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How to Evoke the Most Potent Emotion in a Woman
by Dr. Alex Benzer
of Tao of Dating
March 16th, 2008
In the course of working on 'The Tao of Dating' for women these past few weeks, I did an exercise which I highly recommend that you do.
This exercise involved compiling a list each woman you've dated, then figuring out how on earth you ended up dating her. If you notice a pattern, then you can duplicate it to get better results. This is called modeling your own excellence, and it works pretty darn well.
Now the reason I did this exercise was to come up with what the women did to draw me to them (answer: they were cute and showed genuine interest in me).
What I discovered in the process was what *I* did right to bring them into my life. THAT was a real eye-opener -- partially because of the obviousness of the results. Y'know, that cosmic 'duh' that hits you in the face.
And here are those results. Drum roll, please...
A small minority were sold on me before I even started. Later on, I found out that I looked like some ex-boyfriend that they were still stuck on, or that I reminded them of their father, or some movie star, or some other completely random factor for which I couldn't take credit in good conscience (and most likely did at the time).
(Incidentally, in the process of writing the book for women, I'm re-discovering that most of the success in our dating life that we men ascribe to deliberate design or skill is either entirely her doing, random luck, or evolutionarily predetermined. So don't ever get too cocky or too depressed about this kinda thing -- just roll with the Tao, brother).
But regardless of whether they were into my looks or not, they all had one thing in common.
They were *curious* about me.
So amongst all the emotions that you could possibly evoke in a woman, it turns out that in this test case -- namely, yours truly -- curiosity was the most potent.
Once the hellos were said, curiosity was what kept them in the conversation. It was what made them accept (or extend) the invitation for a second meeting. And it was what kept them sticking around after that.
Curious thing, this curiosity. The young of all animals are naturally curious. Ethologists (= animal behaviorists) have said that Homo sapiens is one of the only species that remains curious for the rest of its life.
In a way curiosity is a hallmark of youth and vivacity. So when you address that part of a woman's (or man's) brain, you are appealing to something primal and powerful.
In fact, if you've read this far, it's because the subject heading of this email evoked your curiosity. Then there was the promise of a story... then words like 'drum roll, please'. And you're still reading, probably interrupting some economically productive activity you were engaged in before you opened this email.
And so, step by step, you are drawn in by the promise of what else I'm going to say, and what else is going to happen.
The other thing about curiosity is that it's baggage-free. It's either judgmentally neutral or positive.
Other emotions can be pretty loaded. I mean, you can use hypnotic techniques to evoke in a woman a state of arousal and lust relatively easily. But that's playing with fire, and you could just as easily drive her away (fast!) as draw her in.
On the other hand, hardly anyone will think, "Oh my god, I was so awful! I felt so bad about getting curious." Curiosity is a-okay.
Okay, so we've established that curiosity = good thing. That's great. Now what, doc? Hold your horses, bud. By now you know I'll never tell you about a tool without also telling you how to put it to use.
So I'm going to give you some ways of making the girls curious about you. Here we go:
1) Be interesting.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "You do goofy off-the-wall things, so of course the women get curious. Easy for you to say. How about us normal Joes, doc?"
Well, as it turns out, the best way of being interesting isn't about you at all. I mean, you could go be like that 'World's Most Interesting Man' beer commercial and arm-wrestle Latin dictators, set trapped bears free and catch giant marlin, and that's all nice.
But the real way to be interesting is to be interested in what SHE's most interested in -- namely, her.
As some wise person once said, "The bad conversationalist talks about himself. The good conversationalist lets you talk. The great conversationalist talks about you."
And how do you talk about her? Come from a space of genuine curiosity (that word again) and ask her questions. Ask this question as often as possible: "What's important to you about that?"
If you want to take it a step further, cold reading in its various forms is mighty mighty. I recommend the game 'The Cube', which I explain in greater detail in 'The Tao of Dating'. Palm reading is a little hokier -- well, okay, a lot hokier -- but also effective.
Great. Now that you've made yourself an interesting person, it's time to ...
2) Be compelling.
The best way to be compelling is to live a compelling life. Do cool stuff. Be a source of enrichment for others' lives.
