A Weapon of Mass Seduction

Mediocracy: How Failure Has Started Masquerading as Self-Love, or, Step It the Fuck Up

I've noticed a trend in recent online editorial writing that disturbs me: the trend of the "It's Okay That I'm A Fuck-Up" essay. These are personal confessions from essayists as to how they failed in achieving the goal/career/lifestyle/body that they wanted for themselves, struggled with a self-loathing that came in their repeated failures, and then eventually came to embrace a comfortable defeatism masquerading as healthy self-acceptance.

There are a lot of topics resting comfortably in this sector of self-indulgent editorialism: financial crises ("I'm $130K in debt and that's okay"), addiction ("I'm a drug-addicted stripper," "I'm a compulsive shopper"), obesity ("I was fat-shamed by my doctor" -- psst, if it's your doctor who's bringing up your weight, maybe you should listen!), and general life shortcomings ("I'm still in school at 30 for no good reason"). And the happy feel-good conclusion that generally comes at the end of each confession is "But over time I learned to accept all this about myself because self-loathing is bad, and now I love myself just the way I am."

A few months ago I wrote an article about being a pick-up artist for a site that features a lot of essays like these, and I was crucified in the comments section for being vain, pathologically narcissistic, and possibly sociopathic. Most heavily, the comments focused on my body. I had been asked to submit some photos to go with my writing, so I sent in a few that I thought cheekily summed me up: me on set during a photo shoot with my band (we have a show at Mercury Lounge on March 29th, come check us out), me baking cupcakes semi-naked for Driven By Boredom, etc. I didn't think much of it at the time. But when I began to see the feedback slowly filter in on my article, there were slews of women speaking up who didn't take any of my pre-pickup insecurities seriously, nor did they give any credit to my accomplishments, because I was a skinny, moderately pretty white girl.

Last night I ended up in conversation with an acquaintance, a man in his 50s who is very sweet but not what you'd call attractive. "How can I get a girl who looks like you?" he asked me. I thought for a moment, and finally I said, "First of all, the cuffs on your shirt are ripped, and there's a stain down the front. You didn't shave this morning, and probably not yesterday either. You need new pants; they're worn thin and they smell bad. You need to work out more regularly; not only is your body out of shape, but when you move it looks like it takes you a lot of effort. What does your home look like? Is it neat? Is it inviting? Can you cook? A woman wants a man who takes care of himself. If you can't take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of her?" He fumed slightly and said with a huff, "Well, we didn't all win the genetic lottery like you did!"

You see where all this is going? This assumption that I just got lucky somehow and therefore I should shut up and stop acting like anything I do is a deliberately mastered skill set which you can also master as well if you put in the same effort?

SO, FINE, WORLD! YOU WANT IT? HERE. HERE IS A PICTURE OF ME WHEN I WAS FAT:

This is the last photo I have of me from that time. I destroyed the others. This was a time before camera-phones, definitely way before iphones, and I'm grateful for that. It's also probably one of the only photos I have from that time because it is one of the most flattering -- the above was not as bad as it got. I would estimate that I was about 30-40lbs heavier than I am now. True, I was never obese, but the girl baking the cupcakes did not win a genetic lottery. (I was going to make a joke about the winning ticket going to Adriana Lima, but that would be kind of the same snarking I received myself, right? I don't actually know how much of Adriana's looks is luck and how much is hard work. I'm sure she must put in effort somewhere.)

To the man who suggested I won the genetic lottery, I replied, "Actually, I work out every day. I take parkour classes twice a week and on the other days I condition and walk everywhere. I feel guilty if I eat anything other than sushi or an organic salad wrap from Chop't. I use eye cream, moisturizer, and collagen serum on my face every morning and night, dry oil on my legs, plus exfoliant and a facial mask in the bath a couple times a week. I wash and condition my hair with non-SLS products, and I have had all body hair below my waist painfully blasted off with lasers. I spent three months of my life with suction cups attached to my mosquito-bite-sized double-A cups in order to get them to a passable B so I could actually bra-shop in the United States. I get gel manicures every two weeks and paint my toes myself. I spend at least 30 minutes on my daily makeup routine. And amidst all that, I found the time to write a fucking book, start a fucking company, and form a fucking band. You want a woman like me? Step the fuck up to the plate."

 

This is me doing parkour, one year after I took it up.
This took a lot of fucking work.

I'm pissed at this notion that complacency passes as self-acceptance ("I'm sooo glad I no longer give into the mainstream media's shaming and unfeminist pressure to be thin!"), and that anyone who dares to do anything extraordinary (unless it's something "brave" like being a BBW porn star or trying out a night at a strip club in order to write a thesis for your gender studies class) is shamed for self-aggrandizement. Think about it. What are we here on earth for, if not for the aggrandizement of our selves, so that we can all lead and inspire one another and collectively as a human race do awesome stuff?

I signed up a few months ago for Neil Strauss's The Society apprenticeship, which means I get access to video content of the seminars put together live for the members of The Society, a small, select group of men for whom Neil facilitates self-improvement education for both personal and professional development. I've watched talks not only on pickup but on time management, charisma, body language, persuasion, voice and speech, being a person who adds value to the world, and finding out what you're most passionate about and how to do it -- all from top authors and experts in their given fields. Membership is currently closed, otherwise I would share these videos with all the PUA haters I get snark from. I only wish they could see what amazing work is happening in these people's lives right now.

And the tagline for the group, the slogan that appears at the beginning of every video, is:

"You only live once, don't blow it."

These are our lives, guys. Who do you want to be while you're here? What do you want to do? Are you doing it? If not, well why the fuck aren't you?

If you were here with me on my bed as I type this (and if you were, you would have to be a guy or girl who had indeed stepped the fuck up to the plate, as my bed is currently reserved for awesome people only), you would notice that my brow is furrowing and my gel manicured fingertips are striking the keys angrily as I type. I'd love to say that I'm here to be all happy Tony Robbins and inspire you, but the truth is that I am feeling much more like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross:

 

It is probably relevant here that David Mamet was one of my guest teachers in college.

I found this clip in the article Six Harsh Truths That Will Make You A Better Person on Cracked.com, and if you haven't read it yet (I tweeted it like fifty zillion times), click on it -- it will open in a new window -- and read it as soon as you're done reading this post. What its author points out that is so brilliant about Alec Baldwin's scene is how polarizing it is: by the end of the scene, you are either thinking, "That guy is a fucking asshole," or you're thinking, "Fuck yeah, let's go make some sales!"

If you're in the former camp, I'll go ahead and make it easy for you: Yes, you are right, I was born pretty and thin and my entire body of work as a seduction coach is just a chance to brag about how lucky I am. Close out this browser tab right now, we're done.

If you're ready to make changes to your life not only for your own satisfaction but also as part of your duty as a human being to contribute something, anything, that is meaningful, beautiful, thoughtful, or inspiring to the rest of the world, then I am with you all the way. I will stand the fuck by you and we will do this together.

I get angry, and also deeply sad, mournful even, when I write about things like this, because I have had so many painful experiences with people who not only accepted their own failure but brought me down with them, people close to me whose irresponsibility for their own lives greatly endangered my own. The obvious example is my ex-boyfriend who owned Rapture, the dungeon where I worked as a pro-domme, who didn't prepare for the possibility that it might one day be busted by the NYPD and who, after his arrest, came to me begging for $25k (pretty much all I had to my name) to pay for the legal defense to keep him out of jail, swearing he'd make it his life's mission to pay me back. It'll be five years this September and I've seen $350 of that money. 

A less obvious example, one I have gracefully kept quiet for a long time, is that of my former best friend who was my roommate for just over a year, a woman who fancied herself a glamorous jetsetter in pricey lingerie, who was always spending money on the best hotels and newest season AP. Many people ask me what happened to my friendship with her. The answer is that she moved out hastily, and three months later I came home to an eviction notice on my door telling me to be out of my apartment within five days. She had bounced six months' worth of rent checks to our landlord. I had to hire a tenant lawyer to sort things out, and by the end of the ordeal the legal fees and rent arrears totalled up to another five-figure sum. To twist the knife a little deeper, my housing court date fell on the morning of my book release party for The New Rules Of Attraction. I think it is also telling that while living with this woman, who complained of struggles with her weight, I would periodically go into the freezer to find entire tubs of the frozen cookie dough I saved for baking rock concert cookies wholly eaten and put back empty.

I'm reminded of Alec Baldwin's line in that speech: "I can go out there tonight with the materials you've got and make myself fifteen thousand dollars. Tonight! In two hours. Can you?"

That's the thing. I don't have any advantage that most people I encounter in my daily life don't also have. I wasn't born with Adriana Lima's body, I don't have a trust fund, I don't have a powerful family who opened doors into the world of business, media, publishing, or entertainment for me. I do have a great and supportive mom and stepdad who made sure I got a good education. Beyond that? My starting stats were pretty goddamn average.

This is again polarizing: If you felt motivated after listening to Alec Baldwin, you should feel encouraged right now. I don't have anything in me that you don't also have in you, other than a mother-fuck-ton of grit and determination, and that means that whatever you envy or admire or snark about in me is also something you yourself can achieve. If on the other hand you think Alec Baldwin's an asshole, you will continue to make excuses, bitch about some privilege I must be unaware of, or write me off as a narcissist and tell yourself that you would never pay the high price I have paid of becoming such a piece of shit for doing what I do. Because that is infinitely easier than admitting that you are capable of the same things but just too lazy to actually do them.

And maybe it's better that you don't, for your own sake. There are many, many times that I wish I could be okay with the possibility of gaining 10lbs, or dipping substantially into my savings without completely freaking out, or thinking about the world at large and the next ten years in front of me in which I will have no job security or 401k and likely a steadily dwindling physical attractiveness. I might be happier if I could be okay with being a girl who worked at a Pizzeria Uno in suburban Pennsylvania.

I was at Neil's house with some people for a week last summer. I can't tell you much about it because I signed an NDA. But one bit of conversation which I think no one will mind my recounting was this: One of the other guys was presenting some stuff about his life, and Neil asked him, "If life isn't about being worthy, about being good enough, then what is it about?"

And I said, "Wait... you mean it's not?? You guys, wait you guys, hold the phone here for a second --"

Last weekend I wrote two new blog posts and shot a new lingerie campaign. Then the Oscars came on television and everything I have ever done felt pointless. The moment I master a skill I'm no longer impressed by it, so ultimately I never feel I'm any good at anything that matters. There's always something better on the horizon.

And the most heartbreaking part about all of this is that no matter how much you strive for that ephemeral brass ring, no matter how awesome and self-actualized you become, there will always be people who will hurt you. This is the crucial flaw in my work, its fatal weakness: that no matter how much you control the factors on your side of the equation, you can never account for the behavior of others, because -- SAY IT WITH ME EVERYONE -- a.) nobody is obligated to love you just because you did everything right and b.) just because someone loves you doesn't mean they're going to treat you well. There will be people who don't prepare for the coming winter, who will pull you under the bus with them in their panic, who will need you to spring their asses from jail, who will leave you in the hospital on your birthday, who will expect you to front their half of rent just so you can keep your own damn roof over your head, who will eat all your cookie dough without telling you so that just hours before the rock concert where you need homemade cookies to pawn your way backstage you will find nothing but an empty container.

And whenever that happens, if you're like me you will channel your hurt and your anger into something like a new blog post or a screenplay draft or a rock band or parkour or MMA, because fuck those people, to the point where your bestie will bust on you and say, "You can learn to jump over stuff and punch people but it's not going to keep them from breaking your heart."

