Attraction and Hypnosis

Okay, whilst I've been incredibly busy for the last three months I'm beginning to realise just how much I miss blogging and so I've come back for another fix. You lucky people.

The last three months or so have passed in a bit of a blur, but I have also learned a lot in that time. Those of you who know me will know that I broke up with my long term girlfriend a while ago, which was both very emotional for me but also represented a major change in direction for my life. I am beginning to rather enjoy the single life, the freedom it affords me, and being on the market again so to speak.

Well, when I say that what I mean is I seem to be filling up my time with fun new activities rather than going out with the explicit intention of finding myself a new partner.

Never mind, as my previous girlfriend was never particularly keen on this hobby my current unattached state means that the gloves are off. I now have the opportunity to talk about hypnosis and dating and how the two relate to each other. Or rather, the experience of being single and knowing about hypnotic phenomena.

I have to say that now I'm single I'm seldom in a hurry to bring up the subject of my interest in hypnosis in conversation. I think this is because the first thing that occurs to me about hypnosis is its massive potential for creepiness. There is the whole Svengali evil hypnotist manipulating people to his own ends cliche that still persists to this day attached to the term hypnotist. Many people are very wary of something that they do not understand; I know this because that's how I felt before I entered this world.

My experience of bringing hypnosis up in conversation has been that most people who don't know about it immediately equate it with controlling other people. Any woman who doesn't have the word "Svengali" in her vocabulary will still be completely familiar with the cliche, and will at least have seen hypnotists in TV shows like Little Britain in which a stage hypnotist uses his skills on a date with a woman, or to get a woman's phone number. These scenes are hilarious and obviously ridiculous but I think they deliberately make light of what to some people might be a legitimate fear about being controlled through hypnosis.

Despite this I think there are also a lot of things that I think work in ones favour. Good hypnotists are by necessity good communicators, so for example we know how to build rapport and have awareness of small signals from another person's body language, which a lot of people just don't have. There are also other things like knowing how to make people feel positive emotions and feel good just through interaction. These are all attractive qualities.

Hypnosis, to me, isn't about control, and there are words like relaxation, connection, escape, detachment and sensuality that seem more appropriate and women are much more likely to appreciate.

Yes I know the line "I know how to make you orgasm using only my voice" might attract some women, but I suspect not the kind I'd want to attract.

Anyone who knows anything about what qualities in men women find attractive will of course know that on a deeper level most women are drawn to men who are naturally able to be in control of the situation, the natural leaders. Another plus point.

One of the books I have been through in the last few months is a book called The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida. It's an extremely abstract book, but in it he describes the concepts of masculine and feminine, which exist within everyone, and suggests that attraction comes from the polarity between the two. Masculinity being characterised by strength, leadership, and being a secure fixed point, whilst femininity is colour, motion, existing in the moment and all that is beautiful in the world. This comes close to my heart in that it immediately makes me think of jive dancing, where like in most forms of partner dance the man leads and the woman follows, spinning and gyrating around him.

I think hypnosis is a kind of partner dance, in a way, because like the follower in a dance the subject is not being controlled but merely being led. This is probably why most hypnotists I meet are male, and most people who are really keen to try hypnosis are female. Just like with partner dancing there is polarity here and theoretically great potential for attraction.

So yes I feel there are upsides and downsides to bringing hypnosis up in conversation with women, but I think that the above just scratches the surface of this topic. There is a deeper question here I feel, which is to do with the concept of using ones knowledge of hypnosis in attracting women.

Let's face it, I've persuaded people that the person sat next to me is wearing a non-existent viking helmet and that their glass of flat cola is really the most delicious ginger beer they've ever tasted. Surely as a hypnotist eliciting the simple emotional response of feeling attraction toward me from women shouldn't be too difficult, especially with a little background reading from books written by experts in attraction such as David DeAngelo and Ross Jeffries.

Well it shouldn't, but how does this stack up morally?

