The HIDDEN Psychology of Seduction and Love | Robert Greene EP 701

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0:34Make sure to get your tickets right now and step into greatness with us at the Summit of Greatness 2024. Head over to lewishouse.com slash tickets and get your tickets today and I will see you there. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:56Do people have sex too early? Well, I don't know what's going on necessarily with young people right now. I know the hookup culture is still pretty strong and, you know, guys are watching a lot of porn. And so, you know, that's probably a tendency. And in the traditional, and things have changed, it was the woman who had more to lose by becoming pregnant who tried to keep the sex at bay for at least several weeks or months or longer. And that's kind of been lost. But yeah, I think the fact that the falling in love process generally takes time, right? I mean, we do have love at first sight, and it is a real phenomenon, and I've had it myself.

1:38Really? Yeah. There's a famous French writer named Stendhal who wrote a great book called On Love, one of the greatest books written about love. It was in the early 19th century. And he compared falling in love to what he called crystallization. and it's based on this thing where you would throw a piece of wood into this mine in Germany somewhere at Salzburg and then you would pull it out like a week later and it would be filled with all of these brilliant crystals and he compared that to the process of falling in love. The person is just who they are they're like a trunk of a tree but your mind kind of puts all these qualities on them, crystallizes them into some kind of ideal figure, right?

2:22And so that mental process takes time, right? It requires also some distance and some fantasizing, you know, sort of basic elements of human psychology. What do you mean by distance? Like don't spend all your time with the person in the first month? Yeah, and if you're having sex right away, it's too close, it's too intimate, it's too early to be able to go through that process, right? And often, you know, there's usually a letdown after that initial sexual encounter, if you have it too early, right? Whereas opposed to letting time go by and letting the other person begin to think about you and fantasize about you and in their mind sort of imagine some interesting qualities about you and fascinate them, which is what he calls this crystallization process.

3:14I mean, literally think of it that way, that you're in their mind, they're kind of forming this sort of ideal crystal image of you, right? And it takes time and it takes some absence. It takes the ability to say, you know, you're not in their face all the time. You disappear for a couple of days, a couple of weeks or whatever, not weeks, but a few days. You let them think about you and you let that kind of spell, because seduction and love is kind of a spell that you're casting, right? And there's an art to it. And so the mistake people have is they're in too much of a hurry, right? Too much of a hurry to want to have sex, to fall in love, to...

3:52Yeah, or to have like a really, you know, intimate relationship or to get married or whatever it is. In general, in our culture, people are too much of a hurry. They're too much of a hurry to make money, too much of a hurry to get attention. That also involves, in romantic relationships. Right. So what's the difference between seduction and love? I maintain that the process of seducing is making the other person fall in love, right? The process of seducing is getting the other person to fall in love. Can someone fall in love without being seduced? Without seducing them? No. Even in love at first sight, there could be like a moment of seduction that turns into that, or how does that work?

4:35Well, even in Love and First Side, which I say I've kind of maybe experienced, it doesn't necessarily lead to something, right? You still have to go through a process where the other person's character, that you start idealizing and romanticizing and thinking about them. You know, even that immediate attraction, there is still the seduction process that has to go on. Sure, sure. Right? And so, you know, I try in The Art of Seduction, I make the point that political seduction, marketing seduction, social seductions, because in your office you're continually seducing, it's the same process. And it's getting the other person to think about you and getting them to fall in love with your product, with your idea, with your political platform or whatever it is.

5:24And that process of internalizing that other person, of having their presence, their spirit or whatever inside you inhabit you, and you're thinking about them a lot, is a process of falling in love. So it doesn't mean that there aren't seductions where you're seducing the other person and then it's over after a month. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to lead to a relationship. I separate seduction from just having sex so if you go to a bar and you pick up a woman in the bar and that night you go back to your place and you have sex that's not seduction because we are psychological creatures we're not animals and the process of actually having our emotions engaged by the other person takes a lot deeper process it can happen quickly it can happen overnight night.

6:23So seduction isn't like, you know, pickup artists don't really like the art of seduction so much. Why is that? Because it's not quick enough for them. I'm telling you, you have to go through these steps. I don't want to have to go through all these steps. I don't have to wait three weeks to sleep with her or a month. I don't have to surprise her and give her gifts or I'm talking about from the male point of view. Sure. Do all of these things that Robert talks about. You know, I want a quick, you know, some of them aren't like that, but some of them are. And so there are plenty of books written out there about how to pick women or guys in a bar.

6:57But seduction isn't about that. It's something else. It's something more elemental. And I talk in The Art of Seduction about how it goes back to our childhood, how we are incredibly vulnerable to the emotions of other people. It begins with our parents, right? And the sense of, you know, we internalize their presence. We're thinking about them. we have this kind of very deep emotional attachment to them. We're seduced by our parents in some ways. It kind of sets a tone from early childhood, this need to feel vulnerable to other people.

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8:27Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.