This post is not a brag but a plea. I'm tired. I'm tired of being the person that everyone calls for help or a loan or a bailout of some kind. I'm tired of men in stained shirts who wonder why they can't get a girl like me. I'm tired of having to hustle twice as hard to survive because people close to me feel entitled to what's mine. I'm tired of guys who text at 3am when they're drunk instead of calling at 8pm to make plans. I'm tired of always being the person who facilitates the difficult relationship conversations and holds space for a person's needs. I would like just once for someone to ask me what I need, what I would like, what would make me happy, and maybe just take that in for a second. I need the rest of the world to step the fuck up to the plate with me and take care of themselves so that maybe one day they can also take care of someone else.

So. Put down your failure, your fucking excuses, and do this with me, okay? The more of us who commit to taking responsibility for ourselves, our lives, and our successes, the more awesome people there will be in the world, and the more awesome relationships there will be as those awesome people pair up into two's (or three's or four's, or whatever floats their boats). You will all be making my job easier, and there will be overall less snarking for everybody, and the world will be a better place. And that's what we're here for, after all.

The Fallacy of the Infallible Relationship

Earlier tonight a close friend of mine solicited my advice. She was sexually interested in a woman she'd met recently, and wanted some tips on having sex with a girl. She also emphasized that the woman in question had confided in her that she was working through some issues dealing with some past trauma, and she, my friend, was worried about unintentionally triggering bad feelings in her, sexually or otherwise.

I thought about it and told her to just write the alphabet with her tongue. Kidding, that is not at all what I said. (But it's interesting how our culture's views on female sexuality can be so reductive that that joke was so obvious, right?)

I told her about the last blog entry I'd written, about how communicating with openness and vulnerability can yield such great results, and suggested she express to this woman the exact fears she'd just articulated to me. "What if you were to say to her, 'I'm really interested in us getting to know each other better, and I really appreciate the fact that you've been open with me about the things that you're processing. I want to do my best to make sure you don't get hurt, so I'm going to ask your help with that. I need you to keep me informed as we go along as to what is working for you and what isn't. Show me how you work. Give me an instruction manual. If you're feeling like a minefield, give me your map.'"

My friend agreed that that seemed like a good course of action. I stopped and considered it a bit longer. "I mean, fuck, if someone said that to me?" I mused. "Like, wow. I'd probably marry them. And I don't even believe in marriage."

I started thinking then about how few of us as human beings have conversations like that. We start dating someone and we kind of fumble around, play cool, pretend like we're not really all that invested in the person (because heaven forbid we love someone more than they love us back), and think more about protecting ourselves than protecting each other.

We also vastly underestimate our ability to hurt people. Whenever I hear someone say the phrase, "I don't want to fuck this up," normally what they're really saying is, "I don't want to lay my heart out too soon and scare this person away." The fantasy is that the victory lies in winning each other's affections and then the work is done, that as long as two people both dig each other enough everything else will fall into place, because clearly if someone loves you sufficiently they will never fuck up and make a mistake, because they will just know better.

It is kind of adorable how people think that they can have relationships where they're not going to hurt each other, like in the way it is adorable that every freshman at NYU thinks they're going to make art that is going to change the world, or like how it is adorable that I think I am totally going to get a record deal because I put an album out and a dude from Interscope gave me his business card. The relationship where no one gets hurt is a magical unicorn relationship that doesn't exist. People get hurt just by walking out of the house. When people bump into each other, run up against each other, date, fuck, love, leave each other, they are going to get hurt. It's an inevitability.

What trips us up is our unrealistic expectations of ourselves and one another. When we fail to accept the reality of how easy it is to get hurt, we can believe that hurting someone is an unforgivable transgression on our (or our partner's) part, and that it makes the relationship a failure. And then we get caught up in the guilt over our failure instead of actually addressing the issue, and we drown in our shame and slink away.

Neither guilt nor its ever-present sidekick, self-sabotage, do anyone any favors. If you screw up and hurt the person you're with, you are doing nothing for them by beating yourself up over it. In fact, you're being selfish and wasting their time. Instead you need to ask yourself what you can do to remedy the situation. After all, the wound has already been inflicted, so there's no taking it back. How do you fix it from here? That's where the real heroism comes in, and that's where you're actually doing something useful for the person you love. I wish for just once that one of my exes, when I told them they'd done something that hurt me, had asked me what they could do to make it better instead of getting defensive and pointing out all my own flaws that had made the situation actually my fault, or just issuing a perfunctory apology, or just leaving because the sight of me reminded them of what a douche they were and then thanking me later for all they'd learned from me because now they treat all their subsequent girlfriends so much better. (Seriously, that happened.) As a close friend of mine said recently, apologies don't change the past, and they definitely don't change the future. So, what have you done for me lately?

I'm thinking that when I get into my next relationship, I'm going to make my partner and I promise each other that we will hurt each other at some point. That way it won't come as a surprise. What we will also promise each other, however, is that we will never hurt one another intentionally, and that when we do get hurt, we will give each other the benefit of the doubt, clue each other in to how we're feeling, and allow ourselves the opportunity to change things around and get the situation back on track as quickly as possible. My mentor Reid Mihalko once told me that good relationships aren't about never making a mistake; they're about decreasing your turnaround time. I'm interested in being with someone who is going to treat our relationship as a team effort in being happy. That sounds like a pretty awesome time in my book.

No one can be so arrogant as to think that they know exactly what is going to trigger another person, that what hurts them is going to also hurt someone else and what makes them feel good is going to also make someone else feel good. We are all programmed differently, scarred with different bumps and bruises garnered along the way during our individual trials of living. In her book How To Instantly Connect With Anyone, my sister in seduction Leil Lowndes writes, "No two people hearing the same words -- at the same time, from the same person -- ever get the same sense of what someone said. Every sound that comes out of someone's mouth strikes a minefield of each listener's buried memories, associations, and a lifetime of emotional pleasure or pain from everyone they've ever met."

Love is so much like sex in this regard. If everyone just took the time to say "This hurts" and "This feels good," think how much more on the same page we'd all be.

So, I think it's about time we start asking for each other's maps. Even just conveying an intention to not hurt one another will work wonders in avoiding the disasters of guilt and failure that plague so many relationships. The person who is next going to win me over as my partner is going to be the one who demonstrates to me that he has my best interests at heart, even if he doesn't always get how I work right away. I mean, I am kind of a complicated creature. I don't expect anyone to be able to figure me out at first glance.

But I will say that I am damn good at giving directions. And that's one of the best things we can ask of one another.

Communication Junkie: Vulnerability and the Art of Pick-Up

In some recent blog posts, articles, and tweets, I've noticed I've had to defend pick-up artistry from a slew of detractors deeming it inherently inauthentic and manipulative. They posit that PUAs get by on "tricking" people into sleeping with them through lies, hypnosis, and sneaky language patterns. (Please note: You cannot trick someone into fucking you. People are smarter than that. You can only be a person they will probably want to fuck and then create the context for fucking to potentially happen. This is the crux of pickup.) It's frustrating to me because I know the material that's out there nowadays in the PUA community, and the angry muggles smearing pick-up have it all wrong. Nearly everything I read or watch from any company that is actually successfully selling products today is focused on genuine self-improvement, confidence building, and being an awesome person who contributes something cool to the world at large.

It's this idea that pick-up and authenticity are at odds that makes me get on my soapbox. Which is why I'm pretty stoked about writing this blog post tonight: because I get to back it up as to how authenticity, honesty, and communication actually make people more attracted to you, and are therefore cornerstones to any successful seduction. Wha-BAM! (Arden drops mic and walks offstage.)

A few months ago I picked up the book Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage With People, Work, and Everything We Do by Ori and Rom Brafman, which presents serious sociological research to explain the factors that cause us to connect with other people. It studies those situations where we feel instantly, magically connected to someone, and then breaks down the external aspects that are necessary for the "click" to happen. Naturally I consumed this book with the fervor of a teenage boy pawing through a hidden stash of Playboy mags.

Immediately the book touches upon the idea of vulnerability:

Vulnerability is perhaps the most counterintuitive. Most of us think that when we make ourselves vulnerable we are putting ourselves in a susceptible, exposed, or subservient position. By revealing their inner fears and weaknesses, many feel they allow others to gain power or influence over them. But in terms of creating an instant connection, vulnerability and self-disclosure are, in fact, strengths. They accelerate our ability to connect with those around us.

Allowing yourself to be vulnerable helps the other person to trust you, precisely because you are putting yourself at emotional, psychological, or physical risk. Other people tend to react by being more open and vulnerable themselves. The fact that both of you are letting down your guard helps to lay the groundwork for a faster, closer personal connection. When you both make yourselves vulnerable from the outset and are candid in revealing who you are and how you think and feel, you create an environment that fosters the kind of openness that can lead to an instant connection -- a click.

The book goes on to chart a scale of five categories of statements ranked in vulnerability.

1. Phatic statements are social pleasantries such as "Hi, how are you?" or "Nice to see you," statements that don't really mean much beyond acting as a social lubricant.

2. Factual statements are statements of objective bits of information about ourselves. My name is Arden. I live in New York. I have a cat named Wesley. And so on.

3. Evaluative statements are expressions of opinions, such as how we might have felt about a film or a piece of art. They're riskier because we may face disagreement, but still pretty mild.

4. Gut-level statements start to heat things up a bit. These are expressions of emotions that are personally revealing, such as "I miss you when you're not here," or "I feel happy whenever I spend time with you."

5. Peak statements form the top of the vulnerability spectrum. They're deeply revealing and are also the most risky in terms of how the other person may respond. When we put our hearts out on the table and tell someone our scariest innermost feelings for them, such as, "I love you, and even if you're not comfortable accepting love right now, that doesn't change my feelings for you," or "I was hurt when you criticized me because I'm worried maybe you don't think I'm good enough and that I might lose you," we are making a peak statement. Peak statements are hard.

But they're also effective, according to Click's authors: "We can help to create magical connections simply by elevating the language we use from the phatic to the peak level."

I've been jumping into the scary conversation pit a lot over the past year. It's my newest adrenaline rush. Making approaches doesn't make my blood pump much anymore; I've pulled off so many of them that the idea of rejection centered around an approach just isn't a big deal these days. And since I'm apparently an adrenaline junkie, I've pushed myself into newer, scarier territory by revealing the shit that terrifies me to the people whom I really give a fuck about what they think of me.

This doesn't have to happen just in the context of meaningfully established interpersonal relationships, btdubs. You can go peak on someone in the same night you meet them. Last year I managed to pawn my way through security and backstage to meet the rockstar who was my teen idol, whose music videos I used to rush home to watch on MTV, who in a Platonic ideal kind of way is probably the reason I have been attracted to 90% of the guys I've been attracted to in the last decade. I used the cookie gambit to cross the final hurdle into the dressing room, and there he was, flat-ironing his hair. (N.B.: If you're ever trying to meet a band dude, bring cookies. You won't get backstage unless you have a tangible object that you need to bring in to them. Also, be nice to your friendly neighborhood venue security guys. Offer them cookies too.)

We hung out and chatted, and soon he started busting on me. "Whatever," he said to me, "I bet you bake cookies for like every band that plays here."

I slowed down, looked him straight in the eye, and said, "You're right. I have a lot of friends in the local music scene here in New York, and I do bake cookies for their shows because I think it's a nice thing to do. But there's something you should know. When I was seventeen, I printed photos of you off the internet and hung them in my high school locker. I watched your videos every day after school. You were my first crush. So when I bake cookies for you, it's different. Now kiss me."

And did he kiss me? Fuck yes he kissed me! And then later we boned. And he still texts me. Say what you want about the perfect morality behind authenticity; I'm here to talk about its efficacy. Self-revelation works on a deep, deep level.

