stirring up the taboo. actually helps as part of the seduction.

Now, what shocked you about that? I just thought it would be maybe, like, if someone's a little prudish, it may be like a turn-off, like, oh my God, I can't believe you said that. And people can sometimes almost be offensive more than it is, like, intriguing. Well, seduction involves, by nature, an element of transgressive and taboo.

So the word itself has this kind of edge to it. Well, we're sort of attracted to it, but we're also a little bit afraid of it. It's like something, it could be very exciting, but there's also something a little bit evil about it, a little bit naughty.

And if it didn't have those two elements, it wouldn't be this very powerful word that attracts us so much. So people who pretend that they want everything to be so comfortable and easy and perfect in their life, they want everything to be good. Everything to be sweet and angelic. But people are complicated. They desire the opposite of what they say they think they want, right?

So underneath every one of our desires is secretly something else, secretly something, maybe the opposite that we want, but we're not aware of it. And so if everything in the seduction were so smooth and wonderful and pleasant, he's giving you chocolates and roses and wonderful, it doesn't have that. edge to it.

We want an edge to things in life, otherwise we're not interested in it. It gives it something a little bit, a whiff of danger. It's something we haven't talked about, but seduction has to have an element of danger to it. It has to be like being involved with this person.

It's not like my life is at stake, but something potentially bad could happen, or there's an adventure involved that I'm not used to, where I could lose something that I value. And that element of danger is actually a spice in our life. So my view of people today is that we're too tight.

We're too like this. We're too political. We're too like holding on to things we want.

We're like, I call it the new prudery in the art of seduction. This is the new pruderies, our political correctness. Everything has to be this way.

I'm so moral and righteous. This is what's right and that's what's wrong. And secretly...

Underneath it all, we actually yearn for the opposite, because it's not natural for us to be so tight and wound up. The human being wants to loosen up. We want to laugh.

We want to do the opposite of what's going on in society. We want things to be the same. that are unconventional. We want things that are mysterious. We want things that are weird and strange.

We don't want our lives to be so tight and controlled like everything is on the media, where you say one wrong thing and 8 million people are after you, right? So an element of political incorrectness, of taboo, of something I'm not supposed to be interested in that person, but I am. How exciting. I think is a very, very important part of a seduction because people are wound up way too tight these days and they need a release and they need that release is something that they don't normally would never normally do you know what hit me as you were talking have you read i don't know if you've read this or you'll be horrified that i'm asking you that if you read this have you read 50 shades of gray no but uh my wife has and she talked to me about it and so i'm kind of up on on what it's all about when i was reading it was you Utterly shocking. But that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

Exactly! That was what hit me. So I do know about the book.

That's what hit me because I was like, when you were saying taboo, I was like, oh, I don't know. Like if something's taboo and someone's a little like edgy, I think people will get their back up. But actually, I take that all back because you're a thousand percent right. Because the book, you would have your, I want to say, average woman who's like, maybe they've got yoga and they've got kids. They're still reading Fifty Shades of Grey.

But it's not only reading Fifty Shades of Grey, the whole romance fiction world is filled with Fifty Shades of Grey. Where the male, no, believe me, because Honest told me, she's instructed me about this. It's the hero, the male, who's got this kind of secret side to him.

He's got a touch of evil to him. But the woman is going to be the one who's going to change him. And that's the whole thing even behind Fifty Shades of Grey. Which I think in the end she does kind of get him to settle down. That's the fantasy element.

The fantasy element is I meet this guy who's got this kind of secret. In this case, I guess he's into kind of sadism or BDSM. But secretly, the woman is attracted to that dark side of him. You're a thousand percent right.

As you're reading it, you get more and more intrigued and enticed by the story, not less. And he gets her to do some crazy shit. Like, it's pretty raunchy.

And I'm reading it and I'm like finding this fascinating. Well, there you go. But then Tom, my husband, who nothing can shock him, like he very rarely gets shocked by anything. He picks up the book and he's like, what is all the fuss about? Like every woman that I've heard, you're obsessed with it.

