A very famous book came out in 2001, called The Art of Seduction, by Robert Greene. In it, he analyses history to discuss what he has isolated as the 24 most important seduction techniques. While some of them might seem a bit extreme, I think you’ll all agree they’re food for thought. Let us know if you find any useful!

1. Choose the Right Victim

Everything depends on the target of your seduction.  Study your prey thoroughly, and choose only those who will prove susceptible to your charms.  The right victims are those for whom you can fill a void, who see in you something exotic.  They are often isolated or unhappy, or can easily be made so—for the completely contented person is almost impossible to seduce.  The perfect victim has some quality that inspires strong emotions in you, making your seductive maneuvers seem more natural and dynamic.  The perfect victim allows for the perfect chase.

2. Create a False Sense of Security – Approach Indirectly

If you are too direct early on, you risk stirring up a resistance that will never be lowered.  At first there mist be nothing of the seducer in you manner.  The seduction should begin at an angle, indirectly, so that the target only gradually becomes aware of you.  Haunt the periphery of your target’s life—approach through a third party, or seem to cultivate a relatively neutral relationship, moving gradually from friend to lover.  Lull the target into feeling secure, then strike.

3. Send Mixed Signals

Once people are aware of your presence, and perhaps vaguely intrigued, you need to stir their interest before it settles on someone else.  Most of us are much too obvious—instead, be hard to figure out.  Send mixed signals: both tough and tender, both spiritual and earthly, both innocent and cunning.  A mix of qualities suggests depth, which fascinates even as it confuses.  And elusive, enigmatic aura will make people want to known more, drawing them into you circle.  Create such a power by hinting at something contradictory within you.

4. Appear to Be an Object of Desire – Create Triangles

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid or neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.  To draw your victims closer and make them hungry to possess you, you must create and aura of desirability—of being wanted and court by many.  It will become a point of vanity for them to be the preferred object of your attention, to win you away from a crowd of admirers.  Build a reputation that precedes you: If many have succumbed to your charms, there must be a reason.

5. Create a Need – Stir Anxiety and Discontent

A perfectly satisfied person cannot be seduced.  Tension and disharmony must be instilled in your targets’ minds.  Stir within them feelings of discontent, and unhappiness with their circumstances and with themselves.  The feelings of inadequacy that you create will give you space to insinuate yourself, to make them see you as the answer to their problems.  Pain and anxiety are the proper precursors to pleasure.  Learn to manufacture the need that you can fill.

6. Master the Art of Insinuation

Making your targets feel dissatisfied and in need of your attention is essential, but if you are too obvious, they will see through you and grow defensive.  There is no known defense, however, against insinuation—the art of planting ideas in people’s minds by dropping elusive hints that take root days later, even appearing to them as their own idea.  Create a sublanguage—bold statements followed by retraction and apology, ambiguous comments, banal talk combined with alluring glances—that enters the target’s unconscious to convey your real meaning.  Make everything suggestive.

7. Enter Their Spirit

Most people are locked in their own worlds, making them stubborn and hard to persuade.  The way to lure them out of their shell and set up your seduction is to enter their spirit.  Play by their rules, enjoy what they enjoy, adapt yourself to their moods.  In doing so you will stroke their deep-rooted narcissism and lower their defenses.  Indulge your targets’ every mood and whim, giving them nothing to react against or resist.

8. Create Temptation

Leave the target deep into your seduction by creating the proper temptation: a glimpse of the pleasures to come.  As the serpent tempted Eve with the promise of forbidden knowledge, you must awaken a desire in your targets that they cannot control. Find that weakness of theirs, that fantasy that has yet to be realized, and hint that your can lead them toward it.  The key is to keep it vague.  Stimulate a curiosity stronger than the doubts and anxieties that go with it, and they will follow you.

9. Keep Them In Suspense – What Comes Next?

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken.  More: Your have ceded them power.  The only way to lead the seduced along and keep the upper hand is to create suspense, a calculated surprise.  Doing something they do not expect from you will give them a delightful sense of spontaneity—they will not be able to foresee what comes next.  You are always one step ahead and in control.  Give the victim a thrill with a sudden change of direction.

10. Use the Demonic Power of Words to Sow Confusion

It is hard to make people listen; they are consumed with their own thoughts and desires, and have little time for yours.  The trick to making them listen is to say what they want to hear, to fill their ears with whatever is pleasant to them.  This is the essence of seductive language.  Inflame people’s emotions with loaded phrases, flatter them, comfort their insecurities, envelop them in sweet words and promises, and not only will they listen to you, they will lose their will to resist you.

11. Pay Attention to Detail

Lofty words of love and grand gestures can be suspicious: Why are you trying so hard to please?   The details of a seduction—the subtle gestures, the offhand things you do—are often more charming and revealing.  You must learn to distract your victims with a myriad of pleasant little rituals—thoughtful gifts tailored just for them, clothes and adornments designed to please them, gestures that show the time and attention you are paying them.  Mesmerized by what they see, they will not notice what your are really up to.