I often talk about the instance three years ago when a guy I was in love with left me when I was in the hospital on my birthday. It's become like a flagship of the most awful rejection I've ever experienced and is fun to joke about nowadays in that manner in which humor is the only way of making such a severe wound manageable, and also which makes me a badass seduction poster child since if I survived that rejection, you guys can survive anything. Also it's funny that I have a giant scar from the hospital visit because it's like a big metaphor, and allows me to use words like scar, cut, bleed, and wound both literally and figuratively, and as a writer that makes me happy. I may or may not have listened to that Leona Lewis song "Bleeding Love" repeatedly throughout that month.

But what I didn't talk about was how I handled it. At the time, I had just inked my book deal and was fresh out of a four-year relationship that had seen a painfully slow death, and frankly I was pretty sure I was more fraud than I was seductress. So when this guy I was seeing began the gradual process of not returning my texts, I ignored it, because it was easier to pretend that I didn't care about him than to put my heart on the line and have him tell me he wasn't into me. I couldn't even ask him to come visit me in the hospital (even though it was only ten blocks from his house); I just asked my best friend to text him what happened and where I was, crossing my fingers that maybe I'd open my eyes in the recovery room and he'd be there at the side of my bed. Nor did I even text him from my party where he didn't show up (even though he was slated to dj); I just downed several of my newly-prescribed vicodin with a bunch of the party's free vodka so that I could get through being fun with all my guests like nothing was wrong, and then I went home and cried alone.

Seriously. Look how fabulous and happy I am here rocking my arm
bandage like everything is totally right with the world.

Three weeks later, the news of Alexander McQueen's suicide broke, and it hit me hard. And I wrote this boy a long and tearful email about how life is so short and precious and we should never let things go unsaid until it's too late. And before I could click send, I fucking deleted it.

When we finally talked about it, a full year later, he told me he'd disappeared not because he wasn't into me, but because he was afraid I was going back to my ex. But by then it was too late. He was already in a long on/off relationship with a girl who, he later admitted, treated him horribly throughout. (See? Had I been honest about my feelings for him, I probably would have been doing him a favor. This is why I believe that seduction is an essentially generous action.)

A few months ago, a guy I was seeing who I was also super into decided to break things off with me romantically -- over a text message. Everything in every shitty 90s bestselling relationship book out there would have told me he just wasn't that into me, would have chanted "Next!" and told me to text back and say, "K, bye!" But I'd learned my lesson by that point. So I wrote back, "Um, can we talk about this?" And when we talked about it, he was shocked by my reaction. He told me it wasn't because he didn't care about me that he'd sent that text -- it was because he didn't think I liked him enough to be hurt by it.

So I said to myself, fuck it, and decided to use that opportunity to tell him everything that I felt. I told him that I did have intense feelings for him, but that if he felt he needed to be alone I would support his decision to do what he needed to do to take care of himself, and that the door would be open when he felt he was ready to come back. And then I also kind of maybe wrote a blog post about it which I think he maybe might have kind of read, which, although I knew that was a possibility since my work is on view to the public, wasn't really something I'd had in mind while writing it. And that was all kinds of scary and awful and awesome.

When we next saw each other (which was a while, he lives far away), he brought it up again, said he realized things weren't as black and white as he'd thought, and went in for a kiss at the end of the night. I'm actually scared to even write about this because who knows what's going to happen next, but fuck it, scary self-revelation is what this blog post is all about, right? Maybe I'm even connecting better with you my readers as a result. But my point is, thank fuck I didn't let my pride get in the way and just shut down and go hide somewhere. Because seriously, fuck a bunch of that shit.

And most of my friends who shit-talk PUAs as dishonest douchebags would read this blog post and say, "But Arden, you're not like those douchey pick-up artists. You're a nice, honest, generous person, and of course things will work out in your favor, because good things happen to good people."

To those of you who feel that way, I will refer you to the greatest pick-up artist of all time, Neil Strauss, one of my closest mentors in the field of seduction. In his bestselling book The Game, which most pick-up detractors like to figuratively burn as a paradigm of the most dishonest and manipulative PUA douchebaggery ever enacted, Neil writes a passage toward the end of the book about how he finally won over the woman he was in love with:

I was about the say the most AFC* thing of my life. "Let me tell you something. The pick-up artists have a word they call one-itis. It's a disease that people get when they become obsessed with just one girl. And they never end up with this one girl because they get too nervous around her and scare her away."
"So?" she asked.
"So," I said. "You're my one-itis."

*AFC is an acronym for Average Frustrated Chump. PUAs love acronyms.

There you have it. That's what clinched the deal for the world's greatest pick-up artist.

And for the record, Neil now teaches both dating and general life-skills to a group of men called The Society, where he touts the idea of finding your best, most actualized self, and then communicating it authentically to the world at large in order to attract quality relationships, friendships, and business partnerships, and to live life as awesomely as possible. It's where the art of pick-up was naturally destined to evolve.

In one of his recent Society classes he addressed some popular women's relationship literature such as The Rules and Why Men Love Bitches, those tomes I so painfully abhor for the way they advise relying on inauthentic states of romantic deprivation in order to avoid rejection, as if a good man will choose to stay with you merely because you didn't do any of the wrong things. He talked about the advice they give, and in one of the awesomest sentences I have heard all year, he said, "Emotionally withholding from a guy and not asking to have your needs met sounds like a great way to keep a relationship you shouldn't even be in."

I have said this before, but in this particular instance, it bears repeating. At the end of the day, you must not be afraid of the truth. You must not be afraid of your truth, or of anyone else's. When you can get used to the idea that being with your truth will open the doors for you to live your life in the most freeing and authentic way possible, you will begin to crave it the way I do. It's a better high than anything else I've ever experienced.

In Defense of Seduction

Last week, an essay I wrote for XoJane.com on how I became a female pick-up artist became the subject of much controversy and rampant disgust. I had rather anticipated this to a certain extent, as I was essentially endorsing arguably the century's most so-called misogynist community in front of a mostly female readership, and I felt that both the boldness and vulnerability of opening myself up to that criticism was part of what would make the piece compelling.

What bothered me was how much of my message was misconstrued, and how much of seduction as both a concept and practice is misconstrued. It bothered me how apparently off-mark I was in explaining my lifestyle and practices to my audience, to the point where my character was attacked on a personal level. I don't at all mind if people don't like me, but if they're going to dislike me, it should at least be for a reason that's true. (And there are plenty: I am an incorrigible narcissist, I'm kind of self-obsessed, I am ferociously strong-willed and stubborn, I'm a control freak, I am by nature impatient, I'm hypersexual, I am terribly materialistic, I'm devastatingly capricious, I'm occasionally sadistic, I am ambitious to the point of antagonism, and I'm blatant in my means of seeking attention. Worst of all perhaps, I talk about my flaws like they're brags because I think that it's funny and that the candor with which I admit them sometimes actually makes me more attractive. Handicap principle!) But if you for one moment try to tell me that seduction isn't one of the most generous, brave, truthful, earnest, and noble practices one can possibly pursue, then we are going to have some serious disagreements.

Part of the controversy heralded in the comments on my essay was of course spawned by the fact that most of what I discussed was my time studying the art of pick-up, which is a particularly contentious branch of seduction. The editors at XoJane who supervised the piece were particularly interested in my experience with pick-up artists, even to the point where they added my mentor Neil Strauss's name to the title of the essay before publishing it on the site. (I'm frank about my relationship to Neil and mentioned him in the piece as he was a necessary part of the story, but it's not my style to add a friend's name in for the sake of sensationalism.) Obviously everyone expected for things to stir up a bit.

Pick-up is easily vilified, particularly by women. Many people construe pick-up as a way of using dishonesty to manipulate its target into sex under false pretenses, and some men are attracted to it for the very reason that they see it as a cheat code to get to sex as quickly as possible. Because of that, there are certainly shitty, dishonest, insecure, manipulative PUAs out there. Pick-up is a skill set that can be used in a constructive manner or a destructive one. Like pretty much anything, really.

One of the things brought to my attention by a personal friend when he read the essay was that I've been lucky to hang out with the good PUAs, the ones who focus on genuine self-improvement rather than insincerity, who use its tactics to playfully and confidently approach women rather than put them down in an attempt to exploit their insecurities, who studied pick-up as a means to create quality relationships with quality people instead of just trying to bed as many hot girls as possible in an attempt to either avenge all their previous rejections or validate their fragile egos. So yeah, I'm biased. I ignore much of the misogynist crap that's out there because I have no use for it. I stuck with the parts of pick-up that felt good to me.

By all this I mean to say that I am not in any way endorsing pick-up artistry across the board, as there are obviously branches of it that are really awful. What I am instead saying is that it hurts me to see people lump all of pick-up into that one terrible category, because by dismissing it so quickly and vehemently I feel that they're missing out on some potentially awesome stuff, stuff that changed my life so dramatically that it basically inspired the epicenter of everything I do today.

And here's one of the most important truths of seduction, what ultimately all good, successful PUAs learn: Tactics like manipulation, dishonesty, agenda-pushing, misogyny (or misandry), disparagement, deception, and general meanness are never actually seductive. And things like integrity, honesty, vulnerability, communicativeness, reliability, and candor are seductive in that along with just being generally good things to do, they're also necessary to forming a functional relationship with any decent human being. Not only are such qualities not at cross-purposes with pick-up, but they're actually crucial to its most elevated levels as an art form.

It's just that there's a lot of superficial training wheels often needed to get a PUA up and running in the first place. I certainly needed them. I needed to craft a "persona" so that I could give myself permission to live life as the person I so passionately wanted to be on the inside -- even though nowadays everything I embody is just an honest expression of my identity -- because I was lost, scared, and just hadn't really thought about it that much. I needed to learn different kinds of "openers" so that I could practice approaching attractive strangers who would have once intimidated the shit out of me. Now I just go talk to people, because doing a bunch of scripted cold approaches gave me the confidence to actually just go talk to people. I needed to break down phases of "kinesthetic escalation" because doing so gave me an innate sense of when someone is going to enjoy being touched and when they're not. And I learned to "close" and discovered that when done artfully, with intense attention paid to your target's level of desire, people actually love when you assume the scary burden of making the first move.

Basically I was really dumb about all this stuff for a long time, and pick-up broke it down for me in clear, Hooked-On-Phonics-level terms. And like any productive learning process, pick-up helped me to frame my failures as lessons and to shape my strategies based on what worked and what didn't (a mentality that I still maintain to this day). And eventually it became second nature to me, an inner compass that shows me the way when desire takes over. I start feeling something for someone, and I know where to go.

Do you have any idea what a boon, what a blessing this is to me? The sad part about learning pick-up was looking around and realizing how many people, when they start feeling something for someone, react with total panic. Because they don't know what to do with it. And that's what really crushes me these days, is seeing so many people miss out on so much happiness because they never learned to manage that fear.

So, yay, go me, I slayed my dragons and I'm all self-actualized and shit. It's easy to frame pick-up as good when you talk about it in the sense that it helps you achieve your own goals. But I'm going to go even further in my defense of seduction, and talk about what a blessing it is to its targets -- the very people whom pick-up's detractors think they're standing up for.

A former colleague of mine once quipped, "Seduction is an essentially generous action because at its core it is considering what the other person wants." Even the crudest of pick-up tactics is at least geared toward a hopeful expectation of how its recipient is going to react. Seduction is a means of giving someone whatever they want or need in order to feel a desire for intimacy.

And yes, sometimes what someone wants, deep down, is not actually constantly pleasant. They might want to feel like you might be unavailable, that they're not sure whether you really like them, or whatever, because their desire for you will increase and they will feel greater joy when they finally do possess you. The degree of this varies from target to target obviously, but it must be addressed, because confusing the idea of giving someone what they want with going around trying to make people feel good by putting them on pedestals is obviously a mistake, one made by every man who bores a beautiful woman by approaching her and asking if he can buy her a drink. But don't mistake those moments of cat-and-mouse as inherently bad, and don't mistake immediate transparency as inherently good, since the latter can amount to "Nice shoes, wanna fuck?" or "Hi nice to meet you, I want to be married with two kids in the next five years, how about you?" Seduction brings pleasure on a level that gets at people's deepest desires, often the ones they can't even articulate to themselves. And yes, it requires a great degree of skill to discern those desires that are so deeply embedded in a person, but that is seduction's noblest aspiration.