So he opens it up to a random page and he reads one paragraph and he's like. oh my he's like even i'm shocked by this and he's like and it's hard to shock me but what was fascinating is that every woman loved it and so do you think that's what it was that it was the storyline where you had this sweet woman who then ends up somewhat controlling this very good looking wealthy uh dominant man yeah and the sex around it is the taboo that keeps the thread pulling throughout the whole story completely it's a perfect example you've picked the perfect example of what I was trying to express, which you've been doing throughout this interview. Oh, it just literally just hit me in real time.

I didn't even dawn on me about the taboo. No, that's exactly what I meant. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, you should maybe read the book too.

if you want but i don't know i'd be shocked i'm telling you when tom was shocked he was like babe i've seen people at airports reading it and he's like if i was a guy reading a porno that was this graphic he's like everyone would judge me he's like but every woman's carrying it around like a pride of honor and i was like it actually is like it really was this beautiful moment of us women signaling each other to be like i can handle the taboo right right you Okay, so number 20, we've got mixed pleasure with pain. And you say mental, emotional, physical seduction. Well, now we're entering the last stages of the seduction where you've been messing with the person psychologically.

They've kind of had a back and forth dynamic with you where they're very excited, they're intrigued, but then they're pulling back because of things you've done that they're not sure about. And it's like a piece of metal that's getting weaker and weaker and weaker by all the bending back and forth. And they're on the verge of breaking.

And so injecting a little bit of pain at the end of this, towards this moment in the seduction. Like, I'm going to leave you. It's over. I'm done with you.

Man, that'll be very, very powerful because there's been so much pleasure, so much excitement, so much interest involved. That at that moment that you're going to pull back. or that you do something kind of heartless is going to have a devastating effect on the other person.

So I'm being the evil seducer now here, but giving that back and forth dynamic where you're leading them along where it's very fun, it's pleasurable. exciting but there are moments of doubt and pain is a very really is what hooks the other person and gets them completely in your grasp so if everything is pleasurable it's not going to be it's not going to have the emotional impact and if you put in particularly near the end these little doses of pain i really think it's important that you said at the end because i think you're right going back to the other ones like if you did at the beginning you're like well this is an asshole like i'm not seeing them again and then you'd never see them again if it's a really relationship, but doing it when you feel loved, when maybe you feel like you can trust them, you've been vulnerable with them, and then they do the pain, like that, A, the back and forth is so true. And it kind of then goes into the other point that you made about the confusion, right? Where it's like making them confused, where it's like, oh my God, this is so amazing. Oh my God, this hurts.

This is amazing. This hurts. Yeah.

Well, I mean, to me, I don't know if this is sound too weird, but an orgasm. ...is a kind of mix of that. Oh, no way! An orgasm is so pleasurable it almost hurts.

No way! In French they call it le petit mort, the little death. There's almost a sense of, it's too much, it's almost like I'm having a heart attack, but it's so fucking pleasurable, right?

And so in the orgasm itself, which is the end goal perhaps in a seduction, this is kind of like a little mini orgasm, where there's... But that sense of this is so much fun, but it's also kind of a bit unpleasant, kind of mimics that sensation, if I'm not being too theoretical here. No, I think you've hit the nail on the head, actually.

Okay, we're going to move on now to number 21. Give them space to fall. The pursuer is pursued. If you're pursuing someone so much, right, it's almost like it's getting too predictable here.

And the sense of being constantly chased. And since pursued is tiring, it's also a little bit frightening, and it's also like, where is this all ending, right? It's going too much like you're in control of everything. If you take a step back, you're the one pursuing her, and now you step back, and you don't call her as much, and you're doing your work, and you're not so interested in her. Suddenly she's going to have to pursue you because you've got your hooks in her so deeply.

And the moment she, you've created this space, because think of it spatially. You're after her, you're after her. It's like this, this, this, this, this, you're after her. And then you pull back.

Now there's a space between you two. That space is where she's going to fall. And that's what I mean by it.

