Your seduction should never follow a simple path towards pleasure. The climax that comes too soon is weak. We appreciate things that make us suffer. A brush wit death makes us love life, a long journey makes home more pleasurable. Create moments of sadness and despair – this is the tension before the release. Don’t worry about making people angry, such emotions imply that you have them under your control. And don’t worry that they will run away, we only abandon those that bore us.
We learn how to become polite early on in life. We suppress our honesty, we feign interest in their stories, we laugh at their jokes. That is how we can live with them. This becomes a habit, we are nice even when we don’t have to be – even when we shouldn’t be. We try to please others, to avoid disagreements and conflict, but niceness doesn’t seduce. It may first attract someone to you, but soon will lose effect. Being nice can push your target away. Erotic feelings stem from tension. Without tension, there is no release, no real pleasure and joy.
Many of us have masochistic yearnings that we deeply repress. It takes someone to inflict some pain on us to make us realize that they exist. Learn to recognize the hidden masochists, each enjoys a unique kind of pain. Some feel they deserve nothing good in life, so they sabotage themselves constantly. Pointed criticism will make them feel better. Deep down, they will enjoy it.
The lovely marble creature coughed and rearranged the sable around her shoulders. • “Thank you for the lesson in classics,” I replied, “but I cannot deny that in your peaceful and sunny world just as in our misty climate man and woman are natural enemies. Love may unite them briefly to form one mind, one heart, one will, but all too soon they are torn asunder. And this you know better than 1: either one of them must bend the other to his will, or else he must let himself be trampled underfoot.” • “Under the woman’s foot, of course,” said Lady Venus impertinently. “And that you know better than I.” •“Of course, that is why I have no illusions.” • “In other words you are now my slave without illusions, and I shall trample you mercilessly. ” • “Madam!” • “You do not know me yet. I admit that I am cruel—since the word gives you so much delight—but am I not entitled to be so? It is man who desires, woman who is desired; this is woman’s only advantage, but it is a decisive one. By making man so vulnerable to passion, nature has placed him at woman mercy, and she who has not the sense to treat him like a humble subject, a slave, a plaything, and finally to betray him with a laugh—well, she is a woman of little wisdom.” • ”My dear, your principles . . .“ I protested. • ”Are founded on the experience of a thousand years,” she replied mischievously, running her white fingers through the dark fur. ”The more submissive woman is, the more readily man recovers his self-possession and becomes domineering; but the more cruel and faithless she is, the more she ill-treats him, the more wantonly she toys with him and the harsher she is, the more she quickens his desire and secures his love and admiration. It has always been so, from the time of Helen and Delilah all the way to Catherine the Great and Lola Montez.“ —LEOPOLD VON SACHER- MASOCH, VENUS IN FURS, TRANSLATED BY JEAN MCNEIL
If you’re interested in exploring the darker parts of human psychology that most people ignore, consider reading this short book The Dichotomy of the Self.