TEDxRíodelaPlata
presents
Andrés Rieznik, The science of seduction
In 1998
I was really, really in love
with a girl that was also really, really in love
but, with my best friend.
Picture how sad I was, how depressed I was.
And, as I've always been kind of a nerd,
I went to the books.
So I started reading about the matter
and I discovered there was and there is
a science of seduction,
a science of attraction.
Mi brother Martin (I was 21 at that moment,
my brother Martin is 5 years younger than me) was 16.
Already since that moment I started talking with him about these subjects,
that, as you can imagine,
became a usual topic of conversation.
So... logically, being both men and heterosexual,
what we were interested in was trying to understand how to seduce women.
Ten years later,
in 2008,
Martin came to me with the idea
that we could see a commercial side to these studies
and ideas we've been developing for so long.
And found a company that takes care of
teaching and studying the knowledge
that exists about seduction in general,
but particularly, about how a man can hook up with a gal.
So that's how in 2008
Levantart(e) was born.
Founded by my brother Martin, a third partner and me.
But, what is that knowledge?
I will speak about it now, but first let me give you a warning, I feel compelled to do.
It's this: you watching this talk here, or maybe at home
later over the Internet, will go searching for more information
and I think it's super healthy that you do, it's really good to look up that information.
But I feel compelled to ask you, do so through critical and skeptical thinking.
Because there's a lot of machismo and misogyny in this,
and reading what some so-called "gurus" write
about seduction is actually so disgusting,
you don't know whether to throw up or cry.
Warning given, let's go for the knowledge.
What we say,
what we believe, and this is not our idea
(it's from a Canadian nick-named Mistery)
is that for a girl to want to start a relationship with a guy,
first she has to feel attracted,
feel interest towards him.
But that's not enough, she also has to feel trust,
feel comfortable with him, and lastly,
once she felt attracted and felt comfortable, she'll be able to feel seduced.
That's why we think that to begin to understand courtship,
this process, it's convenient to break it up in 3 big stages.
That, as you see, we've called
Attraction, Comfort and Seduction.
In the first stage, let's start by the beginning, attraction,
body language is super important.
Actually the potential lovers will
end this stage chatting openly in a frontal way.
But that's not how they start, a turn takes place.
This turn happening was observed
almost 30 years ago in 1985 in a book called "The biology of love"
by researcher Timothy Perper.
So, what is this turn?
to explain it to you, I'll ask Matias if he can help me out a little.
Matias, are you there? Thanks a lot.
Matias, exactly, was already focused on his role.
He's going to act like a nice girl, she's in some public space.
And I'm going to act like the guy who wants to approach her.
What's the mistake that I think is the most common
guys make when approaching a girl in this situation?
It is to get closer like this, look. Of course, she's looking at her cellphone, distracted.
So I get closer and say something here.
This body language, with the body totally facing
hers, is completely aggresive,
even if I keep a certain distance and speak from here,
I can get her, it wakes her fight-or-flight instinct.
Instead, what Perper observed in 1985,
he spent hours and hours in bars for this,
is that most of the time, when courtship ends up well
the conversation started like this: the potential lovers
slightly facing their heads, like this.
So they speak from here, he says something, doesn't matter what, says anything.
She turns.
If she's interested in continuing the interaction,
what she will do is turning her shoulders, not the whole body,
but she will do, *ah* *ah* [turns]
There, you see, in a second stage
we will be facing head and shoulders.
If the interaction continues, we will face our trunks,
chatting like this, but notice that the knees still
don't face, we are speaking like this, but the knees
still point to different directions.
Lastly, if the interaction continues,
we will also face our knees
and we'll be chatting as I said, in a frontal way, openly.
The curious thing is that this process,
this turn, can last 5 seconds,
or it can last 15 hours, but almost every time it follows these 4 stages.