So you've pulled back and now she's going to pursue you because she doesn't want to lose it. It's been so interesting and so pleasurable. And she's so used to this dynamic that she's now going to turn around. The moment she pursues you in any way, it's over. You've seduced her.

That's it. So it's got to be timed right. We're very near the end of our seduction here. Because that literally means to fall.

And we're like falling in love. So this is a book about falling, getting people to love you. It's not a book about just having sex.

It's all psychological. And literally falling in love is a... You can't control it, you're falling.

So you're giving them space for them to fall because if you're pursuing them, they're just backing up, but you want them to go like that. I interviewed a CIA spy, and part of his techniques is to be able to convince someone to trust them and to love, right, to take their secrets. And he says that the thing that you need to do is get them, they need to trust you because people don't necessarily fall into love, they actually fall into trust. And it's the trust that they perceive as love. And I found that always fascinating.

So we've got number 23. So that was the last one I went to. Master the art of the bold move. This is the end of it, the end game, which could be sex or whatever it is that you're after.

But the problem that a man will have in this situation is he's so worried that he's going to offend the woman. that she's going to think that all he wants is sex. He's trying to be nice. And so he's reluctant to take the last step, right? But to the woman that signals, you've been doing this all along.

You don't desire me that much. You're not willing to do something kind of aggressive. This is the moment that the woman wants something aggressive.

She doesn't want you to hit her, but she wants you to take the initiative and do something. Which signals that you are so attracted to her, you are so in love with her, that you're just gonna like pounce on her. And that's what ends the seduction.

That's what's powerful. That's what moves the other person. But the fact that you're hesitating ruins the whole effect. So at the very last moment, it's your boldness that will consummate it.

It's the boldness that in this situation the woman actually wants. Okay, so you wrote those. Oh, my God, they're so powerful.

And then you do do a fourth one, 24, which is kind of, you said, the after effects. So beware of the after effects. What are the after effects?

Well, let's take it from, since this is, your audience is female, let's take it from the woman's point of view. The man has been doing all of these things that have quite honestly required some effort. Right?

He's put, you know, if it's been over the course of a couple months, let's just give it a little bit of time. We're not doing one of those pick up in a bar, three day kind of things. It's been a couple months. He's been working at it, right?

He's been doing these things. He's been taking you out here. He's been buying you things. You're also doing things as well. I'm not saying it's totally one-sided.

But he's been putting in all this effort. Now he's got what he wants and it's all gone. Right?

Now he doesn't need to take you out to a nice restaurant. Now he doesn't need to dress up nicely. He can just sit at home in his shorts and order pizza in and watch games.

He starts to take you for granted. right? He stopped seducing.

Now, I'm saying in this 24 here, Obviously, you're not going to be giving the same amount of effort that you did earlier on. That would be exhausting. A couple like you have lasted 22 years.

If Tom or you were doing this for 22 years, you would have killed yourself by then. It would be too much. No. You have to keep seducing a little bit on and on and on. You have to occasionally do surprises.

You have to occasionally take them to someplace special. You have to be willing to keep dressing nicely or do something. something different, to have that slight theatrical, that sort of fantasy element, there still has to be a little bit of mystery involved.

If the other person becomes so familiar, then the spark, then the charge between you will dissipate. So there has to be a little bit of mystery, a little bit of space still between you and some surprise. So naturally it's going to get lesser the longer you're together, but it can't completely disappear. And a lot of women complain, at least I've heard, that he just stopped trying, right? It's just everything suddenly became, I just became somebody familiar to him and all the magic was gone and all the things that he used to do that were full of effort, all of that has just gone like that.

And that's a devastating feeling like I'm not worth it anymore. It's all over. That kills the relationship. Okay, I'd really love to break down the nine seducer characteristic types. So let's talk about number one, the siren.

Well, Well, the siren is like the original seductress. So I maintain in the book that seduction was a strategy that women invented. thousands of years ago because of the uneven power dynamic, quite honestly.

