13
Disarm Through Strategic Weakness and
Vulnerability
Too much maneuvering on your part may
raise suspicion. The best way to cover your tracks is
to make the other person feel superior and stronger. If you
seem to be weak, vulnerable, enthralled by the other person,
and unable to control yourself, you will make your actions
look more natural, less calculated. Physical weakness—tears,
bashfulness, paleness—will help create the effect. To
further win trust, exchange honesty for virtue: establish
your “sincerity” by confessing some sin on your part—it
doesn’t have to be real. Sincerity is more important than
goodness. Play the victim, then transform your target’s
sympathy into love.
The weak ones do have a power over us. The
clear, forceful ones I can do without. I am weak and
indecisive by nature myself, and a woman who is quiet and withdrawn
and follows the wishes of a man even to the point of letting
herself be used has much the greater appeal. A man can shape and
mold her as he wishes, and becomes fonder of her all the
while.
—MURASAKI SHIKIBU, THE TALE OF GENJI,
TRANSLATED BY EDWARD G. SEIDENSTICKER
—ROBERT GRAVES, THE GREEK MYTHS
The Victim Strategy
That sweltering August in the 1770s when
the Présidente de Tourvel was visiting the château of her old
friend Madame de Rosemonde, leaving her husband at home, she was
expecting to be enjoying the peace and quiet of country life more
or less on her own. But she loved the simple pleasures, and soon
her daily life at the château assumed a comfortable pattern—daily
Mass, walks in the country, charitable work in the neighboring
villages, card games in the evening. When Madame de Rosemonde’s
nephew arrived for a visit, then, the Présidente felt
uncomfortable—but also curious.
The nephew, the Vicomte de Valmont, was the most
notorious libertine in Paris. He was certainly handsome, but he was
not what she had expected: he seemed sad, somewhat downtrodden, and
strangest of all, he paid hardly any attention to her. The
Présidente was no coquette; she dressed simply, ignored fashions,
and loved her husband. Still, she was young and beautiful, and was
used to fending off men’s attentions. In the back of her mind, she
was slightly perturbed that he took so little notice of her. Then,
at Mass one day, she caught a glimpse of Valmont apparently lost in
prayer. The idea dawned on her that he was in the midst of a period
of soul-searching.
As soon as word had leaked out that Valmont was at
the château, the Présidente had received a letter from a friend
warning her against this dangerous man. But she thought of herself
as the last woman in the world to be vulnerable to him. Besides, he
seemed on the verge of repenting his evil past; perhaps she could
help move him in that direction. What a wonderful victory that
would be for God. And so the Présidente took note of Valmont’s
comings and goings, trying to understand what was happening in his
head. It was strange, for instance, that he would often leave in
the morning to go hunting, yet would never return with any game.
One day, she decided to have her servant do a little harmless
spying, and she was amazed and delighted to learn that Valmont had
not gone hunting at all; he had visited a local village, where he
had doled out money to a poor family about to be evicted from their
home. Yes, she was right, his passionate soul was moving from
sensuality to virtue. How happy that made her feel.
That evening, Valmont and the Présidente found
themselves alone for the first time, and Valmont suddenly burst out
with a startling confession. He was head-over-heels in love with
the Présidente, and with a love he had never experienced before:
her virtue, her goodness, her beauty, her kind ways had completely
overwhelmed him. His generosity to the poor that afternoon had been
for her sake—perhaps inspired by her, perhaps something more
sinister: it had been to impress her. He would never have confessed
to this, but finding himself alone with her, he could not control
his emotions. Then he got down on his knees and begged for her to
help him, to guide him in his misery.
In a strategy (?) of seduction one
draws the other into one’s area of weakness, which is
also his or her area of weakness. A calculated
weakness, an incalculable weakness: one challenges
the other to be taken in.. . .• To seduce is
to appear weak. To seduce is to render weak. We
seduce with our weakness, never with strong signs or
powers. In seduction we enact this weakness, and this
is what gives seduction its strength. •We seduce with
our death, our vulnerability, and with the void
that haunts us. The secret is to know how to play
with death in the absence of a gaze or gesture, in
the absence of knowledge or meaning. •
Psychoanalyse tells us to assume our fragility and
passivity, but in almost religious terms, turns them
into a form of resignation and acceptance in order to
promote a well- tempered psychic equilibrium.
Seduction, by contrast, plays triumphantly with
weakness, making a game of it, with its own
rules.
—JEAN BAUDRILLARD, SEDUCTION, TRANSLATED
BY BRIAN SINGER
The Présidente was caught off guard, and began to
cry. Intensely embarrassed, she ran from the room, and for the next
few days pretended to be ill. She did not know how to react to the
letters Valmont now began to send her, begging her to forgive him.