Well, thank you very much miss. (applause)
We will keep talking about the first stage, attraction,
but before that I'd like to tell you, that
the whole general model, which we call sequential model
of attraction, comfort and seduction,
is useful as well to understand why many times
a good candidate fails
to win his potential couple's heart. Of course, it's not an exact science,
but for example, we see many times that
the woman, the ex future woman of our good candidate
feels very comfortable with him, but never felt attracted.
So she won't be able to feel seduced, and that's what we call ending up in the friend zone.
It has happened to all of us.
Another thing we've observed to be very common, is that the man
generates attraction correctly,
but then recklessly skips the comfort stage
and that makes him look bad,
because it makes him look needy.
The moment a woman shows a little interest,
the guy jumps in with a sexual or romantic proposal.
And finally, don't even mention guys who haven't
generated attraction
nor comfort, and go straight to an amorous or sexual proposal,
which of course most times doesn't work,
and many times causes reject.
Well, let's get back to the first stage: the stage of attraction,
where we said the turn happened.
The stage of attraction, (excuse me), we also have separated it in 3 phases
we call A1, A2 and A3.
A1 goes from the first visual contact,
until the moment he makes a connection with her, it could be,
but most times, with the group she is in,
because women are usually not alone in bars or in clubs.
It's important to say this because many guys think that to be with more girls
they have to go to a club and systematically attack every cute girl in their way
and the truth is, when you see a guy that is naturally seductive,
a natural lady's man, what he's doing is having a good time,
socializing in general,
talking to everybody, talking to girls he finds attractive, it's true.
But also with the ones he doesn't, and with men.
He's having a good time, and eventually he speaks
to a girl he's interested in, and he even gets there with a huge advantage,
because he's introduced by a friend of hers, and that's a head start.
During the whole A1 stage
it's also very important the fact that the interaction begins before you open your mouth
right? women are watching.
It's likely that when you get closer, she had already looked at you.
Speaking of which, the other day my sister,
knowing I'm a physicist, saw this t-shirt and bought it for me,
look what it reads: "The speed of light is faster than the sound's,
that's why most men look interesting until they open their mouth"
Right, because they are watching.
That's why it's so important
in this A1 stage, the body language.
Because with it you are transmiting
if you are having a good time with friends, or if you are there just trying to hook up with a chick at some point.
So, for instance, how's a body language that doesn't generate attraction nor interest?
I'm going to ask Matias to come here again, now he will be my mate, a friend of mine.
Matias look, we are in a club together, and
we are going to show the body language
of two guys that are kind of bored, trying to see if they can score.
So sure, the beer, exactly, look
45 degrees towards where people are, 90 degrees between us,
conversation goes like this, suddenly like this. Sure,
that, that's the most pathetic
when apart from being like this, kind of bored, a chick goes by
and they are like "look at that ass, dude, look".
Everyone that sees this knows exactly what's happening.
Plus, what do people think, looking at this?, they say "those guys, what are they doing here?"
Right, they're probably waiting for a girl to trip over
in this space they've created here
so maybe they can say something silly and she bites the bait.
Now compare this
with the body language
of the guys who are naturally seductive.
When you watch them, what are those guys doing?
They are having a good time, with friends, people they are emotionally connected with.
So, how are they talking? They're talking like this, facing each other,
focused on the chatting, the conversation,
laughing,
in a way that the one who sees this
says: "oh, look, what could they be talking about that they are
so focused, or laughing? It even produces a certain curiosity,
a certain desire to participate. Now of course, it doesn't work
what Matias is doing, acting it doesn't work. If I say "This is boring,
but the chicks are watching, man, let's pretend we are having a great time,
to the count of 1, 2, 3, go!"
That's kind of pathetic, of course it doesn't work.
Alright, thanks again Matias.
So then, Stage A1,
during the whole Stage A1, the body language it's very important, and
it finishes when he makes a connection
with her or the group, and Stage A2 is characterized by
2 things, in the first place, by demonstrations of interest
from her towards him. She starts to show interest at some point, let's hope.
