The Lost Art of Seduction

Greetings folks!

I went to a Meetup on Thursday evening. The group is called “Love Café” and it has nothing to do with anything LGBT. I just found the topic interesting and joined them for this talk. The group of people who showed up were all heterosexual, more men than women, at about a 6:4 ratio, and I would estimate the ages ranged from mid-twenties up to early sixties, so a good mix. It was held in French and there was a dinner afterwards for socializing that I didn't attend (for obvious reasons).

The title of the presentation, given by a local journalist, Jean-Sébastien Marsan, was Les “Québécois ne veulent plus draguer”, which, roughly translated, means that Quebecers no longer want to flirt. This is also the title of his recently published book, written in collaboration with Emmanuelle Grill.

His thesis was fascinating and very much aligned with what I have read elsewhere about relationships. He is also involved in a dating website so he has access to all of the hackneyed clichés that people use in their profiles. He also proceeded to tear down the idea of “the one” or the soul mate, (no such thing), being “authentic”, which for many means spilling all about ourselves, good or bad during the first date, then, by the second date asking if the person you met loves you! Or putting “being coupled” on a pedestal.

Marsan pointed out that our romantic imaginations are so impoverished that people can only imagine themselves as either single or in a couple, thereby completely negating all the other ways people can relate (I think LGBT folk have a better handle on this, what with unconventional relationships and all). He also pointed out the mythology that being in a relationship will save you. Not so: if all one’s relationship needs are to be met by that one, significant other; that is too much for anyone to bear. All your own needs are loaded onto the other, like loading a camel…no wonder camels spit!

Being a couple in a vacuum only heightens the isolation both were trying to escape. No couple can long survive without a community. It’s most often why, amongst LGBT folk, open/closeted relationships are so difficult.

Marsan stated that for Quebecers, there is a myth that we are equivalent to our romantic counterparts in France. Not true, we are generally really bad at the language of flirting and of meeting people, it is almost impossible here to just approach some stranger (cold as the weather!), there is no code or understood language of seduction…Tellingly there was a girl from the Caribbean at the Meetup who talked about how, back in her country, guys would do certain things to signal their attractions, and everyone understands what it means, but here, there is no such language…sad really, French was made for love!

Enter the Art of Seduction.

Marsan talked about a couple he knows who are now married. At first she thought that during the time they had been courting, that everything was an accident. Not on your life, said Marsan; everything, absolutely everything, was planned by the guy, over a period of 6 months. Every “accidental” encounter, every move, gift, dinner, was meticulously planned in advance….She asked him later how it happened and he was completely honest with her…and they’re still together.

There is a huge difference between getting into a relationship not to be alone and getting into a relationship based on the kind of desire that inspires the beautiful, devious and successful seduction of that couple mentioned above. Seduction is the game, and if it is seen as a game, rejection is so much easier to take. For too many oh-so-fragile people, a simple “no” hits them right in the heart. Because it isn’t seen as a game, the risk seems too great. For the seducer, the kind and flavour of that “no” will signal whether it really is a no, or something else…this takes skill and no small measure of strategy.

Seduction is also the sublimation of bringing courtship to another level. It has its own language, whether it be the language of flowers, or attentions, or even deliberate lack of attention! It is often the art of indirection, of taking the long way to the goal and thereby creating something out of nothing. It is the art of appreciating that getting “there” is more than half the fun! So many long-married couples miss those first days and months of courtship, there was a sense of danger and delight that marriage too often sacrifices. Indeed that couple mentioned above actually re-created, after their marriage, the things that were done during courtship, such was the fun!

I remember reading somewhere that there was a direct and positive correlation between the imaginativeness and creativity of marriage proposals and the duration of these marriages. It makes sense these are what I would call “desire-based” marriages; relationships that want more than just cuddling on the couch to keep loneliness at bay. They are full-passionned relationships that are well-versed in the kind of creativity and vitality that went into the courtship.

Seduction is a game for grown-ups, sometimes involving white lies (the kind that makes great art, to tell a greater truth, as Picasso would have said…no accident he was a skilled seducer), knowing your target and what is missing in their lives, knowing also that the target would never accept this kind of manipulation and acting accordingly.

It is often a kind of puritanical moralistic stance that prevents the kind of seduction that works, indeed, during the Meetup there was pushback on these ideas. The word “stalking” was mentioned. I asked why it was that one can only imagine the dichotomy of being either completely catatonic when it comes to approaching someone, or stalking! Where are all the other things in between these two extremes?