He praised her beautiful face and her beautiful soul, and claimed
she had made him rethink his whole life. These emotional letters
produced disturbing emotions, and Tourvel prided herself on her
calmness and prudence. She knew she should insist that he leave the
château, and wrote him to that effect; he reluctantly agreed, but
on one condition—that she allow him to write to her from Paris. She
consented, as long as the letters were not offensive. When he told
Madame de Rosemonde that he was leaving, the Présidente felt a pang
of guilt: his hostess and aunt would miss him, and he looked so
pale. He was obviously suffering.
Now the letters from Valmont began to arrive, and
Tourvel soon regretted allowing him this liberty. He ignored her
request that he avoid the subject of love—indeed he vowed to love
her forever. He rebuked her for her coldness and insensitivity. He
explained his bad path in life—it was not his fault, he had had no
direction, had been led astray by others. Without her help he would
fall back into that world. Do not be cruel, he said, you are the
one who seduced me. I am your slave, the victim of your charms and
goodness; since you are strong, and do not feel as I do, you have
nothing to fear. Indeed the Présidente de Tourvel came to pity
Valmont—he seemed so weak, so out of control. How could she help
him? And why was she even thinking of him, which she now did more
and more? She was a happily married woman. No, she must at least
put an end to this tiresome correspondence. No more talk of love,
she wrote, or she would not reply. His letters stopped coming. She
felt relief. Finally some peace and quiet.
One evening, however, as she was seated at the
dinner table, she suddenly heard Valmont’s voice from behind her,
addressing Madame de Rosemonde. On the spur of the moment, he said,
he had decided to return for a short visit. She felt a shiver up
and down her spine, her face flushed; he approached and sat down
beside her. He looked at her, she looked away, and soon made an
excuse to leave the table and go up to her room. But she could not
completely avoid him over the next few days, and she saw that he
seemed paler than ever. He was polite, and a whole day might pass
without her seeing him, but these brief absences had a paradoxical
effect: now Tourvel realized what had happened. She missed him, she
wanted to see him. This paragon of virtue and goodness had somehow
fallen in love with an incorrigible rake. Disgusted with herself
and what she had allowed to happen, she left the chateau in the
middle of the night, without telling anyone, and headed for Paris,
where she planned somehow to repent this awful sin.
The old American proverb says if you
want to con someone, you must first get him to trust
you, or at least feel superior to you (these two
ideas are related), and get him to let down his
guard. The proverb explains a great deal about
television commercials. If we assume that people are
not stupid, they must react to TV commercials with a
feeling of superiority that permits them to believe
they are in control. As long as this illusion of
volition persists, they would consciously have
nothing to fear from the commercials. People are
prone to trust anything over which they believe they
have control....• TV commercials appear foolish,
clumsy, and ineffectual on purpose. They are made to
appear this way at the conscious level in order to
be consciously ridiculed and rejected.... Most ad men
will confirm that over the years the seemingly worst
commercials have sold the best. An effective TV
commercial is purposefully designed to insult the
viewer’s conscious intelligence, thereby
penetrating his defenses.
—WILSON BRYAN KEY, SUBLINHNAL
SEDUCTION
—SØREN KIERKEGAARD, THE SEDUCER’S DIARY,
TRANSLATED BY HOWARD V. HONG AND EDNA H. HONG
Interpretation.The character of Valmont in
Choderlos de Laclos’s epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons is
based on several of the great real-life libertines of
eighteenth-century France. Everything Valmont does is calculated
for effect—the ambiguous actions that make Tourvel curious about
him, the act of charity in the village (he knows he is being
followed), the return visit to the château, the paleness of his
face (he is having an affair with a girl at the château, and their
all-night carousals give him a wasted look). Most devastating of
all is his positioning of himself as the weak one, the seduced, the
victim. How can the Présidente imagine he is manipulating her when
everything suggests he is simply overwhelmed by her beauty, whether
physical or spiritual? He cannot be a deceiver when he repeatedly
makes a point of confessing the “truth” about himself: he admits
that his charity was questionably motivated, he explains why he has
gone astray, he lets her in on his emotions. (All of this
“honesty,” of course, is calculated.) In essence he is like a
woman, or at least like a woman of those times—emotional, unable to
control himself, moody, insecure. She is the one who is cold and
cruel, like a man. In positioning himself as Tourvel’s victim,
Valmont can not only disguise his manipulations but elicit pity and
concern. Playing the victim, he can stir up the tender emotions
produced by a sick child or a wounded animal. And these emotions
are easily channeled into love—as the Présidente discovers to her
dismay.