12. Poeticize Your Presence

Important things happen when your targets are alone: The slightest feeling of relief that you are not their, and it is all over.  Familiarity and overexposure will cause the reaction.  Remain elusive, then.  Intrigue your targets by alternating an exciting presence with a cool distance, exuberate moments followed by calculated absences.  Associate yourself with poetic images and objects, so that when they think of you, they begin to see you through an idealized halo.  The more you figure in their minds, the more they will envelope you in seductive fantasies.

13. Disarm Through Strategic Weakness and Vulnerability

Too much maneuvering on your part may raise suspicion.  The best way to cover your tracks is to make the other person feel superior and stronger.  If you seem to be weak, vulnerable, enthralled by the other person, and unable to control yourself, you will make your actions look more natural, less calculated.  Physical weakness—tears, bashfulness, paleness—will help create the effect.  Play the victim, then transform your target’s sympathy into love.

14. Confuse Desire and Reality – The Perfect Illusion

To compensate for the difficulties in their lives, people spend a lot of their time daydreaming, imagining a future full of adventure, success, and romance.  If your can create the illusion that through you they can live out their dreams, you will have tem at your mercy.  Aim at secret wishes that have been thwarted or repressed, stirring up uncontrollable emotions, clouding their powers of reason.  Lead the seduced to a point of confusion in which they can no longer tell the difference between illusion and reality.

15. Isolate the Victim

An isolated person is weak.  By slowly isolating your victims, you make them more vulnerable to your influence.  Take them away from their normal milieu, friends, family, home.  Give them the sense of being marginalized, in limbo—they are leaving one world behind and entering another.  Once isolated like this, they have no outside support, and in their confusion they are easily led astray.  Lure the seduced into your lair, where nothing is familiar.

16. Prove Yourself

Most people want to be seduced.  If they resist your efforts, it is probably because you have not gone far enough to allay their doubts—about your motives, the depth of your feelings, and so on.  One well-timed action that shows how far you are willing to go to win them over will dispel their doubts.  Do not worry about looking foolish or making a mistake—any kind of deed that is self-sacrificing and for your target’s sake will so overwhelm tie emotions, they won’t notice anything else.

17. Effect a Regression

People who have experienced a certain kind of pleasure in the past will try to repeat or relive it.  The deepest-rooted and most pleasurable memories are usually those from earliest childhood, and are often unconsciously associated with a parental figure.  Bring your targets back to that point by placing yourself in the oedipal triangle and positioning them as the needy child.  Unaware of he cause of their emotional response, they will fall in love with you.

18. Stir Up the Transgressive and Taboo

There are always social limits on what one can do.  Some of these, the most elemental taboos, go back centuries; others are more superficial, simply defining polite and acceptable behavior.  Making your targets feel that you are leading them past either kind of limit is immensely seductive.  People yearn to explore their dark side. Once the desire to transgress draws your target to you, it will be hard for them to stop.  Take them farther than they imagined—the shared feeling of guild and complicity will create a powerful bond.

19. Use Spiritual Lures

Everyone has doubts and insecurities—about their body, their self-worth, their sexuality.  If your seduction appeals exclusively to the physical, you will stir up these doubts and make your targets self-conscious.  Instead, lure them out of their insecurities by making them focus on something sublime and spiritual: a religious experience, a lofty work of art, the occult.  Lost in a spiritual mist, the target will feel light and uninhibited.  Deepen the effect of your seduction by making its sexual culmination seem like the spiritual union of two souls.

20. Mix Pleasure and Pain

The greatest mistake in seduction is being too nice.  At first, perhaps, your kindness is charming, but it soon grows monotonous; you are trying too hard to please, and seem insecure.  Instead of overwhelming your targets with niceness, try inflicting some pain.  Make them feel guilty and insecure.  Instigate a breakup—now a rapprochement, a return to your earlier kindness, will turn them weak at the knees.  The lower the lows you create, the greater the highs.  To heighten the erotic charge, create the excitement of fear.

21. Give Them Space to Fall – The Pursuer Is Pursued

If your targets become too used to you as the aggressor, they will give less of their own energy, and the tension will slacken.  You need to wake them up, turn the tables.  Once they are under your spell, take a step back and they will start to come after your.  Hint that your are growing bored.  Seem interested in someone else.  Soon they will want to possess you physically, and restraint will go out the window.  Create the illusion tat the seducer is being seduced.

22. Use Physical Lures

Targets with active minds are dangerous: If they see through your manipulations, they may suddenly develop doubts.  Put their minds gently to rest, and waken their dormant senses, by combining a nondefensive attitude with a charged sexual presence.  While your cool, nonchalant air is lowering their inhibitions, your glances, voice, and bearing—oozing sex and desire—are getting under their skin and raising their temperature.  Never force the physical; instead infect your targets with heat, lure them into lust.  Morality, judgment, and concern for the future will melt away.

23. Master the Art of the Bold Move

A moment has arrived:  Your victim clearly desires you, but is not ready to admit it openly, let alone act on it.  This is the time to throw aside chivalry, kindness, and coquetry and to overwhelm with a bold move.  Don’t give the victim time to consider the consequences.  Showing hesitation or awkwardness means you are thinking of yourself, as opposed to being overwhelmed by the victim’s charms.  One person must on the offensive, and it is you.