Let's just consider for a moment that I could do a Kenny Craig. That it really would be possible for me to approach any woman I took a fancy to, wave my hands around, tell her to look in the eyes not around the eyes, snap my fingers and have her under my power. Say I could even maintain the attraction toward me from this gimmick indefinitely. What value would my connection with her really have? How would I feel about it?

It might appeal to some men but definitely not me, and I suspect in being the sculptor of her reality I would feel incredibly lonely. I think the most important thing for me in a relationship is that the person I'm with has qualified me, that they have a firm grounding in reality and yet they know me and are drawn to me because they recognise the person that I am and my array of positive attributes. I set the bar very high in being most attracted to strong, mature, intelligent and independent women; I think it helps drive me toward being my best possible self.

Okay, so we'll have none of this covert hypnotic manipulation or any of these attraction techniques. Just be yourself and be nice, like mother said, and everything will be fine, right?

Sadly not.

The unfortunate truth is that all of those things that women say they want in a man: intelligence; great conversation; being a good listener; sense of humour; adventurousness; being passionate about life; common interests; sensitivity; morality; these are all meaningless and might as well be completely invisible if the guy doesn't know how to spark attraction with the woman. If he doesn't in the best case the woman will just befriend him and in the worst case he'll be punished for his honourable intentions by being told he's creepy.

This is a big "aha!" moment that I have had in the last three months; the realisation that attraction in women, like hypnosis, is something that can be induced. Attractiveness is something that men can actually learn. Anyone who has read The Game by Neil Strauss will know that this is what in essence the pick-up artist community is all about. They have developed the art of procedurally creating the feeling of attraction in a woman and by means of such techniques leading her all the way to the bedroom. Seldom beyond it should be added.

Anyone who understands hypnosis will recognise that accidental hypnosis is occurring naturally all the time and spot it when it's happening. I experienced a similar revelation when I started to understand which male behaviours women find attractive. It's something else that's going on all the time, though most people don't realise what, how or why.

If these are things that people who are naturally good with others, and especially women, are using anyway I conclude that I have absolutely no qualms about using them myself. To not do so would be to shoot myself in the foot; to punish myself for having explicit knowledge about such things.

But wait is this manipulation? Well let's talk for a moment about something really manipulative, which is the more common approach men take. A man goes up to a woman in a bar and says "Can I buy you a drink?". He's offering her a drink but the subtext, whether he's aware of it or not, is that she is therefore obliged to talk to him or more. In fact, any occasion where a man is deliberately nice toward a woman he is attracted to in order to try to gain her approval he can unfortunately be assumed to have the words "...and please sleep with me" tagged on the end of his action.

Women spend hours prettying themselves up before they go out, enhancing their attractiveness to men's primarily visual sense of attraction with clothes that flatter them, styling their hair and using makeup. Is that manipulation? If a man's character really is to a woman what a woman's figure, face and hair is to a man, why not put in the effort to make sure that one is presenting ones best self, especially as the effects are even more pronounced for men than they are for women.

I can see why some people might object to what the pick up artists do and say they're taking advantage of the women they pick up. Personally whilst I don't condone telling lies or misleading people I think that the women who go for pick up artists know what they're doing and it's their right to enjoy enjoy themselves. Interestingly nobody seems to be raising the same objections about the proverbial busty blonde with the perfect figure who uses what she has to get what she wants.

I think the interesting question is where to draw the line when using this stuff. What is quite acceptable, and what is just self-serving manipulation?

The answer, to me, lies in the advice of John Morgan and his website Real Human Connect. Recently he and James Tripp have been putting together a dating programme called attraction games, which I'm sure will be well worth a look once it's up and running. The central premise to both of these sites is utilising the concept of play as opposed to work. The idea of just having fun and enjoying what comes naturally, as opposed to going out with a specific agenda. If the only thing on the agenda is to have a good time how can one be manipulative? Is it even possible to manipulate people into having fun?

So this is where I stand at the moment. Have to say I'm enjoying life right now.

Stay tuned. More hypnosis stuff coming.

Parkey.