I was chatting online with a therapist a couple of years ago—we had a date set. He was a bit younger than me. As a side note, most of my clients, both male and female, date within a ten-year range or so in either direction. By then, I was pretty skilled at talking with men, so I was barely paying attention to our banter—until my phone chimed. I glanced down and read something like, “I watched a show with Sydney Sweeney. Don’t worry, I didn’t look too hard at her great tits.”
First, I had to look up who Sydney Sweeney was (I know, I can be out of touch). Right away, I started mentally questioning my strong reaction. I knew that I felt triggered because I’ve been in relationships with men who are constantly ranking and rating women. They notice everyone and are always seeking emotion outside of themselves. Those men never stay fully satisfied—there’s always some level of side attention they need—and they find life outside of novelty and drama boring. The men that cheat on you, fight with you and lay on you like a wet blanket.
When I’m triggered, I move away from my body and into my mind.
Like anyone, it takes consciousness for me to bring myself back. Embodiment is a lifelong practice, not a surgical procedure. My mind was spinning, not because I was attached to this random man, but because he lit up a signal of past danger in my body. He used the same language around women that my past abusers had used. It felt like he was testing me - to see how much jealousy or comparison I would allow to enter the connection and how soon.
Still, part of me wanted to excuse it, logically it could easily be easily excused using the magical wand that makes it fine for men to comment freely on any body they choose without being invited to do so.
He was also a therapist—a man who’d presumably “done the work”—someone open-minded enough to date women across a wide age range. Surely, there was some logical explanation. I tried to cut him slack, especially since up until that point, I’d been excited about our date. He made me laugh, and I found him interesting, which I value more than any other quality.
But this comment completely threw me off.
I unmatched him. As a mother of two young women, I can’t deal with men who aren’t more careful and conscious of themselves, even with strangers, no matter the rationale. Plus, he immediately became boring and predictable to me—another sad, overplayed trope of a man who can't be bothered to hold a high quality conversation even in dating. An enormous benefit of my work is that petty dramas and men who can't direct their words no longer are my only sources of emotion. Getting entangled in a bunch of bullshit feels so much less appealing than my own erotic and explosive inner life. They just seem small and bored with themselves now - I am safe.
Once I settled down and got back into my body (using the same practices I teach in my courses and sessions), an interesting emotion emerged. I wasn’t jealous—as I had so oddly been accused of. Why would I be? He was a stranger, and I’m secure in my body and age. I also think Sydney Sweeney is an attractive actress with an ideal figure—no argument there. If on some planet it's ever a conversation that needs to occur between myself and a man that might become my lover - I agree she has great breasts. Five stars.
But I was angry.
Why? What had been taken from me?
I sat with it. I wasn’t mad because this lame man revealed himself so early—that part actually makes me grateful. It’s nice when someone quickly shows you how little capacity they have for understanding how their words and stories affect others. So my anger confused me. After sitting with it, the real reason bubbled up…
What made me angry was that he wasn’t trying to seduce me.
He didn’t see that as his job. He made a comment that, at best, belonged in a 1970s locker room with a buddy, and at worst suggested he’d possibly be browsing my daughters next. In other words, he simply felt no obligation to impress me, captivate me, or draw me into something that would appeal to me. He wasn’t trying to warm me up or to become closer to me.
When I think about what my female clients most often complain about regarding their partners or dating, it’s the lack of seduction. It’s men wandering in, reminiscing about their exes, making excuses, and turning every conversation into something excessively casual or self-focused. They lack creativity and effort. They feel like a clingy best girl friend or like they are fumbling in the dark - there isn't any flair or mystery inside them or the way they orient to life.
We all want to be seduced by life, men and women.
Too often, people confuse seduction with drama or manipulation, but those wells always run dry. Any man that has ever wanted to compare me and head into the connection with a lot of personal drama has eventually grown tired of me anyway. Seduction and the erotic - true desire doesn't run dry.
Modern therapy teaches us skills that I am still working my way out of. The concept is that if we go in wide open and fully available that's what other healthy people want - when it isn't even what we want. If you watch yourself without judgment, you can notice how often that wide-open, green flag, oversharing, self-flagellation is a form of avoidance.
It definitely has been for me.