This is a hugely underrated quality when you consider how many people in the dating world are so caught up in their own heads, approaching each other with skepticism, checklists, defensiveness. Some people are so caught up in their own insecurities that they allow them to get in the way of making a connection with the person across from them, and that's not doing either of them any favors.

Yes, that's right: a seducer puts her insecurities temporarily aside as a favor to her target, so that she can grant him a more meaningful connection and pleasurable experience. God, do you know how many insecurities I have? Do you know how much I would just love to crawl under my bed and hide sometimes? Do you have any idea how many panic attacks I have had that have gone unseen in the privacy of my own home; how many times I have shaken, cried, felt my heart pound deafeningly in my chest worrying that the person I want might bail out on me at any moment? But you know what? I don't go hide under my bed, because it's fucking selfish. Because the people I fall in love with fucking deserve better of me than that.

Insecurity, when improperly managed to the extent that it prohibits a profound and mindful presence with another person, is selfish. It is selfish because what it condones is a person's foremost preoccupation with themselves, letting them off the hook for actually being present with the person in front of them. It's like the equivalent of walking down the street trying to have a conversation with someone who is constantly checking their own reflection in the glass to make sure they look okay.

The sad thing is that we all have the same goals: we all want to be loved, accepted, respected, cherished. Underneath a person's fear, no matter how much of a dick it makes them act like, is a deep desire for communion. Obviously. We're all human. We're built to crave loving relationships, romantic as well as familial, communal, fraternal. And the things we are built to crave are also built to terrify us. It's a cruel dichotomy.

What sets the seducer apart is that she goes out of her way to make it happen for her loved ones as beautifully as possible. She assumes the burden of potential rejection in order to further the chances of happiness for both herself and her target. She brings not only excitement and pleasure but also the potential for extraordinary emotional fulfillment.

And the douchey PUAs my readers were so appalled by? Come on, trust your judgment of character a bit more. Pick-up won't override someone's douchiness, because as I've explained, douchiness is just another manifestation of improperly managed insecurity, and pick-up will only help you conquer that if you're willing to face it.

But truly my sincerest defense of seduction lies in how desperately I wish someone would seduce me. I am really a very simple puzzle to solve, but very few people actually pay attention. They see what's on the surface of me -- a  sexually confident, conventionally attractive, successful, self-sustaining woman who lives by the principles of getting what she wants -- and they assume I don't need/want them (which is a manifestation of insecurity and therefore selfish), feel intimidated (insecurity, again selfish), let fear of rejection override their desire (also insecurity, also selfish), or figure that I'll make all the moves myself (just plain fucking selfish). I know I'm going to have a tough time making the case of "oh what a hard life I have because I became a seductress," but do please step into my shoes for a moment and consider the workload that I take on every time I start dating someone.

Sometimes I think that's the driving force behind almost all of my writing, is the desire to be seen. I'm forthcoming about my feelings here not only because my dedication to authenticity better serves my work and you the reader, but also because I am handing the fucking keys over to anyone with balls enough to get in the car and drive. I'm an open book here -- literally and figuratively -- and I so wish that someone would come along and exploit all my deepest desires to make all my fantasies come true. It's all there if you want to figure it out. Til then, I'll keep figuring you guys out, and yes, you're fucking welcome.

So yes, seduction (and by default, pick-up) is in my estimation the noblest possible lifestyle for a person to choose.

Earlier this summer I seduced a woman I was attracted to, and we had an exciting, pleasurable evening together. We're in distant cities but we still flirt online from time to time. Not too long ago I made a cutesy comment on her social media referencing the time we spent together, and she replied to me, "If only I could re-live that night. It was the most luxurious experience I've had since I moved to this city."

That. That is why I do what I do.

Why Breakups Suck and How You Can Make Them Suck Less

"'There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." -- William Shakespeare

Breakups are kind of a taboo subject in the seduction community. We pick-up artists rarely want to admit that we had a breakup, because clearly we are all romantically infallible and should you choose to follow our path of mastery, you too can hold the secret key to nothing ever sucking. So splits don't get discussed nearly as often as the fun stuff like getting a really hot stranger to instantly find you attractive or using neuro-linguistic programming to get your target to think about having sex with you (um, guilty). But breakups deserve some discussion, because they are actually far harder to deal with than seductions: by the time you are in a relationship, there is far more investment at stake, and the pain of ending far surpasses the joy of beginning. So I'm going to be brave, take one for the team, and talk about why breakups suck so hard and how you can get through them in as chill a way as possible.

I can't really say that what happened to me earlier this week was a breakup, because there wasn't what you'd typically call a relationship there to begin with. What is more accurate is to say that I experienced a sudden and unexpected derailment of a path I was confident was going in a certain direction. But it sucked a lot because I really liked this person, and though I knew he had a lot of things going on in his life that were going to make forging a relationship Herculean at best, well... I'm me, and I'm stubborn, and I was determined to give it my best shot. And even though he expressed to me that his need to be alone came out of work he needed to do on himself and not any lack of awesomeness on my part, it is never not devastating to lose the rush of sexual and romantic intimacy with someone you dig so hard.

However, I don't have time to lie in bed eating ice cream and feeling sorry for myself, because frankly I have way too much shit to do. (Actually I'm not an ice cream breakup kind of girl; in these situations I'm a starver, not a binger. Silver lining: breakup diet! But I digress.) So I called up two of my friends who are brilliant dating/intimacy coaches -- Adam Lyons of Attraction Explained and Reid Mihalko of Reid About Sex -- and I said to them, "Please help me make this not suck so much." And they did. So I'm here to pass on some of their wisdom, and some of my own, to help you out should a sucky breakup one day befall you.

The first thing you need to know about breakups is the physical effect they have on your brain and body. During the course of your relationship, your brain has released a whole ton of happy feel-good chemicals to bond you to your partner. These range from infatuation-stage chemicals like phenylethylamine and dopamine, which are naturally occurring amphetamines, or uppers, to attachment-stage chemicals like oxytocin, vasopressin, and endogenous morphines, which act as opiates, or downers. This means that when a relationship ends, you are suddenly facing, on a very real physical level, the same withdrawals as an addict coming down from cocaine and heroin -- at the same time. Why love isn't regulated by the FDA is a mystery to me.

What makes it worse is that in the absence of your dopamine/oxytocin rush, your bitch of a body starts releasing stress hormones like adrenaline, which actually puts you in physical pain, because adrenaline impedes your heart's ability to function, causing chest pain and muscle contractions. There have actually been instances in which a breakup has caused the release of so much adrenaline in a person's system that it has put their heart into shock, made it stop pumping blood, and caused death. Yes, you can die of a broken heart.

Furthermore, Adam Lyons explained to me, while you were in your relationship you probably had some dreams and plans for the future that you were banking on happening at some point, and as you play out these scenarios in your mind, your brain registers them as memories, which creates new neural pathways. That means that in that awful stage after your breakup where you start to think about all the things you'll now never get to do together, with each scenario you imagine, somewhere in your brain a neural pathway rips apart. Ouch.

This all sounds like bad news, but understanding what your body is going through actually makes a breakup easier to bear. It means that the pain you're feeling actually doesn't have so much to do with losing the relationship as it does with losing the chemical attachment. This means that once you pass through the withdrawal stages, you won't actually feel like the loss was that bad. It would be kind of like a drug addict getting over their addiction and then missing the drug. (That might be a slightly harsh analogy, but you get my point.)

In fact, happiness expert Dan Gilbert (watch his TED talk, it's brilliant) claims that somewhere past the three-month mark, your breakup won't actually feel sucky at all. He describes the fallacy of what he calls impact bias, which is your brain's tendency to overestimate the effects of a certain outcome -- winning or losing an election, winning the lottery, becoming a paraplegic, or, in the case of our topic today, gaining or losing a romantic partner. Once an event is roughly three months in the past, our brains return to their default state of happiness and create a retroactive justification that everything was for the best. Or, as Adam Smith once said, "The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from overrating the difference between one permanent situation and another... Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others, but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice." Yes, that's right: the father of modern economics is entreating you not to call your ex and leave tearful drunken voicemails that might end up on youtube one day.

One of the first things Reid Mihalko posed to me during our talk was that my absconding lover was actually doing me a favor by bowing out. Most of you would raise a skeptical eyebrow at this notion, but this is something I've heard before and generally speaking, it is true. In most cases, when someone leaves you because they're just not feeling the relationship, they're helping you out by not letting you continue to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't want to be there. Seriously, even in the worst scenario kind of breakup, like a husband leaving his 30-year marriage for his bimbo secretary, would you really want a person to stay with you if they weren't willing to love you? No! You deserve to be loved, enthusiastically and without qualm! You are being done a favor by being opened to the opportunity to find the person who will love you unflaggingly. Like I said two blog entries ago, it is far better to be available to the right person than in a relationship with the wrong one.

In the case of my departed paramour, his reason for curtailing our involvement, so he stated, was not about a lack of interest in me but rather about work he needed to do on himself having just left a very long relationship. I am partly at fault for seducing someone so freshly on the rebound; this is where my eternal optimism does me in by causing me to think that I can surmount the apparent obstacles a relationship faces because I am so super awesome at this stuff. But the idea that he was doing me a favor still applies: in fact, one of the things he said he needed alone time to work on was learning how to not be a toxic person. (To which I dearly wanted to reply, "Are you kidding me?? Do you know how much amazing sex I have had with toxic people??") So in fact, it might be possible to go so far as to say that by spending time alone working on himself now, he may end up being a better partner somewhere down the road, and we may have the opportunity then to have a relationship that will have far greater odds of succeeding than the one we might have had now while he's still deep in his own trenches. I mean, when you think of it that way? It's like, wow. Awesome. Thank you.

The only thing that is truly unbearable is when we're afraid of the truth, when we try to cover it up or pretend it's something else. So often we're afraid to have the difficult conversations and to ask the questions that we're afraid of the answers to, or we try to persuade our lovers into staying with us because we feel that their departure will be a far worse outcome than their reluctant presence. But if you're in denial about the truth, you will spend your entire relationship in anxiety and misery, trying desperately to patch together something that just isn't working. Once you can accept both your truth and your partner's, you can weather anything that results.

So if you're in the midst of a breakup, even if it feels so awful now that you feel like you might die of a broken heart, realize that for whatever reason, it is for the best. No matter what, you don't want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't feel like they're capable of being in that relationship, even if you think you do.

Counterintuitive Generosity: Sometimes You Need To Let People Do Nice Things For You

Let me begin this blog entry by saying that I am extremely bad at the issue I am about to describe to you. It makes me deeply squicked and panicky just thinking about it. Hence, my reason for writing this post is that I'm hoping that by rationally, methodically dictating why the following move is not only helpful but possibly crucial to a successful seduction, perhaps I'll osmose more of a talent for it. Bear with me in the meantime.

I come from the old school of seduction. I'm a Casanova-style fantasy figure who sweeps in from out of nowhere and miraculously presents you with everything you've only ever dreamed about. I study you, profile you, and figure out what makes you tick so intricately that I can give you what you want before you even know you want it. (This often happens literally, by the way, and it delights me to no end.) It is through the outward focus of my attentions that my best work is done. I sidestep all the self-doubt that might trip me up by getting out of my own head and getting into yours. It's where I'm most comfortable.