So sex was the one tool back then that a woman had to gain power over a man. And so women invented the art of seduction as a way to turn the dynamic around, right? To have power over the man.

So they developed this very elaborate art of how to hook a man so that he would become her slave, which was very, very powerful. And so the archetype of that is like Cleopatra, right? So the siren is the most primal, the most primitive form of seduction, of seductress.

And these were literally, sirens were literally these mythical creatures that were on rocks in the sea, and their song was so powerful that men on ships would drive into the water to reach them, and then they would drown and die. So the siren is so powerfully attractive, so powerfully seductive, has such a sexual energy. that men will dive into the water and kill themselves over them.

They're so attracted to them. And so the siren kind of exudes this kind of very powerful sexual energy. She doesn't have to say anything.

There was a charge about her that was very sexual and very powerful. And men would go wild over this, and they would pursue her, and then she would know how to keep stringing them along. So Cleopatra...

who, as far as we know, was not in incredibly beautiful. She had a bit of a nose. And the people who described her, she wasn't like a classic beauty.

She was a master of psychology. She created this theater as if she were a living goddess. And men would go crazy over that.

And, you know, the other classic example is Marilyn Monroe. So a siren will seduce any kind of man. She'll seduce the great athlete, like Marilyn Monroe seduced Joe DiMaggio. She will seduce the intellectual. she introduced Arthur Miller.

No man can resist a siren because of that energy that she exudes that's so primal and it's so rare. There are not that many sirens around, but a siren is the most devastating seductress. them all. And I think it's quite a myth, right, that we think the siren is a goddess, is stunning, is beautiful. No, she's a master of fantasy.

She creates a fantasy that she does have all of these qualities. Now, Marilyn Monroe, yes, she was very beautiful. But I talk about in The Art of Seduction, Marilyn Monroe would go into a bar in New York and nobody would recognize her, right?

It was all image. She knew how to use makeup, how to do her hair. Would you take away her makeup? You take away her hair. Her hair wasn't naturally blonde.

She was pretty, but she was not Marilyn Monroe. People wouldn't know, recognize her. It was all something she created.

The siren creates her image. She creates something very theatrical, very powerful, very larger than life. So it's not just about the face. Men are...

are very visually oriented, right? But it's also the psychology involved that she's playing on. That's fascinating.

Also, when you were talking, I realized how much the confidence part makes a difference. Like a woman or even a guy being confident is very sexy. And so it doesn't almost matter what that person looks like. If you bring yourself, if you feel good in your own skin, that definitely has an impact on the person. the people around you.

Yeah, but it has to be real confidence. Some confidence is kind of fake. And inauthentic, and it's covering up loads of insecurities. And people can pick that up. But if it's real confidence, you're exactly right.

Which brings us to the next one, the rake. And the reason I bring that up, the rake is the kind of most dominant male form of seducer. The rake is the male form of the siren.

And there was a rake called Gabriel Danuncio. an Italian poet that no woman could resist. It was amazing. He was one of the ugliest men.

He was truly ugly. He was short. He had this horrible skin color. He had a nose.

But he was a poet. And his words just flowed. Because the weakness of women is often words. And he was just a fountain of beautiful words. And he was a master of seduction.

The Rake is a man who's really, really interesting. interested in women. You know, he's interested in their world, in their spirit.

He often grew up with maybe a mother and sisters. So he's very comfortable around women. He knows them.

He loves women. He loves their world, their energy, their spirit. But not a single woman can ever satisfy him.

So he has to have 50, he has to have 100, he has to have 1,000 women in his life. And Errol Flynn, by the time he died, calculated that he'd slept with 3,000 women. And he died at the age of 50. but the fact that he's so interested in their world he's so attentive is what's so devastatingly attracted to the woman and he's so confident in himself he's got this kind of male energy he's like a tiger he just knows who he is and i'll just leave with one quote there was a woman who was seduced by errol flynn who was probably the greatest one of the greatest male seduces ever and she said sitting next to him was like having drunk five martinis me. I felt like so relaxed in his presence because he made me feel so relaxed by his confidence that I felt drunk without even ever having drunk anything because of his confidence.