On some level, most of you know it will end things or keep them at bay - if not for you, for the other person. I think that's why so much of this asexual, emotionless, sterile advice has made it so far - it blocks us from connection. Most people, whether they see it or not, are fearful and avoidant. Even "anxiously" attached women who cling and beg usually know on some level that will cause an ending.
We all kind of know when we start blasting our partner in front of a stranger in couple's therapy that the bedroom is being set on fire. Every rule-like boundary is just one more step toward the grave of the connection. Each cold, formal structured conversation drawing lines in the sand between us and other people. Connection isn't rooted in rejection.
People want you to tease them—they want to work for it. Their bodies and trauma need to warm up. So do you.
I recently made a change on the sales page of my 21 Days of Embodiment course that improved its performance. I put the work "unlock" on all the purchase buttons - so silly. But it worked because on some level - we all want to be unlocked. Fully chosen, brought forward piece by piece shadow and light - the problem is most of us are so avoidant that we can't let that happen with people that really could love all those parts so we show them only to people that we know will push us away.
My clients who struggle with decades of dating but not finding the "right match" seem to move from a love interest they don’t find depth in to a stormy or sticky lover, back and forth, like only salad and then only bacon cheeseburgers. And all the while, I wonder if they realize another kind of lover exists—one who doesn’t have to be pitied or idolized to keep their interest. Honestly that seems like such a boring waste of one life.
A lover looking for a dance of mutual seduction ...
My favorite song is “Moves” by Suki Waterhouse—I saw her perform it live last month. The track stirs me:
"Don't make it complicated
Don't tell me what you're going through
There's nothing you can do
I know that I want this
No one likes to lose
Know that I got this
I'ma put some goddamn moves on you, babe, I know you need it
Die a double death for you, death for your secrets
I'll find another way for you, wait 'til you see it
Put some goddamn moves on you, God knows you need it"
And honestly, that’s all any of us are after—the feeling of being wanted, the sense that someone is trying (really hard) to reach us, and the spark of mutual fascination that makes the world feel a little more alive.
You don't need to be treated like crap by someone who is playing games and preparing to discard you to experience the erotic or to enjoy seduction. Actually you'll only think you've experienced it.
Seduction is important and it's important for a long time.
I was told this morning that I am confusing sometimes because I am both rude and playful - it's true. Last night my friend texted me and said her teenage daughter said something so sharp but funny to a guest at their house who was being obnoxious at dinner. And because my best friend loves that quality in me so dearly she was reminded to let her daughter be. The just sat in awkward silence - something I can regularly create.
Play, teasing, making things fresh, pointing to the elephant in the room, creating space and then coming back together is seduction. It has nothing to do with sex. In fact sex alone is such an absurdly low quality substitute for the real life erotic. Creative and embodied living is based in the idea that you can have these experiences in your real life. Your emotions are meant to be expressed - just in a more mature and artful way than you understand right now.
Embodiment is a primal act that turns on your body so that you can self generate the erotic and seduce yourself as well as others. You can be interesting in a way that isn't attached to novelty, immaturity or cultural gold medals like being the most attractive or the richest.
There is so much more.
Times I have been so angry with men, when I could have just been mildly annoyed, usually lay on the altar of realizing after a few tries that they can't co-create. They can't be mindful enough of their words, their triggers or their commitments to really play with me. A grief maybe - of wanting them to follow my energy lead into something surprising and fun - a connection that has edges we haven't created yet - ones we might push past or we might not. An offer to invent something neither of us has experienced so we don't have a map and there isn't a need to constantly compare or complain. Instead they seem so utterly absorbed in replacements for emotions like siphoning it off invented stories and re-touched memories of women that were never as great as they invented them to be.
Finally, seduction is only manipulative when it's disembodied and doesn't come from a place of mutual respect and consent.
At its core, seduction is simply a commitment to sparking curiosity, generating excitement, and fostering a deeper attraction between two people or between you and other parts of your life like your work.
"When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds." - Robert Greene, The Art of Seduction
I write primarily to support my small business, christinaelaine.com
I am a somatic coach, writer, and curriculum creator writing about the interior life of modern relating, weekly on Medium & Substack. I also host interviews on YouTube.