This is a boon in our world of self-absorption. Most people are so caught up in worry about how others perceive them that they forget to actually pay attention to other people -- a remarkably counterproductive tactic because usually they end up falling prey to their own insecurities, acting like dicks, and pissing everyone off. In a world full of people like that, it's deeply disarming to meet someone who somehow knows how to put us at ease and make us feel good.

But then, as those who know me intimately would say, generosity is my default state. It's what I do. It's become almost a fetish of sorts, perhaps a sort of vermicular branching of my former sexual submission into a more artful, subtle yet proactive form of pleasure-giving. I'm a modern courtesan. I am the fucking Floating World come to life.

The trouble is that somehow I've managed to let an insidious double-standard creep in here. This is hilarious to me because I am so outspoken against the misandrist gender double-standards I see in the world (you can read me rant on some of them here and here). And what I realized was that in my quest to become America's Next Top Geisha, I've often deprived my targets of the pleasure that I myself most enjoy: the act of giving pleasure to another. I'm bad at receiving. Really, really bad at receiving.

Recently I solicited a man I've been seeing for some advice, as it was about a field in which he is far more well-versed than I. I felt trepidatious about even asking that much, because I am really bad at asking for things, but I figured a bit of brain-picking was ultimately a very reasonable request. What he offered me instead was a huge favor in helping to set me up with some resources that would be of tremendous help to me on the path to accomplishing my goals. This kind of freaked me out a bit. I made sure to explicitly state that I had not been looking for a favor when I called, and spent countless hours biting my fingernails worrying that he might think such a favor was what I was in it for all along, the idea of which kind of gave me a panic attack. (I mean, let's face it -- I'm a seductress. I know how bad I look on paper.) And then I stopped myself, cleared my head, and after some serious consideration realized that if our roles were reversed, if he had called me asking for my help and I had been able to offer a resource that would be of use to him, that would have made me feel fucking elated. And it was ultimately selfish of me to feel weird about accepting his generosity because that would deprive him of the pleasure he might take in doing something nice for me.

This is completely counterintuitive to me. I am actually feeling serious discomfort at this present moment writing this blog because I know that by the time I finish it I will have had to undergo some major adjustments to my core philosophy. Like, you mean to tell me love is actually a two-way street? In fact, if you are reading this right now, which means I actually finished it and posted it, you should congratulate me. I am way out of my comfort zone right now.

I related this issue to a trusted confidant, and he reiterated to me a bit of advice he'd himself received recently. "Arden, you can't achieve intimacy with someone if you never allow them to take care of you." Well, shit. I'VE BEEN DOING IT WRONG THIS WHOLE TIME.

Part of seduction is about making it very, very easy for someone to be with us. We create opportunities that are easy for our targets to say yes to, things for which they don't have to go too far out of their way. It's the dating equivalent of handing someone a pen and a dotted line at the end of your sales pitch. I'm notorious for making all the arrangements for an evening and simply telling a target when and where to show up. I take all the work out of the equation. And that's a great gift to be able to give someone. But part of me wonders if some of the reason I do this is because I'm afraid they'll flake at the first sign of any obstacle. And the answer to that is yes, yes I am afraid of that. And then I'm like, why am I dating people who are that flaky? Unless perhaps you consider that people in New York, or maybe just people in general, are inherently prone to flakiness. I once had a date with a woman who called to cancel at the last minute because her dog had been to the dentist that day and she felt bad leaving him home alone. Seriously, I can't make this up.

A related issue here is that it's become clear to me that in the past I have been really bad at selecting partners who are willing and/or capable of taking care of me. (You can read my admission regarding my sucky vetting process here.) The reasons for this are probably ultimately unimportant; obviously I had a shitty dad who didn't remotely take my needs into consideration (but seriously, who didn't?), as well as a longterm boyfriend who convinced me that any expression of anger or unhappiness was an unforgivable act of selfishness on my part, add to that a major crush who abandoned me when I was in the hospital on my birthday, and I spent a good chunk of the last decade crushing on guys I thought were cooler than me and who clearly couldn't be bothered with anything remotely resembling my emotional maintenance. It's fair to say that I've learned over time to become ridiculously self-sustaining.

But then this boy I like does something like, say, offer to pick up tickets for a show we'd planned on going to together, and I look at him like he has three heads. Why on earth would someone offer to pay to go to something I'd invited him to? (Actually, I think what was crossing my mind at the time was something like, But I know what the website is. I've ordered tickets there before. As if, you know, it were not possible to find the information through Google... which, to my credit, was probably not reliably within the skill sets of my previous four dates to said show. Again, my standard operating procedure is to remove as many obstacles as possible by taking care of the details myself.) But I think maybe I unwittingly acted like kind of a jackass by offering to take care of so much that it may have implied that I thought he was incapable, which I don't... it's just, I'm acting out of deep, deep habit here.

Not too long ago I stayed up late one night with one of my pick-up artist friends and we joked about the row we would cause if we ever decided to date one another. And then I turned to him seriously and said, "You know what would actually happen if we dated? We would both be so generous to one another that we would each end up thinking it was weird, and it would turn into some awkward one-up-manship kind of game, and ultimately you would drive me crazy because no matter how much I tried to reach out to you, you wouldn't let me get close enough to take care of you. And I would chase you down that rabbit hole and go insane because I would keep trying, and it would never be enough. I would self-destruct trying to keep up with you and you would never let me in. Why? When is it your turn for someone to take care of you instead of you always doing all the work?" He got very serious and said, "Arden, when you've been carrying a burden around all your life, you become used to it. But the moment you put it down, even for just a second, it becomes impossible to pick up again."

And maybe that's what I'm afraid of, ultimately, is that the minute I accept an ounce of caretaking from someone, I'm going to melt into an emotional invalid cripplingly dependent on whatever they're giving me, and then I won't be able to live without them. Life is so much easier when I don't expect anything from anyone.

I happened upon a recent blog entry written by my friend NC Shuva, a musician and controversial modern-day philosopher, about how he believes independent women will end up either lonely or in relationships with weak, leeching men. (The latter has indeed happened to me before, but to my credit, they were all really, really pretty.) NC is by no means a relationship expert, and he enjoys the fact that his ideas are so extreme as to spark debate amongst his followers, so his writings are often not intended to be followed to the letter. Still, some of his words struck me as relevant to the ideas I've had simmering in my mind:

By eliminating your need for a man, you are no longer interesting for a man. You see, we want to be needed. If you don’t need us what the fuck are we going to do around you? Especially those of us who are strong and dominant. Don’t confuse this with oppressive machoism. We just want to feel like our presence is needed, appreciated and therefore prized. When you have no need for us, we will not seek you out.

The truth, of course, is that I do feel the need for a partner in my life, but it's a weird kind of need, because what I need is someone upon whom I can direct my geisha-like pleasure-provider talents. I feel profoundly sad when I have no outlet for that (something I touch upon in this post). But I'm not sure that this ever registers as need, because it is admittedly unconventional. Even I realize how ridiculous it sounds to ask, "Would you do me the favor of letting me take you out and treat you to an amazing evening followed by a blowjob and a full-body massage?" But, you know, that does it for me. And it's selfish and stupid of me to think that maybe doing something like that for me wouldn't do it for somebody else.

And if I don't learn to let go every once in a while and let someone do something nice for me without my feeling weird or awkward or like I immediately have to reciprocate, I'm actually depriving them of the opportunity to enjoy the pleasurable act of making me happy. I feel seriously nervous about this and I know it's going to take some getting used to, but maybe at some point I'll feel secure enough to let someone else go online and buy the tickets for once.

It's Okay To Be a Single Seductress

"Hearts are broken more easily than cycles." - Jamal St. John

Every once in a blue moon, I take some flak for being a seduction coach and yet being single. I've heard everything from outright condemnations such as, "If you're so good at relationships, why aren't you in one?" to subtler, probably well-intentioned inquiries such as, "So, are you seeing anyone lately?" I accept this as part of the price for doing work that I love, and indeed, as a semi-public figure, notably one who loudly claims to live and die by her practices, I believe people have a right to ask me questions. (I also have the right to not answer them, or at least to answer them in ways that still retain my privacy.)

There are a few pat but truthful answers to this particular question. One is that I tend not to publicize my involvements, since casting my semi-public spotlight onto an unwitting partner might result in a breach of trust and also scare off future potential partners who find that kind of attention to be a liability (both of which would be highly unseductive conclusions), so while I may appear single to the outside world, chances are I probably have a few things subtly brewing under the surface at any given time. Another reductive answer is that I am far more benefited by being single because it allows me to freely seduce anyone I want. This is also true, and most of you who are familiar with my work know my tenebrous feelings about monogamous limitations being placed upon me. (If you don't, feel free to read my recent two-part analysis on the subject here and here.) Or if I'm really feeling lazy, it's, "Well, I've been traveling a lot, and there's a lot of stuff with the book going on, and also finding funding and representation for my screenplay, and getting the proposal for the next book sent out, and recording my album and putting my band together, and... Hey, did I mention I'm doing a book talk on Monday? You should come." I am, by the way, doing a book talk on Monday. 7pm at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. You should come too.

And I should be sure to mention that "Because I goddamn well want to" is a decent reason for any relationship status. Follow your dopamine.

But yeah, the truth is, I desire the presence of a romantic partner in my life. It's a desire that I've only recently been comfortable vocalizing, since there's always that irritating logic of "Well, you're a seduction coach, why don't you have one?" It's a totally valid want that a lot of us get shamed into thinking is weak or desperate, or, god forbid, unfeminist, but which is really no unholier than the desire for one's dream career, or for health, or for a vacation to Hawaii, or for dessert before dinner. We were programmed to further the species. Anyone who tells you that love shouldn't be a priority for you is pushing some flawed moral agenda likely borne out of those awful books that try to tell you how to get a man by not wanting one.

And for me in particular, being "okay by myself" is a more complex issue than for most. Yeah, of course I'm okay by myself. I'm more okay than most people I know, judging by the number of asses I've had to save over the course of my adult life. One friend of mine commented on my self-sufficiency just by pointing to my shoe collection. (It is pretty awesome, not gonna lie.) I am emotionally and financially self-sustaining, and I have no desire for a partner to complete me or somehow validate me into existence.

But given that my calling is creating peak romantic experience, I sometimes feel that without a partner, I'm kind of benchwarming, in a sense; that I'm a virtuoso pianist recovering from a broken hand, or a musician who's gone deaf, or one of those furniture dudes in Beauty & the Beast before Belle arrives at the castle, because I am not availed of a context in which my greatest skill set can be put to use. When I first start dating someone, and even throughout, I feel like I'm firing on all cylinders, like I've got a hard drive that's capable of running all my programs. And granted, I don't need a conventional relationship for this. I have had sexually and emotionally rich romantic experiences with partners who could best be described as fuckbuddies. The parameters of the relationship don't matter nearly as much as the degree to which my partner inspires me.

And in the past I have definitely been guilty of glossing over the vetting process of a potential partner (you can read all about those clusterfucks in theory here) because when someone inspires attraction in me, it feels so awesome to be running my game that I jump in before properly assessing whether this person is actually going to be a non-detriment to my mental health. And also because as a seduction coach, I clearly possess the magical powers to make anything work, despite the fact that a.) nobody is obligated to love you just because you did everything right, and b.) even if someone does love you, it doesn't guarantee that they're going to treat you well.

I've justified this behavior by saying, "Hey, I'm in my 20s, I don't want to settle down just yet, it's totally cool for me to go around dating these tattooed trainwrecks because I'm just having fun." And I do believe that, because I believe in my right to follow my dopamine. But then it leaves me feeling empty and I have no one to blame but myself. (Myself and my stupid exes. I totally blame them too.)