It takes imagination and skill to seduce, but more importantly, it takes passion and intelligence to create the work of art that seduction demands. This effort, almost by itself, guarantees a more satisfying relationship in the end.

If you want to learn more about this, read “The Art of Seduction”, by Robert Greene, it is eye-opening!

 

:roflmao:

Fact is, this situation is not restricted to the gay community, or to Quebec, or to Montreal: there are neighbourhoods in this city where it is 50% people living alone! In the US the situation is similar:

The significance of these figures is staggering. Once, there was a church, or a community within which one worked and people with whom one had things in common. This lack of community seems to have the effect of making people more alone, while at the same time, there is enormous pressure from family and friends to get coupled, but forming couples that are just as isolated.

A sizable percentage of young people in this province do not marry, it's as if it is acknowledged that you need relationships, but it's too risky to make the ultimate commitment. When they do pair up, married or not, the lack of community means that they can only love each other and their own kids. Friends and family are seldom seen (my own friendships were kept in suspended animation for the duration of my marriage, only now, I am rekindling my relationship with them...why is that?).

The result is divorce, serial polygamy, the end result of putting too much strain on one's significant other...

I'm not suggesting a return to religion as a cohesive or community creating force. Problem with religion is that you have to believe 6 impossible things before breakfast...but it is our western obsession with "either/or", either alone or in a couple. Sorry, no room for anything else! If you engage in brief encounters, friends with benefits, the whole spectrum of possible (legal) relationships, well, there are other sources of disapproval from family, friends and other counsellors who will chime in to judge.

Fact is, too many of us fall back on a conventional morality when it comes to unconventional relationships. LGBT folk know something about unconventional relationships...gay marriage will indeed challenge these "arrangements", hopefully not too much. If we engage in anything other than official or common-law couples, we will also have to engage our moral senses, and decide for ourselves what is the right thing to do...this takes skill, intelligence, compassion, kindness and a certain confidence in ones own point of view.

 

The most interesting seductions are when the person being seduced is unaware of it. What is advertising, if not seduction?

And being called a "player" has moralistic undertones, that won't do in a fairly puritanical context, which is very much part of US culture. Nevertheless, the seduction I'm talking about is that set of actions directed at one person, call it a seduction leading to capture. Capture?! Who wants to be captured?? Of course, but don't we often hear of people having their hearts "captured"?

Personally, I would love to have someone make the kind of effort I described above to seduce me! It's a game, and games have rules (to help avoid misunderstandings). But in North America, we don't seem to want to play that game...I've had relationships with women in Europe (many years ago, when it was easy), over there, it's a different ball game, heck it is actually recognized as a game. I enjoyed the banter, the sly smiles, the double-entendres. We didn't just lay out our lives on display...it was a beautiful and elegant performance...that's what I crave, I guess, the sublime beauty of seduction...

 

BlueSky,

You point out a very telling fact. Our social technologies do indeed use the either/or, zeroes-and-ones, logic of software. There once was a wave of scientific and technological fashion called "fuzzy-logic" where in fact you get degrees of something as opposed to just this or that. I don't hear much about it these days, I suppose it has already ingrained itself in many computerized control and expert systems (you know, the ones that are supposed to replace doctors...).

This seems to be the major limitation of these dating sites and mobile apps, there are assumptions made about how we date and meet each other. There is absolutely no room for the give and take and play of seduction, as I see it. It's been said long ago that man creates tools, and then becomes a slave to them. Have we adapted our dating to the technology? What kind of Faustian bargain is that?

With these sites and apps, how many do we reject, and how many reject us, on the basis of the flimsiest of superficialities? During the Meetup, Marsan spoke of single men and women he knows who have had this ideal of the perfect person (who doesn't exist) in their heads, sometimes for years, and who end up (once their expectations start to match reality) perfectly content with the ordinary guy or gal next door!

If people don't want to play, or misunderstand the play of seduction as something evil or "inappropriate" because they never learned the rules, or didn't even realize they were in the game (many don't even recognize a "date" for what it is!). It then becomes quite difficult indeed to meet people.

I call for a return to the art of seduction, but more importantly, to the idea that getting to the goal is more than half the fun!

 

It's all about the game, and if both parties are aware that they are players in it, and there are rules (important), then let the fun begin!