Seduction is a game of reducing suspicion and
resistance. The cleverest way to do this is to make the other
person feel stronger, more in control of things. Suspicion usually
comes out of insecurity; if your targets feel superior and secure
in your presence, they are unlikely to doubt your motives. You are
too weak, too emotional, to be up to something. Take this game as
far as it will go. Flaunt your emotions and how deeply they have
affected you. Making people feel the power they have over you is
immensely flattering to them. Confess to something bad, or even to
something bad that you did, or contemplated doing, to them. Honesty
is more important than virtue, and one honest gesture will blind
them to many deceitful acts. Create an impression of
weakness—physical, mental, emotional. Strength and confidence can
be frightening. Make your weakness a comfort, and play the
victim—of their power over you, of circumstances, of life in
general. This is the best way to cover your tracks.
You know, a man ain’t worth a damn if he
can’t cry at the right time.
—LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON
—-SEIGNEUR DE BRANTÔME, LIVES OF FAIR &
GALLANT LADIES,TRANSLATED BY A. R. ALLINSON
Keys to Seduction
We all have weaknesses, vulnerabilities,
frailnesses in our mental makeup. Perhaps we are shy or
oversensitive, or need attention—whatever the weakness is, it is
something we cannot control. We may try to compensate for it, or to
hide it, but this is often a mistake: people sense something
inauthentic or unnatural. Remember: what is natural to your
character is inherently seductive. A person’s vulnerability, what
they seem to be unable to control, is often what is most seductive
about them. People who display no weaknesses, on the other hand,
often elicit envy, fear, and anger—we want to sabotage them just to
bring them down.
Do not struggle against your vulnerabilities, or
try to repress them, but put them into play. Learn to transform
them into power. The game is subtle: if you wallow in your
weakness, overplay your hand, you will be seen as angling for
sympathy, or, worse, as pathetic. No, what works best is to allow
people an occasional glimpse into the soft, frail side of your
character, and usually only after they have known you for a while.
That glimpse will humanize you, lowering their suspicions, and
preparing the ground for a deeper attachment. Normally strong and
in control, at moments you let go, give in to your weakness, let
them see it.
Valmont used his weakness this way. He had lost his
innocence long ago, and yet, somewhere inside, he regretted it. He
was vulnerable to someone truly innocent. His seduction of the
Présidente was successful because it was not totally an act; there
was a genuine weakness on his part, which even allowed him to cry
at times. He let the Présidente see this side to him at key
moments, in order to disarm her. Like Valmont, you can be acting
and sincere at the same time. Suppose you are genuinely shy—at
certain moments, give your shyness a little weight, lay it on a
little thick. It should be easy for you to embellish a quality you
already have.
After Lord Byron published his first major poem, in
1812, he became an instant celebrity. Beyond being a talented
writer, he was so handsome, even pretty, and he was as brooding and
enigmatic as the characters he wrote about. Women went wild over
Lord Byron. He had an infamous “underlook,” slightly lowering his
head and glancing upward at a woman, making her tremble. But Byron
had other qualities: when you first met him, you could not help
noticing his fidgety movements, his ill-fitting clothes, his
strange shyness, and his noticeable limp. This infamous man, who
scorned all conventions and seemed so dangerous, was personally
insecure and vulnerable.
In Byron’s poem Don Juan, the hero is less a
seducer of women than a man constantly pursued by them. The poem
was autobiographical; women wanted to take care of this somewhat
fragile man, who seemed to have little control over his emotions.
More than a century later, John E Kennedy, as a boy, became
obsessed with Byron, the man he most wanted to emulate. He even
tried to borrow Byron’s “underlook.” Kennedy himself was a frail
youth, with constant health problems. He was also a little pretty,
and friends saw something slightly feminine in him. Kennedy’s
weaknesses—physical and mental, for he too was insecure, shy, and
oversensitive—were exactly what drew women to him. If Byron and
Kennedy had tried to cover up their vulnerabilities with a
masculine swagger they would have had no seductive charm. Instead,
they learned how to subtly display their weaknesses, letting women
sense this soft side to them.
There are fears and insecurities peculiar to each
sex; your use of strategic weakness must always take these
differences into account. A woman, for instance, may be attracted
by a man’s strength and self-confidence, but too much of it can
create fear, seeming unnatural, even ugly. Particularly
intimidating is the sense that the man is cold and unfeeling. She
may feel insecure that he is only after sex, and nothing else. Male
seducers long ago learned to become more feminine—to show their
emotions, and to seem interested in their targets’ lives. The
medieval troubadours were the first to master this strategy; they
wrote poetry in honor of women, emoted endlessly about their
feelings, and spent hours in their ladies’ boudoirs, listening to
the women’s complaints and soaking up their spirit. In return for
their willingness to play weak, the troubadours earned the right to
love.