And yeah, you could awake the bad boy is what I've got in my note. Yeah, he is. He is a bad boy.

He's like Lord Byron. He's slept with his sister. He's slept with everybody.

You know he's bad, but that's exactly why you're attracted to him. Okay, so that was number two was the Reiki. Number three is the ideal lover. That's just simply like a Casanova who's able to fill your fantasies. He knows he's very romantic.

They know what you secretly really want, and they bring it to life in real time. They are the living incarnation of your deepest fantasies, right? And so Casanova and also... So Rudolph Valentino, the great actor in the 20s, these were kind of classic ideal lovers.

Yeah, Casanova's definitely, I think, become the almost epitome for that. Yeah. Number four, The Dandy.

The Dandy. Dandy is somebody who's got a bit of androgyny to them. So the female dandy would be like Marlene Dietrich or Madonna.

They kind of sometimes will dress like a man. But they're definitely a woman. They're not, you know, sexless. But they're a woman with a male streak. They're a man with a feminine streak.

And, you know, Freud talks about this. We all are kind of bisexual by nature. In other words, at birth, men have strong feminine qualities to them genetically, and the same for women. So we're almost sometimes attracted to the opposite, to the gender, our own gender, than the other person, which is a strange quality but it's very much a very powerful trend. And the dandy isn't going to seduce everyone but a lot of people are attracted to that kind of androgynous figure.

Interesting. Do you think that that's because of like the potential mirroring? So what I mean by that is there was this docuseries on Netflix and it was about a guy that had like over a thousand children. He was going to these sperm banks and he was like basically donating his sperm, but he was lying and he had this compulsion. So he was going to all these sperm banks.

And so the pop he was like, what was he lying about? Because you're only allowed to give sperm like a certain amount of times a year because you can't just populate the entire earth yourself with your sperm. So there's like laws and restrictions about how many times you can donate. And so he was faking it.

So he was traveling, going to all these different places, faking his names and doing all these sperm donations so he can get all these women pregnant. And what ended up happening was there was this tiny little town and there were so many of these kids that were his. And what they were saying is, is that a child is more likely to be attracted to a sibling. without obviously knowing it, than a stranger. Because there's something familiar about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something that they are drawn to because when you mirror someone or when someone mirrors you, you feel very comfortable. And so they think that mirroring ends up happening with siblings and that's why they're actually more likely to fall for each other than a stranger.

So now I go back to what you just said, that if you're a man and you have some femininity in you, it's actually more appealing. I wonder if it's because of that, because now you feel seen, understood, more familiarity. I think that's definitely true.

But I also think there's a sexual component as well, where you're secretly attracted to your mirror image. It's a narcissistic thing, right? And you'll find a lot of, they've done studies, men and women, who the partners they end up being or the people they're attracted to actually resemble.

Family members resemble the father, the mother, the brother, the sister. Not totally obvious, but in certain ways you can definitely see that that was a very powerful part of the attraction. So it's not just the comfort, but it's also there's a sexual charge to that.

Fascinating. Okay, number five is the natural, who is more childlike. That's the ultimate seducer type because you never suspect a child of being a seducer. being a seducer, but children are very seductive. So if you're very natural, if you're very comfortable and you don't have much of a filter on what you say and what you do like a child does, but it's so innocent, it's like that's why we fall in love with animals or pets, right?

They're so innocent. They can't help being what they are, right? So we fall in love with them for that very quality. Whereas people who try really hard, it's very off-putting.

They're not being who they are. But when somebody just can't help it, this is who they are, they're naturally playing these pranks, they're naturally making these jokes, they're naturally upset and emotional. We're naturally drawn to them.

And Charlie Chaplin was kind of the icon of that. He played the kind of ultimate sort of... child even in his 20s, 30s, and 40s. And it was devastatingly seductive on women, that quality. All right.

So we've got number six, the coquet that we already spoke about. Number seven is the charmer. Well, the charmer is a seducer without sex. So it'll be like someone who's a social seducer.