24. Beware of the Aftereffects

Danger follows in the aftermath of a successful seduction.  After emotions have reached a pitch, they often swing in the opposite direction—towards lassitude, distrust, disappointment.  If you are to part, make the sacrifice swift and sudden.  If you are to stay in a relationship, beware a flagging of energy, a creeping familiarity that will spoil the fantasy.  A second seduction is required.  Never let the other person take you for granted—use absence, create pain and conflict, to keep the seduced on tenterhooks.

Rec sex: Short for “recreational sex,” this kind of fucking-for-the-fun-of-it usually comes from a positive, happy place; in other words, if you were depressed or heartbroken or enraged, the sex you had shouldn’t officially be called rec sex. But, really, any sex between two or more consenting adults outside of a long-term relationship could be referred to as rec sex. And rec sex doesn’t ensure that there won’t be any negative consequences (like heartbreak, jealousy, confusion, or STDs). But while you’re doing it, you’re not worried about the future: You’re in the moment. Rec sex is often employed as a more cheery synonym for casual sex, and is particularly common after one has sold a first novel, won the lottery, or received a refund on their tax return.

Booty call sex: Sex with a friend-with-benefits or a new lust interest that’s arranged via a phone call or text message made after 11 p.m.—usually because there are no better prospects and/or you’ve been drinking.

Appointment sex: A more formalized version of the booty call. This kind of sex scheduling is usually done more than twenty-four hours in advance, when both parties are sober. Email invitations tend to be favored over more casual text messaging messages or impromptu phone calls. This kind of arrangement happens more frequently among the older set—work-a-holics, recovering alcoholics, single parents, people for whom fart jokes have lost their charm, i.e., those who no longer have the patience (or the liver) to wait until closing time to make a booty call.

Ex sex: Sex with a previous partner, usually because they’re easy and you’re lazy. A.k.a. double dipping, blue- binning, recycling, returning to the well.

Cereal sex: A random one-night stand in the middle of a sexual/romantic dry spell: It’s delicious while it lasts, but it’s not filling, and an hour later you’re hungrier than you were before you “ate.”

Deja sex: Unexpected sex with someone you weren’t planning on seeing or sleeping with again. For instance, after a few keg stands, you spent one of your last college Saturday nights in a room at Theta Kai with what’s-his-name, never to see him again, until ten years later when you bump into him at the international trade convention in Dallas, and, after a few Maker’s Marks at the Hilton, end up in his room, for old time’s sake.

Drive-thru sex: Convenient sex, i.e., you stop by for a quickie and then keep on moving. (“I hate to boff and run, but I’ve got a plane to catch … ”).

Mercy sex: Sex with someone you are not particularly attracted to or don’t necessarily want to do. You do it simply because you feel sorry for them: Perhaps they’ve had a crush on you since sixth grade and swear they want “just one night of passion to help me move on,” their pet goldfish just died, you know they’ll be extra “giving” in the sack in return, you know this is your only hope of “deprogramming” them out of their cultish Trekkie community, their heart was just put through a blender (by you or someone else), they haven’t had sex in a long time and have no prospects, they’re dying of cancer, they’re thirty years old and still a virgin. A.k.a. charity work (most often used as a negative rebuttal, as in “I don’t do charity work.” Oh, snap!)

Comfort sex: The sexual equivalent of mac and cheese: sex after a bad day at work, a terrible break up, a tragic pet death—anything that makes you long for the consoling feel of warm skin on skin, of connecting with another soul. You usually have to find someone willing to have mercy sex with you, and when you do, it’s slow, deliberate, usually missionary, with face-holding and perhaps Rachmaninoff playing in the background. But while it may feel good in the moment, comfort sex, like comfort food, will usually make you feel worse after it’s all said and done.

Occasion sex: A one-night stand and casual sex due to a specific circumstance, such as a power outage, a heat wave, an announcement of war, a notification that the terror alert is raised to orange, a new Al Green album. Occasion sex may be celebratory (Obama wins the presidential election, you win the lottery, good hair day) or commiserative (Ah-nold wins the presidential election after a Constitutional amendment qualifies him, death of a pet, bad haircut).

Palate cleansing: Rebound sex that obliterates the bad taste left in your mouth (not literally) by a recent ex. A.k.a. sorbet sex.

Temp work: Casual sex you have until a better, more permanent relationship comes along. Thus, an overzealous matchmaking friend, an adult online personals site, an escort service, a brothel, or an “Overeaters Anonymous” conference could all be considered “temp agencies.”

Hate sex: When lust trumps like. Sex with someone who annoys you is a drag, but sex with someone you hate with every pore of your being? Now, that’s hot. Not on a regular basis, of course (that’s just depressing), but sometimes it’s just what the shrink ordered. And you just know there’s no relationship in it, because you’d kill each other first. Push each other around, pull each other’s hair, bite each other’s shoulders, and yell, “I hate you!” right as you climax. It’s like an enema for the soul.