Little has changed since then. Some of the greatest
seducers in recent history—Gabriele D’ Annunzio, Duke Ellington,
Errol Flynn—understood the value of acting slavishly to a woman,
like a troubadour on bended knee. The key is to indulge your softer
side while still remaining as masculine as possible. This may
include an occasional show of bashfulness, which the philosopher
Søren Kierkegaard thought an extremely seductive tactic for a
man—it gives the woman a sense of comfort, and even of superiority.
Remember, though, to keep everything in moderation. A glimpse of
shyness is sufficient; too much of it and the target will despair,
afraid that she will end up having to do all the work.
A man’s fears and insecurities often concern his
sense of masculinity; he usually will feel threatened by a woman
who is too overtly manipulative, who is too much in control. The
greatest seductresses in history knew how to cover up their
manipulations by playing the little girl in need of masculine
protection. A famous courtesan of ancient China, Su Shou, used to
make up her face to look particularly pale and weak. She would also
walk in a way that made her seem frail. The great
nineteenth-century courtesan Cora Pearl would literally dress and
act like a little girl. Marilyn Monroe knew how to give the
impression that she depended on a man’s strength to survive. In all
of these instances, the women were the ones in control of the
dynamic, boosting a man’s sense of masculinity in order to
ultimately enslave him. To make this most effective, a woman should
seem both in need of protection and sexually excitable, giving the
man his ultimate fantasy.
The Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte,
won dominance over her husband early on through a calculated
coquetry. Later on, though, she held on to that power through her
constant—and not so innocent—use of tears. Seeing someone cry
usually has an immediate effect on our emotions: we cannot remain
neutral. We feel sympathy, and most often will do anything to stop
the tears—including things that we normally would not do. Weeping
is an incredibly potent tactic, but the weeper is not always so
innocent. There is usually something real behind the tears, but
there may also be an element of acting, of playing for effect. (And
if the target senses this the tactic is doomed.) Beyond the
emotional impact of tears, there is something seductive about
sadness. We want to comfort the other person, and as Tourvel
discovered, that desire quickly turns into love. Affecting sadness,
even crying sometimes, has great strategic value, even for a man.
It is a skill you can learn. The central character of the
eighteenth-century French novel Marianne, by Marivaux, would
think of something sad in her past to make herself cry or look sad
in the present.
Use tears sparingly, and save them for the right
moment. Perhaps this might be a time when the target seems
suspicious of your motives, or when you are worrying about having
no effect on him or her. Tears are a sure barometer of how deeply
the other person is falling for you. If they seem annoyed, or
resist the bait, your case is probably hopeless.
In social and political situations, seeming too
ambitious, or too controlled, will make people fear you; it is
crucial to show your soft side. The display of a single weakness
will hide a multitude of manipulations. Emotion or even tears will
work here too. Most seductive of all is playing the victim. For his
first speech in Parliament, Benjamin Disraeli prepared an elaborate
oration, but when he delivered it the opposition yelled and laughed
so loudly that hardly any of it could be heard. He plowed ahead and
gave the whole speech, but by the time he sat down he felt he had
failed miserably. Much to his amazement, his colleagues told him
the speech was a marvelous success. It would have been a failure if
he had complained or given up; but by going ahead as he did, he
positioned himself as the victim of a cruel and unreasonable
faction. Almost everyone sympathized with him now, which would
serve him well in the future. Attacking your mean-spirited
opponents can make you seem ugly as well; instead, soak up their
blows, and play the victim. The public will rally to your side, in
an emotional response that will lay the groundwork for a grand
political seduction.
Symbol: The Blemish. A beautiful face
is a delight to look at, but if it is too perfect it leaves
us cold, and even slightly intimidated. It is the little
mole, the beauty mark, that makes the face human and
lovable. So do not conceal all of your blemishes. You need
them to soften your features and elicit tender
feelings.
Reversal
Timing is everything in seduction; you
should always look for signs that the target is falling under your
spell. A person falling in love tends to ignore the other person’s
weaknesses, or to see them as endearing. An unseduced, rational
person, on the other hand, may find bashfulness or emotional
outbursts pathetic. There are also certain weaknesses that have no
seductive value, no matter how in love the target may be.
The great seventeenth-century courtesan Ninon de
l’Enclos liked men with a soft side. But sometimes a man would go
too far, complaining that she did not love him enough, that she was
too fickle and independent, that he was being mistreated and
wronged. For Ninon, such behavior would break the spell, and she
would quickly end the relationship. Complaining, whining,
neediness, and actively appealing for sympathy will appear to your
targets not as charming weaknesses but as manipulative attempts at
a kind of negative power. So when you play the victim, do it
subtly, without overadvertising it. The only weaknesses worth
playing up are the ones that will make you seem lovable. All others
should be repressed and eradicated at all costs.