I have a male friend who's incredibly attractive, intelligent, and successful, whom I've only ever seen date women who were really pretty but really dumb. Some mutual friends and I were discussing how strange his tastes seemed, and while we were all befuddled, I was particularly indignant. "If you ask me," I ranted, "I think on some subconscious level he is deliberately choosing partners who don't match his intelligence because they are incapable of fully understanding him, and that's his way of avoiding emotional intimacy!" And no sooner did the words leave my mouth than I realized HOLY SHIT I AM TOTALLY TALKING ABOUT MYSELF.

One of my mentors asked me not too long ago if I would date me. "Yeah, I would totally date me," I replied. "I'm awesome." She then asked me to list the qualities in myself that I would find appealing as a romantic partner. "I would appreciate how much effort I put into myself and into the relationship," I pondered. "I would appreciate my ability to create excitement and adventure, my ability to communicate and problem-solve, my desire to make a relationship work around the individual needs of each person, my flexible nature and lack of desire to create conflict, and my ability to be affectionate and have fun. And I would really appreciate that I would probably be the only person I'd ever met who liked sex with as much frequency and intensity as I do. And finally I would appreciate how far I go to be the kind of person I would be proud to be with." And then all of a sudden it dawned on me how few of my past partners have shown the same appreciation for me that I apparently would for myself. Don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of people want to date me because they thought it would make them look cool, but that's not at all the same thing, even if it's kind of a weird compliment in its own right.

Someone tonight, after the initial are-you-seeing-anyone question, asked me affably, "But you're getting laid, right?" And I was like, "You know, I have offers out there, and people I know I could call, and some I'm considering, but I'm just not feeling terribly inspired by anyone in immediate reach lately." The man I was talking to, a well-known voice in the sex-positive field, replied, "Hey, I fully believe in everyone's right to be as slutty as they want, but the corollary to that is that everyone also has the right to NOT be slutty. You should only be as slutty as you feel like at any given time."

Sex and desire are not mutually inclusive for me, and sex without a requisite amount of desire ends up feeling pointless and icky. I'm at a point now where I won't have sex with someone unless I can no longer stand to not rip their clothes off right then and there. But even when desire is present, there's that trap of pairbonding to someone who's really not right for you (read all about that here), and running down a rabbit hole of anxiety and misery because all of a sudden you're in a relationship with someone who just doesn't treat you well. Which is probably because they don't appreciate you. Which is probably because they aren't capable of understanding you.

So yeah, you can choose any reason you want to justify why you're a single seductress, or you can choose to have no reason at all. But if you are like me in that you choose to commit to a lifestyle of seduction, and if your relationship status is ever called into question, don't ever let anyone make you feel bad for your choices.

Because it is far better to be available to the right person than it is to be in a relationship with the wrong one.

Here Is Significantly Less Conflict: Several Alternative Relationship Models to Try For Yourself

In my previous blog entry, "Here Is Conflict: Why Nature Has Us At Odds With Ourselves," I unpacked the sociological and evolutionary reasons we so often end up forming monogamous relationships and then cheating on them. Essentially, we are programmed to pairbond, and then to stray. My hero Dr. Helen Fisher explains in her book The Anatomy of Love that throughout human development, cheaters were naturally selected. Humans who possessed the ability to spread their genes widely without getting caught, thereby avoiding ostracization from their societies due to their violations of its moral strictures, were likely to produce the most offspring and to genetically pass on their abilities of amorous deception. With the agricultural revolution and its culture of ownership more or less developing into today's normative mores of monogamy and marriage, we as a culture have evolved ourselves into an unsolvable puzzle.

My previous blog entry was rather depressing. But in some ways the information I discovered was also very freeing, because to me it demonstrates that the failure of so many monogamous relationships is not to be blamed on the individuals who comprised them. We have so many biological odds stacked against us -- and so much of our culture miseducating us -- that it's no wonder that most people enter into relationships blindly and with unrealistic expectations.

But I decided it's not enough to merely tell you guys we're all fucked, because as a so-called relationship "expert" (I put "expert" in quotes every time I write it -- I even put it in air-quotes when I say it -- because we all suck at these things and the only way that I'm different is that I'm good at articulating what has and has not worked for me), I consider it my responsibility to be a part of the solution. I may not have all the answers, but I'm definitely not going to give up on finding them.

I decided to start thinking about what would happen if we took the unrealistic expectation of eternal monogamy out of our pairbondings. The trouble is, however, that I've been in open relationships before, and they haven't always functioned merely as a result of removing monogamy from the equation. I once dated a man who, less than an hour after I'd been mugged, said he had to run back to his apartment instead of staying with me because (as I later found out) he had another woman waiting for him there. I dated another man who tried to sneak-text another girl he was attracted to while he was in bed with me -- and not in a sexy "hey watch me seduce this girl" kind of way, but in a douchey "I don't need you, I have other people I like" kind of way. Monogamy may be an inherently flawed approach, but nonmonogamy isn't a silver bullet either. So what are the key factors in making a relationship work?

I went out this weekend and interviewed three couples whom I knew to be in successful, happy, open relationships. I asked them to tell me about the structures of their relationships, how they avoided typical pitfalls, and the basic guidelines they would prescribe to other couples who might want to model their own relationships after them.

I'm not going to go around saying I solved the problem of our sucky evolutionary biology, but I am going to offer you here what seem like a few viable alternatives to monogamy when monogamy is so difficult to sustain, alternatives which do not sacrifice relationship essentials such as love, loyalty, and trust. You can thank me later.

Matt & Rachel

I'd met Matt and Rachel a couple times, but when a mutual friend described their relationship as one of the only functional open relationships she'd ever seen, I asked if they would talk about themselves with me over lunch. They've been together for twelve years and married for six, and they define themselves as polyamorous. When I asked them what they felt the difference between polyamory and nonmonogamy was, they said essentially it's an attitude of love and emotional connection that they extend to their other lovers, and a culture of inclusion, honesty, and communication in their relationship with each other. They said they're not looking for their partnership to be a free-for-all, and that polyamory seems a more fitting word for the presence of emotion they sustain with one another.

One of the first things they mentioned as a key to their happiness was the word "compersion." (I've linked to its Wikipedia entry for you here because I'd never heard of it either.) They defined it as the opposite of jealousy, of the feeling of joy one has in seeing a partner happy, whether it means they're happy going out playing a round of golf or happy going on a date with another person. I asked how they prevented jealousy, and they said they do it by checking in with each other. They never see other people behind each other's backs, always let each other know what they're up to, and make sure that their partnership is always their main priority. Each partner has a "veto" if they truly need the other to choose not to pursue a course of action. Their "secondaries," as they referred to them, must never come before their primaries. They even mentioned needing to manage the expectations of their secondaries, as they care about them and don't want to see them getting hurt either.

Rachel went further in unpacking the benefits of an open relationship. (Even beyond my simplistic but important justification of "the other way doesn't work.") She cited how many women don't reach their sexual peak until their early 30s, and how limiting it would be to experience the sexual exploration of those years with only one partner.

"How can you expect to be everything to someone all of the time?" she posed. "How can you expect to meet someone's every need and be happy about that?"

Matt noted the fact that he was out to lunch with three beautiful women (Rachel, myself, and the mutual friend who set us up), and that even regardless of the sexual component, how could he not be thrilled to live a life where he could be free to have such great people around and not have a partner feel jealous about it?

I asked them how they might prescribe their structure to other people looking to model a relationship after theirs. They gave me some key tenets.

• Always treat your partner as your priority.
• Check in with one another to promote honesty and communication.
• If your partner has an objection to something you're doing, trust their judgment and that they're looking out for your best interests, not that they're doing it out of possessiveness.
• Understand that your partner's attraction to someone else does not mean they're less attracted to you.
• Allow your partner to be an autonomous individual and trust them to go about their life.

I could see visibly how happy Matt and Rachel are with each other. I also couldn't help but think that their relationship structure required a certain enlightened attitude in both partners, an attitude they both possess but which is pretty rare among most people. I remember being in a place of insecurity and jealousy myself a few years ago, and thinking that at that point in my life, trying their relationship structure would have scared the shit out of me. I wouldn't be surprised if many people who are as secure as they are in themselves and in each other would probably have a pretty great relationship regardless of its rules.

Lawrence & Leah

Later that day, I met up for drinks with Lawrence and Leah, two friends from Santa Monica I'd met last month. They've been together for five years. Leah and I had talked about their relationship before, and I had found it an enviable configuration. I asked whether they identified as polyamorous or nonmonogamous, since it had seemed to be an important distinction to Matt and Rachel, and they told me that they chose not to label their relationship since so many schools of thought that fall under those labels try to foist their own rules on others.

The first precept that came up as foundation of their relationship was to treat each other like adults and trust in one another to make their own decisions.

"I will never ask you to change your behavior, because your behavior is your behavior," Leah said. "I will either learn to adapt, or I will leave."

"I consider it my responsibility to manage my emotions," Lawrence added. "Whatever you're pursuing is feeding you in some way, and I trust you to know what's best for you."

"Like, follow your bliss?" I asked.

"Like follow your dopamine," he answered in a reply that could have easily been on the other side of a phone sex call for someone like me.

They distinctly do not have the veto function that Matt and Rachel have. They don't ask each other's permission, but they do check in with one another to stay connected. I asked if they told each other about their other encounters or purposefully kept them hidden, and they said they maintained a middle ground. There were no secrets, but they didn't feel the need for full disclosure either.

I asked if jealousy ever came into the equation and how they dealt with it. Leah told me that for the first two years they were together she felt a fear of being lied to, but she learned to trust Lawrence's intentions in time. She also once told me she stopped looking at his Facebook because she didn't need to stress herself out worrying how many other women might be pursuing him. Again, they both mentioned the importance of treating one another as a priority, managing the expectations of your secondaries, and being happy for your partner's happiness.

"I have an amazing woman," Lawrence said, "and I believe others should be able to experience her if they both want. Why wouldn't I want to share that with other people?"

Their basic relationship tenets are:

• Treat your partner like an adult and trust them to know what's best for themselves.
• Don't parent your partner or make them ask for your permission every time they want to do something, but don't keep secrets on purpose either.
• Trust each other's intentions.
• Always treat each other as the priority.
• Be happy for your partner's happiness.

Lawrence and Leah also struck me as being particularly enlightened. Again, I wasn't sure that I wouldn't have found their ideas threatening in my early 20s, and wondered if the success of their relationship didn't rest on their degree of security in themselves.

Mick & Bianca

I met with Mick and Bianca the following night at a bar where they dj together once a week. They've been together for a year and a half, and I had met them through my social circle where they had been forthcoming about the nature of their relationship. I asked them if they felt their relationship was best defined as polyamorous or nonmonogamous, or as something else.

"I don't know, modern?" Mick replied. "We're not technically open, but I guess you could call us nonmonogamous." I asked them how they came about having this relationship structure.

"Well, because Mick doesn't have tits and a vagina," Bianca giggled into her Jack & Coke. They explained to me that Bianca's bisexuality was the impetus behind their relationship and that Mick certainly hadn't objected to their having other women. They did mention that there are no other men who factor in their relationship. I asked if Bianca was ever tempted by other men, but she affirmed that she wasn't.

Mick stressed the importance of having some rules to play by. "I insisted we have them, because I didn't want to fuck up a great thing. So I figure I better stick by them because I'm the one who made them." They told me that they don't ever sleep with strangers, that they get to know a person before they invite them into their relationship. I asked where they drew the line with when a person went from stranger to trusted partner, as it seemed there could be a lot of grey area in between. They told me that it's a case-by-case basis, but that as a rule they always sleep with a new person together the first time. After that, they generally trust each other to be with them as individuals, but they emphasized that that's on a case-by-case basis as well.