And you say things that make the other person feel so good. You make everybody around you feel it's like high-level social skills. There's a famous quote about there was two Englishmen.

There was Benjamin Disraeli, who was a prime minister under Queen Victoria, and then there was his rival, a man named Gladstone. And they kind of hated each other. And a princess sat in between them once at a party, and she said, talking to Mr. Gladstone, I felt like he was the smartest man in the world.

But talking to Mr. Disraeli, I felt like I was the smartest woman in the world. And that's what a charmer is. He makes you feel like you are the star.

You are the most wonderful person. Not him or her, but you. All the attention is on you. And he has a high level of social skill to make you completely feel comfortable and make you feel like you are the most brilliant person in the world. Okay, number eight, we've got the charismatic, who is, you call, mysterious, has eloquence, theatricality.

In... uninhibited vulnerability and adventurousness. The way I define it is a person who's charismatic, it's like they have a light inside of them, like a light bulb or a lamp that's inside of them. You can't see it, but it animates everything from them. Their face, their eyes, their gestures.

They feel like they're lit up from within, and it's very powerful. They have this confidence and this energy. I talk in there about John F. Kennedy, who had charisma. I talk about Marilyn Monroe, who was a charismatic.

And I think about people with deep levels of charisma. And I worked with 50 Cent on a book. He has tremendous charisma. And I could see it in real life, you know, it is very real.

The weird thing about charismatics is they often come from broken homes. They come from a childhood where they didn't get any love. Almost invariably you will find this.

And what that means is, in order to get the love that everybody wants, the validation and the attention, they have to get it from other people, they have to get it from crowds, they have to get it from an audience. They have to get it from the camera and all the millions of people who are going to watch them. They have such a need for love and attention because they never got it that they project that out onto the world.

That is the lamp that's lighting them up from the inside and making everything that they do seem so animated and so exciting. So feeling like you were never loved but you need it from the public is often what makes a charismatic, that quality. And you will always, almost always find that they come from. deprived childhoods. Wow, and so as a child because you were so deprived you, like how did you get that light?

I would have thought it would be the opposite. Well, it can have the opposite effect. So not everybody who has a deprived childhood turns into a charismatic. True.

So often you're so beaten down, you feel so worthless that it doesn't have that effect. But you take a strong personality like Marilyn Monroe who was an orphan, who grew up in an orphanage. and had dealt with abusive men, etc., had a very, very rough childhood, right? But she's a very strong personality, and so she's desperate for love in her life.

Now, if some women wouldn't have that effect, they would just kind of shrink and find another way to get it. She needed that love, so she had to find it. She found it through modeling and through acting, etc.

John F. Kennedy. had a very troubled relationship with his father. He was not the preferred son in the family. There was another son who was like the golden boy. When he was in the public, he wanted the whole world to fall in love with him.

I talk about Malcolm X and his childhood. Winston Churchill, one of the most charismatic political figures ever, had a terrible childhood, even though he came from a very wealthy family. He was completely ignored, right, and had a very rough childhood.

Charismatic figures feel a deep need to get the love and attention that we all need, but not from one person, but from a whole country, from a whole audience, from the public itself. And that's what lights up everything inside of them. And you think that that then stems most likely from a wound from childhood?

I think so. Yeah, makes complete sense. It almost feels like that would be a great survival mechanism for you as a kid, right?

It's like, if you don't have people to love you, no one's looking at you, no one cares for you. And you have charm and charisma, right? You can make people laugh.

You can make people feel amazing. Like they want to be around you. Now, instead of being isolated, alone, with no one, now actually you've been the magnet that's drawn those people.

Yeah, makes complete sense. And then the final character type is the star. And you say this is the most powerful of all. Well, it's the most modern form. It's kind of based on cinema.