In second place, a new concept,
a concept we call NEGA. [T.N: from negate]
NEGA means he will be denying at the beginning, at least
his romantic or sexual intentions for her.
Opposite to most men, that when
approaching a girl say: "Hey, you are so cute"
"Your eyes are so pretty", "Wanna have a drink?"
I had a girl friend that used to answer "I rather you gave me the money"
It's a good one, right? Yes.
So, again, what happens when you watch a guy that is naturally seductive?
He is a natural seducer. He's not having this attitude, he's much more irreverent.
You know, they treat the girl a little like, like they were her older brother.
Making jokes that are arrogant and playful at the same time.
Jokes like, for example, "Aw, so nice, so annoying"
or, "Nice earrings, are they your grandma's?"
Now, he doesn't mean to offend her, be careful,
if he notices she got offended he apologizes,
but what he is showing with the negas, with these negas,
is that, in the first place he is in a good mood, he wants to have fun,
and in the second place, that he is immune to her beauty,
he's like ok, she's really pretty, that's great, that's awesome,
but beauty is rather common, and not a great merit,
all she had was luck in the genetic lottery.
So, if he's having a good time, he wants her to
show she's got something to share too.
In the third place, finally, the nega also allows
to add credibility to the compliments and flattering from him to her
in Stage A3,
the stage characterized
by the demonstrations of interest from him to her.
Because what the nega was saying consciously or unconsciously,
was that he's not approaching any girl
and that if now he's praising her, it's because he really felt attracted
by something more than her ass and boobs,
and for a women that's much more nice, it generates much more attraction,
so that when in Stage A3 he says "you are
so pretty", it's a completely different "you are so pretty" from
the "you are so pretty" cute girls get from 500 guys every day.
So, in Stage A3, there was already a demonstration of interest
from her to him, and from him to her, and then happens
what we call isolation.
That is the step from Stage A3 to Stage C1,
being C1 the first stage of Comfort.
We call it isolation because it's the moment when they go away to talk alone, they isolate themselves.
Comfort is the longest stage of all,
it's where dating happens, if it happens, and we've also
separated it in three phases, C1, C2 and C3.
Conversation, Connection and Intimacy. What happens during the whole stage of comfort
is indeed a conversation with a crescendo in the level of intimacy,
and in general it has more to do with subjects
related to philosophy, or psychology, about personalities,
emotions, feelings.
Another thing that happens during the entire comfort stage, is what we
call escalation of touch, they begin to touch more and more.
First it's a little thing, then the arms touch slightly.
Then they touch each other's hand, and at some point the first kiss happens.
And finally the stage of seduction,
which we also divided in 3,
that we call.
I didn't say it, the stage of comfort goes from the isolation to the moment where they meet
in the place where they we'll sleep together.
And there the actual seduction stage begins, with
S1. That's the C stage I've forgotten.
The S1 stage, foreplay. It ends with stage S3,
when they sleep together, and goes through stage S2,
which many man find hard to understand.
Last minute evaluation.
It seems to be a brain circuit we don't have.
Because, foreplay and then sex, there's no doubt for a guy.
But, it's something you've got to respect.
Many times it will happen, and depending on how the whole courtship was,
the result of that evaluation will be a no, and no means no.
To conclude,
a lot of people ask me
when I talk about these things, if all this
studying, analyzing and thinking, takes the charm out of it.
I... actually believe it doesn't,
I think I like to draw an analogy with wine,
the more you know about wine the more you can sit and enjoy a good wine.
I also very much like the answer of Ellen Fischer,
a scholar on these matters,
she says that understanding the human nature makes us more compassionate.
Speaking of seduction I truly believe that as long as we keep on understanding each other better,
we will be able to build better relationships, relationships between equals,
relationships of care, respect, love.
On the other hand, studying this can do you no harm.
I mean, no matter how much you study it, you will keep falling in love,
that's in your nature, it won't stop happening.
And, as any argentinian knows,
love is stronger.
Thank you very much.