Nobody is stopping you from taking flying lessons, scuba lessons, or learning ventriloquism (and now that I mentioned it, maybe I *will* go learn ventriloquism). Or writing poetry. Or climbing mountains. Or learning how to breakdance.
If you're worried that you'd only be doing all of this in order to impress the ladies, no worries: it's always been that way, and it always will be. The controversial evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller says in his book 'The Mating Mind' that our brain grew to such outsize proportions with capabilities for such eminently useless things as music, poetry, philosophy and freestyle skiing precisely so we could impress the babes. No shame in it, my friend.
The good news is that I'm positive that you're already plenty compelling. It's just a matter of being aware of that compelling part of you and being willing to present it to the world.
Hey, if you aren't going to promote you, who is?
In 'Chapter 10: Attraction' of 'The Tao of Dating' I enumerate five ways of being compelling, and I'll give you a brief version of that here. The five ways are: mystery, outlandishness, fun, intensely focussed attention, and excellence.
It's not enough just to be a cool guy, you see. You have to have a relationship with people that MOVES them. Through mystery, outlandishness, fun, intensely focussed attention (on her -- that's basically the same as 'Be interesting' above) and excellence,
you are presenting your interestingness to people in a way that captures their attention.
Storytelling is one of the ways that incorporates a lot of those elements. So develop your signature story (as we discussed in the Transformation Weekends) and be willing to tell it.
3) Leave her wanting more.
I have a friend who sometimes uses this downright dastardly technique at the end of a date.
Just as he's about to say goodbye to a girl, he says, "Y'know, there's something that I've been wanting to tell you." He makes a long meaningful pause to make sure he's got her attention, then he says, "Naah, never mind. I'll tell you later."
Damn! If that doesn't evoke curiosity, I don't know what will.
He's using this technique called the 'open loop' in NLP. He's opening up a story and not closing it. And the human mind really, really needs closure.
Therefore, to evoke and sustain curiosity, open many loops and close fewer than you open. Never, ever be an open-and-shut case.
People are always trying to ask you questions so their brains can tidily categorize you and stick you in a neat cubbyhole so they don't have to think about it anymore.
But if you refuse to be categorized, then guess what? She has to keep on thinking about you.
So whenever possible, avoid the pat answer. The response "I'm an accountant" signals the end of a conversation. "I get paid to mess with people's heads" marks the beginning of a conversation.
Factual answers to questions are conversation dead-ends. Unless you're in a job interview, avoid them like the plague.
The other tendency to avoid like the plague is to get carried away talking about how wonderful you are.
Wait, didn't I just tell you that you need to promote yourself? Yes, I did. But you don't do that talking about yourself -- you do it talking about interesting things. Like her. And the things she's interested in. There is a difference here.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen a guy just ramble on about 'my this, my that, this party I threw', yada yada bla bla snooooze. And he gets nowhere, because nobody cares. And the women find it utterly boring. If you do that, I will personally come over and whack you with the cosmic mallet.
So there it is, my friends. Be interesting, be compelling, and leave her wanting more.
And here's a way to feed their (and your) curiosity -- with a fascinating topic of conversation about an esoteric, ancient and powerful tradition.
Recently, I've been reading up and taking courses on Buddhism and its origins, and it's fascinating stuff.
As part of the course, they took us through the origins of Tantra -- which, for some reason in Western society, means 'kinky Eastern-style sexual practices.'
And that is a total misrepresentation of Tantra. See, Tantra comes from the Vajrayana tradition of Buddhism, and in its day was a radical offshoot of Buddhism advocating purification through action (vs just sitting there meditating). It means 'warp', as in the part of the loom that you weave stuff on. In other words, it's the fabric around which reality is woven.
I'll be talking more about Tantra in future articles. In the meantime, remember to be interesting, be compelling, and always leave her wanting more.
The power is within you,
Dr Alex
PS: Can you think of two friends who would also find this article useful? Then send it to them! They'll thank you for it.
PPS: I'm interested in your questions and comments regarding dating, persuasion and networking, so please do send them to me. I can be reached at dra***x@th***.com[ ? ]
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