And the star is sort of harder to verbalize, but it's a person who attracts fantasies. So there's a kind of a slight blankness to them, a kind of a mysterious quality, where we see unto them whatever we want to see, right? We project unto them all of our fantasies, all of our desires, and they know how to attract that kind of attention. Actors and actresses are kind of the classic example, they're the star obviously, but they know how to embody a certain kind of fantasy and if they were too strong about it, if they projected it too outward, you wouldn't give room for people to fantasize about it. But the fact that you're kind of empty, that there's nothing mysterious about you, almost as if there's something kind of empty, that we can now see what we want to see in you, is the primal.

kind of star quality. And I talk in the book about people who have it. They're kind of modeled on movie stars. We've gone through so much, Robert, but I've got one more question. Uh-oh.

I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, especially being a woman, what would be the key things as a woman that we can do if we wanted to seduce a man? Knowing how to play a little hard to get would be a good skill to reinvent that's kind of been lost now. Knowing how to hook a man, but keep him hooked.

To kind of signal that you're interested in him, that there's something physical, and men are very visually oriented, you know, so there's something about you that excites them. But you're getting them to pursue you. You see, men like to pursue. We're like hunters. I hate to be so brazen about it.

We like to chase. To get a man to chase after you is exactly what he wants. But if you're too available, if you're just like surrendering after the first date, then he'll lose interest because there's no chase involved.

So you've got to know how to kind of put a little honey in the bait and keep him going and withdraw and say no. No, no, but not too much. And if you can get a man to chase you, then, you know, you're the one in control of that. You're the one in control of the dynamic.

So would you recommend to never, as a woman, you shouldn't chase men? Well, it's ironic, but the fact that you are getting him to chase you means that you are the one in control of the dynamic. You know, we're so stupidly logical sometimes that we don't realize that things are kind of ironic, things are the reverse of what they seem. We're too literal minded. So to get somebody to pursue you means that you are the one actually doing the work.

You're the one actually in control. So it's not like you're chasing him, but you are in some ways doing that by withdrawing, by getting him to come after you. But yeah, if you're the aggressor, if you're chasing the man. That could be interesting for a man, and that might lead to sex on the first or second date, but I don't think it's going to lead to a long-term, to anything that's going to be very exciting, have a lot of spice to it. So keep in mind that what excites a man is the chase itself.

It's what makes men... Cheat on their wives, quite frankly. Everything has become too obvious, too familiar. There's no more chase involved.

Ah, now there's this new young woman, this secretary, this woman in my office. I get to chase her, right? There's an animal I get to hunt.

That'll happen. That's why a man will cheat on his wife, because there's no more chasing going on in the relationship. So, I mean, we're generalizing, because not all men are like that. But I think...

Being an aggressive woman can work for some men and can work very quickly. But I think a more powerful thing to seduce a man is to do the opposite of getting to chase you. I could be wrong.

I could be... an old guy who does totally out of touch with the Tinder age. And I recognize my own limitations, that I grew up in an era where seduction was much different than it is now.

So I understand that I might be a dynamo. dinosaur and that, you know, but I do think that human psychology basically doesn't change. And that the things that I've spelled out eventually will kind of be revealed, even in our, in our, in our online world. I interviewed a guy called Matt Hussie and he's a relationship coach.

And he was telling me about how... You interview so many weird, interesting people. I love, yes, I do.

You do, you have a great job. Thank you. Well, I've been dying and so excited for today. I feel like I'm...

geeking out like a little child right now. But what he said to me was back in like the 20s, when people would date, it was about the pursuit. Women understood and so did men.

So women understood they had to give these small micro signals to the man to say, okay, it's okay to pursue me now. The guy would wait for signals and look, and then they would do the pursuit. And it was this... beautiful tango. And he said back in the day, a woman would just be on the street corner and have like a little like handkerchief and she would accidentally drop the handkerchief and she would wait for the guy to come and pick it up.

And you'd be like, oh, thank you so much. That was how we were back then. And we've just lost that art form. So I think that the psychology of it is completely accurate.

Now, look, I could be old too, Robert. Like I'm 45 and been married for 22 years. But I truly believe the psychology is exact.

exactly the same. It's a very confusing time to be a man. What is masculinity? What does it mean to be a man in the 21st century? What are our icons?