Mick's previous relationship was an open one of the non-functional variety. He confided that his ex couldn't get over her jealousy. When she asked for a don't-ask-don't-tell policy, Mick obliged, but six months later she wanted to ask and tell, and was upset when she found out. This seems an obvious bad ending to avoid setting yourself up for. Mick expressed how happy he is at Bianca's security in herself, that she knows she's always his number one.

Their basic relationship tenets are:

• Always treat your partner as your priority.
• Always bring in a new secondary together for the first time (all secondaries are female).
• Check in with your partner to allow individual encounters on a case-by-case basis.
• Make sure you get to know and trust your secondaries before bringing them in.
• Trust in your partner and don't be threatened by their attraction to other people.

Mick and Bianca don't have quite as open a relationship as Matt and Rachel or Lawrence and Leah do, and obviously for a relationship like this to work, the female partner must be bisexual, or else by having other women involved and no men she would likely feel she was getting an unfair deal. I noticed that their structure was more distinct than those of the other two couples I interviewed; their rules, more definite and less spiritual. But they too stressed the most of the same values.

                                                        *        *        *

In all three couples I interviewed, the overarcing themes were treating your partner as the priority, being secure in yourself and in the relationship, desiring your partner's happiness, and trusting your partner's judgment and intentions. These are all great things and should not be confined to alternative relationships. It's even possible that the success of the open relationships I've encountered is due not so much to their openness as to the enlightened character necessary to be secure in an open relationship. Perhaps the success of the three relationships above is correlative rather than causative.

Oh, and for the record, all three couples also stressed to me that no matter what other circumstances they would absolutely stay the night with their partner if they'd been mugged, and that they would never try to sneak-text a potential lover while in bed with their primary. (I made a point of asking. Hey, what's the point of having a writing project if I can't somehow justify my righteousness with it in some way or another?)

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

I found it very interesting that none of the three couples I interviewed subscribed to the don't-ask-don't-tell policy that seems so popular in the theory of open relationships. It's popular enough that I feel compelled to dedicate a section to it in this blog entry, but since none of the couples I interviewed fell into that category (maybe by virtue of "don't ask, don't tell" a couple wouldn't be able to talk to me about it?), I did a little research on my own.

One person I did speak to who subscribes to that approach is Guy Blews, author of Marriage and How To Avoid It. I'm not sure it's de rigueur for every relationship he has, but when we met up for dinner last month, he said it applied to his current one.

I asked him if his relationship was an open one, and he paused.

"That means it's not," I quickly commented.

"Well, it's like this," he explained. "She asked me if I would tell her about the other women I get involved with, and I said, 'No, I won't.' And then we dropped it."

Guy, for the record, said that if his girlfriend had been mugged while another woman was waiting for him at his apartment, he would have told her, "Hold on, honey, I need to run back to my apartment because I had a few friends over and I have to see them out, but I will be back to you in less than half an hour and will stay with you til you feel safe." He would have lied to protect her from a reality she didn't want to know about, but he would have still treated her as his priority. "The other women in your life have to know about your girlfriend, and they have to know that they'll always come second to her. If they can't live with that, then the situation isn't right for them."

Elaine Sciolino's book La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life includes a list of precepts written by a Frenchman for "the unfaithful but loyal husband." I'm including it here as a photo since I am way too lazy to type it all out myself, but it does seem to represent a surprisingly honorable approach to the DADT method of open relationships.

"The Honor Code of the Unfaithful But Loyal Husband"
(...or Wife. This set of rules is applicable to both genders.)

I'm assuming this set of rules was written as instruction for a marriage in which the other partner actually has no idea that an affair is going on. I can't conscientiously condone nonconsensual nonmonogamy, since each partner in a relationship should know exactly what they signed up for. But since it was designed for a situation in which the stakes of discovery are even higher, it seems like a good code to apply to ethical, consensual relationship DADT. After all, in that relationship structure, it's not only important that you not tell your partner about your affairs, it's just as important that they don't find out through other means.

Basically in the honorable version of DADT, the principles of always treating your partner like the priority, being secure in yourself and in the relationship, and desiring your partner's happiness still seem to mostly apply, but honesty, communication, and trust get a little bit fudged. Perhaps there's trust inherently built in: you are trusting your partner to do what they want to do on their own time and trusting that they are not going to do anything that impedes the relationship's ability to function.

                                                        *        *        *

Can I vouch that any of this works? Of course not; I've never consciously tested any of the structures myself. Honestly the only thing I can personally vouch for is that being in a relationship where your partner doesn't treat you as the priority really sucks, whether it's monogamous or not. But the couples I talked to all seem genuinely happy and in love with one another.

My goal in this blog entry is to offer you a few different relationship models so you can see that the normative, monogamous, marriage-oriented relationship is not the only way of going about things. Perhaps something here will resonate with you and you'll try it out with your next lover. If you do, write to me and let me know how it goes.

Before I sum up, I'll add one thing more. All of the women I spoke with were beautiful -- not just genetically, but also in keeping up their grooming and appearance. Their looks were each different -- Rachel sported blonde curls and a sundress, Leah wore heels and a black cocktail dress, and Bianca had fire-engine red hair and fishnet stockings -- but they each put effort in. The men were sexy too. I noticed as a distinct pattern that each person in each relationship maintained a well-groomed, attractive appearance. This goes back to a principle that I wrote about in this blog entry nearly two years ago, where I stated that one of the benefits of non-monogamy is that it forces each partner to actively work on the relationship:

"In a non-monogamous situation, we are aware that we must constantly strive to earn our partner's commitment, and it makes us better at being in the relationship. We wake up every day knowing that we owe it to our partner to be their best option, just as much today as the day we first won them, and we have the confidence to know that our partner is spending his time with us because he chooses to, not because his word obligates him to it."

The amount of vibrant glow I saw coming from each person I interviewed is rare amongst most people I know. I can't say if it came from actively continuing to seduce their partners, from the freedom they felt in getting to explore other lovers, or if it's just that it takes a remarkable kind of person to sustain a successful open relationship in the first place, but their positive energy was palpable, and they were all incredibly attractive in ways that do not depend on genetics alone.

And as I see it, the energy that comes from that kind of happiness is alone an enviable reason to give something like this a shot.

Here Is Conflict: Why Nature Has Us At Odds With Ourselves

I began studying the science of falling in love when I was in my early 20s. I was a late bloomer, had never had a real boyfriend, and the inner workings of relationships were a mystery to me. I was convinced that somehow, if I could decode the science behind love, I could figure out a formula to give us all perfect happily-ever-after relationships with one another.

Well, I'm several years into my studies now, and I wish I had better news for you guys. Truth is, according to science, we're fucked.

Let's take a look at a few things. I mentioned in a few past blog entries (specifically this one and this one) that we cannot count on nature to look out for our own happiness. Natural selection passes down in us the traits that help us to further the species by creating healthy, functional offspring, because that is evolution's main goal. (Even if you're on the pill and using condoms. Even if you never want kids. Even if you're gay. Your brain is still programmed to make you select partners with apparent qualities of survival and reproductive fitness and to pairbond you in ways that would help you raise a kid if you were in a natural environment, whether you like it or not, because we have not evolved neurologically as quickly as we have evolved socially and technologically. So spare me that argument. You don't get to opt out of your biological programming just because of the life choices you make.) Past the part where you do your share in furthering the species, nature does not help you in having a satisfying relationship. This is not survival of the happiest.

Let's then look at the construct of monogamy. At the very least, we can say that monogamy is the current cultural norm: relationships that consist of nonmonogamous pairings or of more than two partners are all lumped under the category "alternative." But why?

Drs. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha explain in their book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality that monogamy became a big deal right around the agricultural revolution. Before farming, there was no such thing as land ownership; humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, and while careful mate selection and pairbonding still occurred, children were more or less raised in a communal setting as the whole tribe was somewhat invested in a child's survival. When food (i.e., valuable goods) could be cultivated on a piece of land rather than hunted/gathered, having land became paramount. Monogamy became important because a guy with land wanted to make sure that the kid he passed his land on down to was actually his, and so like land, a wife became synonymous with property. Thus began our culture of ownership, and when ownership is important, any threat to it results in jealousy. (Ah, jealousy -- you can find out more of what I think about that right here.) And with that came the double standard of the shaming and blaming of adulterous women. Yes, farming is to blame for why we have a slut-shaming/stud-praising culture today, because a woman's infidelity meant bringing unagreed-upon genes into the family, whereas a man's infidelity resulted in... aww heck, who's ever gonna find out anyway. Next time someone calls you a slut, blame the farmers.

But let's dissect the idea of monogamy bit too. My hero Dr. Helen Fisher in her book The Anatomy of Love: The Mysteries of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray points out that the Oxford English Dictionary defines monogamy as "the condition, rule, or custom of being married to only one person at a time," but does not necessitate sexual fidelity. Moreover, it certainly does not suggest a lifelong partnership, as indicated by the phrase "one person at a time." My hero Dr. Fisher goes on to note that several zoologists define monogamy even somewhat more loosely, as "a prolonged association and essentially exclusive mating relationship."

Ah, there's our loophole. Essentially. Meaning, you know... "kinda, sorta, basically, but who's really counting."

So monogamy and fidelity are not mutually inclusive. Even in the wild, mammals in monogamous, pairbonded relationships still often mate on the sly with mammals other than their partner. Cheating is practically built into our systems, both as males and females. For males, justifying cheating is simple: men are programmed to pass on their genes through as many genetically fit females as possible. With females, it may be a bit more complicated, but women still have their reasons.

In a recent chat  I had with relationship expert Guy Blews (author of Marriage and How To Avoid It), he pointed out to me how common it is for a woman to marry a man who's a stable provider (to provide for her offspring, i.e., survival) but mate with a man who is a genetically fit badboy (to create genetically fit offspring. i.e., reproduction). "You'd be shocked at the level of denial some partners go through convincing themselves that a kid is theirs," he said in his cheeky British accent as we drove through Malibu. "They'll be like, 'Oh no, red hair runs on my mother's side of the family.' And I'm like, 'But you're black.' It doesn't matter. It's the way the world works."

Blews embraces the fact that his opinions on relationships are controversial in their extremity, but reading through his works, you can't help but see the logic in his anti-marriage, monogamy-skeptic stance.

"Stupidity is the reason so many people marry," he writes on his blog. "It’s not always a calculated decision. It’s not always logical. It’s not even sensible. It’s just STUPIDITY. 'Oh, my boyfriend likes me. I’m 25. He asked me to marry him. I love him. Yes, ok. I do.' See? STUPIDITY. Not, 'Hold on a second, I’m only 25 and I’ve only had 4 serious relationships and none of them lasted more than 2 years, and now I think I can spend the rest of my life with this one person that I kind of love!' No. Just STUPIDITY. Based on false hope, lies, and miseducation."

You have to admit that marriage as an institution was designed to be entered into before the peak of our reproductive years, which is usually less than a third of the way into our entire lifespans, and that at best it is unrealistic for us to believe that we will want to stay forever sexually faithful to that one person we chose at that point in time. As I pointed out in another blog entry, our brain chemistry is designed to stop releasing happy love chemicals over a partner a few years into a relationship, so divorce becomes a trend after about four years of marriage. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why put ourselves under so much unnecessary pressure?

Back to my hero Dr. Helen Fisher. As I continued reading The Anatomy of Love late last night, this one passage struck me:

It is not difficult to imagine that the evolution of serial monogamy and clandestine adultery triggered the beginnings of selection for this moral wiring some four million years ago. What conflict this dual reproductive strategy produced. To form a pair-bond and also be adulterous required the skills of deceit and judgment and the ability to weigh the odds. ...As human social life became more complex and our ancestors continued to jockey for sex and power, they acquired a conscience too.