What are our ideals? But the idea of being able to trot out your energy, your testosterone, your masculine energy, and to chase a woman and to have it end in a seduction and in sex is as primal as it gets and that is not going away in 2,000 years. in 10,000 years, I don't care. But however we evolve, that is who we are. So these things don't change.

And I think women, I'm going to also echo that, women always want to feel wanted. And I don't think that has ever changed. And so I think even in the pursuit, it's like if a guy's pursuing you, it makes you feel wanted. And I do worry.

Now look, I'm a woman who's in business, who's built multiple businesses with my husband. So I want to caveat that and still say that As a woman, I like crushing it in business, but I still love being soft. safe in my husband's arms.

And I do also worry for the female younger generation that it's all about be your own girl, you don't need a man, screw them. And the truth is, is that no, you don't need a man. But if you want one, that's beautiful.

And how as women, the thing that I try to talk a lot about is how do we ebb and flow in our masculinity and our femininity. And for me, it's when I have to make hard decisions. I have to make hard decisions. I go in. to my masculine energy, if you will.

And I have to be just business oriented. But when I go home with my husband, I want to bring in that feminine energy. And I worry that we're not talking about both and that people now feel like they have to be one or the other.

Well, the thing is, one thing to keep in mind is being in a relationship with a woman from the man's point of view, actually feminizes a man. And being in a relationship from the woman with a man actually makes a woman more masculine. The trait of the other gender kind of rubs off on you and that quality, that interaction has a dissolving effect. So if women say, I don't want to be interested in men, I've had enough of them, screw them. They're just going to feed toxic masculinity and make it worse and worse and worse and worse.

The power you have over men is by relating to them, by bringing your world into them, by locking them into a relationship. where they learn how to be in a relationship, they learn how to care, they learn how to be empathetic, you're feminizing them. So your desire to get away from them is going to have the opposite effect that you want. You're going to make men, the qualities that you don't like in men, even worse. Is that what you've then seen in culture, where we're becoming even more bifurcated because that's happening on both sides?

Yeah, well, you know, that's this thing I think is very new right now, particularly after the election. I'm hearing that there are these memes about, I've had enough of men, I'm quitting on men, no more men in my life kind of thing, which seems kind of ridiculous to me, first of all, to generalize that all men are like that, but also I think it's going to have the opposite effect of what you desire. It's going to make it worse, right?

You're going to have more of those qualities that upset you about them, their lack of empathy, their lack of interest in your world. They're not caring about what it means to be a woman and you're... Problems with your own bodies, etc.

You're going to make all that stuff worse by isolating them, by not being interested in them. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, I agree.

Robert, this has been my dream come true. Like I said, I've known you for... Well, it sounds like you've had all these other amazing guests. Yes, but no Robert Greene. We've known each other for how long now?

Twelve years ago. Really? Yes.

Wow. All right. When did he start having his show?

Back in that studio in some weird place? It was probably 2014. I wonder if you're right. 2014. The show wasn't earlier? No.

All right. Well, I was one of the first guests. I think so. Oh my God, Robert, we've known each other for so long.

And so you can imagine, for me, having read your work, having followed you, love who you are, what you stand for. You're seducing me. I learned from the best. I have a book that I read that taught me everything. No, in all seriousness, I have just, I freaking adore you.

And this has been a dream come true. And this has honestly been so amazing. Your work, your writing is phenomenal. So if anyone wants to keep following you, where should they go?

Well, I believe I have a website. I don't know if the... We can put the link in the description. I think it's still called Power Seduction and War.com, but they might have changed it. And that was my old website back in the early 2000s, if you can believe.

I think that still exists and that'll have links to everything that you would need. All right. We'll link that in the show notes to make sure.

Absolutely. If you want to learn how to seduce and influence anyone in any situation, then click here right now. I'm thinking inside.

Do you like it? Do you like what you see? Because here I am, all this gorgeousness and all of this that I believe.