As men and women became engaged in larger and larger networks of social obligations, individuals became more driven by the opposing values of reproductive self-interest and the necessity to cooperate within a larger group. Here was conflict.

Yes! Here is conflict! Opposing values! This stuff that I've basically devoted my life to figuring out a way around? It's wired into us. It sucks. We each basically want a faithful partner that we can cheat on. Our happily ever after isn't fair or even remotely realistic.

It's times like these that I really wish I was a shitty relationship expert who could bullshit you with happy stupid aphorisms or give you a list of "rules" to follow so some dude will get hitched with you (BECAUSE CLEARLY IF HE MARRIES YOU THAT SOLVES EVERYTHING). I hate being the bearer of bad news. But as far as I'm concerned, we're all in this together to figure this shit out, and I'm not just going to pepper my blog with rehashed book excerpts every couple days to up my traffic so that you'll go buy it (although seriously, do go buy it). I'm still looking for answers and my quest continues every day. I am on the front fucking lines here, AND I do all the dry and boring anthropological reading so you don't have to. So if there's one thing about me that you can trust, it is that I am always going to be honest with you.

I don't have the solution yet, but I can tell you this much: what we're doing right now as a society isn't working out so hot for us. Divorce rates are higher than ever, and yet we persist in this notion that our relationships ought to just perpetuate because of love, something that most of us can't even properly define for ourselves.

I do think that we need to make cheating less of a taboo in society, and also to be more realistic about what it is. I've been in monogamous relationships and in nonmonogamous relationships, and in my experience, getting to be sexually intimate with an outside partner that I found attractive was far less damaging to my relationship than not getting to be sexually intimate with them. Strange, right? About four years ago I spent a night in Paris with a man I was devastatingly attracted to, and I turned down his sexual advance because I was in a monogamous relationship. This haunts me to this day. (Seriously, Mr. Fashion Photographer, if you're reading this, whatever part of the globe you're in now, come back to New York and find me already, I am not fucking kidding.) Conversely, last year I was in a nonmonogamous non-relationship, and I found myself devastatingly attracted to two other men. I slept with both of them, because it was in the rules that I got to do so, and you know what? I found myself wanting to be back with my pairbonded partner pretty quickly afterward.

Even stranger, when that pairbonded nonmonogamous non-relationship ended, I continued the affair with one of my two occasional lovers, and several months later found myself getting all pairbondy to him, only after my other primary partner was out of my life. (For like half a second until my rational mind kicked in the door like a SWAT team and informed my oxytocin-flooded brain that that was not at all a good idea.) It was like my brain wouldn't even let me pairbond with more than one partner, despite my attraction. It was actually safer to cheat than to not cheat.

I don't know, you guys. I'm not the most reputably monogamous person out there but I am at a point where I am starting to try to take my relationships a little more seriously, like maybe try to prioritize dating people who seem capable of emotional intimacy rather than people who just have a lot of tattoos. I've realized that within some of my recent involvements I have not always lobbied for my own best interests, and I've let my eternal optimism keep me at it when I should have just acknowledged a person's lack of intimacy abilities and moved on. So I'm pretty invested right now in trying to figure out what actually works.

All I do know is that something will only work if it's working for both people, so it becomes necessary not to try to fit two people into the same box, but rather to design a relationship that is tailored to the needs of both individuals. Some say that people's needs are never in conflict, only their strategies to get their needs met. Well, I think we need to address our strategies.

Because the ones society has been giving us aren't working out, and nature isn't much on our side either.

Chemistry vs Compatibility

Let's focus for a moment today on the trap, the falsehood, the illusion that is chemistry.

How many times have you consoled a friend after (or even before) an inevitable breakup with some callous loser where she has cried into your shoulder declarations of "But I don't think I'll ever feel this way about anybody else ever again!" Or maybe you've been said friend. Either way it's a common scenario. Even though your relationship has turned so stressful as to be a total pain in the ass to be in, you're worried that the chemistry you feel with your partner is precious, irreplicable, a miraculous strike of lightning that couldn't possibly hit you twice.

Well, you're wrong. Chemistry is actually pretty easy to achieve, because mother nature is doing most of the work for you. You are biologically programmed to feel the attachment that you feel to your mate, because mother nature wants you to stick with him long enough for you to do your part in furthering the species.

Have I mentioned this before? I'm sure I have, but it's important, so I'll say it again. Mother nature doesn't give a shit about whether you're happy. She basically wants to pair you up with a guy whose pheromones are compatible with yours (that means that the two of you each have different genetic strengths and weaknesses so that your offspring will have the greatest chance of being physically healthy), and she doesn't care whether that guy is a jerk or a sociopath or an alcoholic or a pathological liar or a philandering cad. She cares whether his DNA and yours are a good match for healthy kids.

There are countless reasons why we fall in love with one person and not another. Pheromones have a good deal to do with it (you are attracted to the scents of men with whom you are the most genetically compatible), as do what scientists refer to as "love maps," what my hero Dr. Helen Fisher defines as "a template replete with brain circuitry that determines what arouses you sexually, what drives you to fall in love with one person rather than another." Things like mystery, timing, and your balances of estrogen vs testosterone and serotonin vs dopamine play key roles as well.

 

My love map looks something like this, apparently.

But once you find someone whom both you and mother nature deem to be a suitable partner, the attachment that grows from there, I'm afraid to tell you, is incredibly commonplace. Your feelings aren't terribly special. Even though it feels like you are the only person in the world and indeed in all the history of time who has ever even remotely felt this way about another human being... well, that's how everyone feels.

Researcher Dorothy Tennov (author of Love and Limerence) collected hundreds of responses from men and women in love and discovered remarkable similarities about their experiences. Subjects in love recounted viewing everything in their day-to-day lives through the filter of their experience of being in love (what would their loved one think of the book they're reading or the movie they just saw, for example). "Many informants said that, as the obsession grew, they spent from 85 to 100 percent of their days and nights in sustained mental attentiveness, doting on this single individual." For real -- 85 to 100 percent of their entire day spent obsessing over their crush! I thought I was the only one who did this, but apparently I'm not alone.

Your brain chemistry plays a huge role in all of this. When someone comes along with the right pheromones, who fits your love map, where the timing and receptiveness and all the other factors come together to work out just right, your brain has a chemical reaction. It releases this lovely little neurochemical called phenylethylamine (my favorite drug), which is a naturally occuring amphetamine, an upper that causes you to feel energized, giddy, happy, and in love with life in general. Basically your brain puts you on speed.

Then, once you become sexually active with your partner, your brain engages in something called pair-bonding. At the chemical level, during sex your brain releases a neurochemical called oxytocin (or, in guys, vasopressin) which is responsible for the bang-crazy that happens to you after you have sex with a guy a few times. Researcher Diane Witt puts it this way: "You first meet him and he’s passable. The second time you go out with him, he’s okay. The third time you go out with him, you have sex. And from that point on you can’t imagine what life would be like without him. Since the release of oxytocin can be classically conditioned, after repeatedly having sex with the same partner, just seeing that partner could release more oxytocin, making you want to be with that person all the more, and you bond."

Sound familiar? It is. And it happens to all of us.

Here's the real kicker though: Pretty much none of this science behind why we fall in love and with whom has anything to do with whether we have actual compatible values and lifestyles with the person we're falling for. Lord knows I've fallen for plenty of guys who looked like Edward Scissorhands or Nikki Sixx who smelled amazing to me when they were sweaty but who weren't actually suitable mates for me beyond their appealing pheromones and their consistency with my goth-rock love map.

So let's be clear on one thing. Yes, you will feel this way again about someone else. You're biologically programmed to! Mother nature is going to do all the work for you -- once you find someone basically passable, and then have consistent sex with him, your brain is going to go all haywire and make you feel crazy in love because that is what it is wired to do. Isn't that great? You're already set up for success where falling in love is concerned. Evolution desperately wants you to fall in love. It's got your back. You're good to go.

Where you really have to concentrate here is your vetting process (something I mentioned a few blog entries ago that I'm particularly terrible at). You are responsible for finding a partner with whom you share not chemistry, but actual compatibility.

I like to define compatibility as having similar values and similar lifestyles -- basically, the things that make a relationship work without too much forcing or compromise on anyone's part. For example, for me to feel real compatibility with someone, he has to keep similar hours (matching circadian rhythms are important as falling asleep together is a huge priority for me) meaning he's probably a night owl like me, meaning most doctors and lawyers and bankers and other guys my mom wishes I'd date are automatically crossed out. He also has to have similar life views, which means he's probably a bit of a free spirit, since I'm not the right gal for anyone looking for the mom of their 2.5 kids behind a picket fence, which means he's probably a little lenient where "monogamy" is defined but is steadfast where loyalty is concerned (psst -- loyalty and monogamy, not the same thing!). He has to be responsible with drugs and alcohol, or simply not use them at all, and he has to be if not completely mentally/emotionally stable at least on the path to self-awareness and improvement where that's concerned. And he has to value things like adventure and curiosity and picking things apart, and being creative and openminded and possibly spiritual but not in an organized religion kind of way, and he has to really, really like sex, a lot, and with great frequency and intensity. So it kinda falls naturally that I end up dating a lot of musicians and models and nightlife personalities, because they tend to match me where most of those values and lifestyle components are concerned (except for the responsible use of drugs and alcohol and the desire for emotional stability, which are harder to find in those social circles but not totally impossible). See? Not just because guys with guitars and cameras are hot. I mean, they are, but still.

Your values and your lifestyle are probably different from mine, but the fact remains: It is up to you to find someone who is compatible with you. Because mother nature isn't taking care of that part for you. She doesn't care if you end up with a jerk just so long as that jerk has good genes and is going to help you pop out a baby. Mother nature is kind of a bitch.

While we're on this subject, let's talk about something not to do, shall we? Do not, when you feel a sudden panic set in on your life, or your career, or your youth, or whatever else you feel is being threatened at the moment, decide suddenly to settle down with that person you were just "kind of seeing" because they seemed a decent way to pass the time for a while. Granted, I have more often seen guys do this than girls, but I've been susceptible to it once myself. All of a sudden it begins to look like the carousel is slowing down, the roller coaster's pulling into the station, you're not as big a deal as you thought you were, people seem less interested in you personally and professionally, your big career move turned out to be a flop, and you panic and crave some stability in your life, so you settle down into a relationship with that person you were casually seeing because you know they're a sure bet. Because you crave the spurious feeling of stability that comes with the comfort of being in a relationship. However, the comfort of being in a relationship isn't actually comfortable if you're in a relationship with the wrong person, and when you're in that panicked and vulnerable phase, you are far more likely to gloss over your vetting process and fail to choose someone who is actually compatible with you. As my hero Dr. Helen Fisher writes, "Once an individual becomes receptive, he or she is in danger of falling in love with the next reasonably acceptable person who comes along." And then you have all that sex with them that releases all that oxytocin and vasopressin in your brains, and all of a sudden you're pair-bonded to them. And you're stuck in it. And trying to get out of it makes you feel like you're in a pit of quicksand, because that chemical attachment keeps bringing you back again and again. Sometimes for years. And it's only after you've been away from them for enough time that the chemical haze finally leaves your brain and you think to yourself Oh my god, what was I thinking? How could I have wasted so much time and never seen that person for who he/she really was? And then you feel like an idiot.

So yeah. Don't do that. Please, please, please, for godssake as I bang my head on the keyboard... don't do that.

When it comes to finding a suitable mate, you need to be your own lawyer and lobby for your own best interests. Biology will ensure that you fall for someone and feel that amazing chemistry that you swear each time you will never feel again with anyone else in your life -- but only you can look out for what kind of person is actually right for you and find someone who possesses the compatibility that will make your relationship one that is actually good for you and not a total pain in the ass to be in.

poster courtesy of Karen Salmansohn