Have you ever wondered about what causes women to feel that burning desire to be with someone? How come a man with seemingly nothing going on can get women obsessed with them? Why many men sit in “idle mode” with women even though they’ve got lots going on?

In the last five years, the field being labelled as “seduction” has made leaps and bounds. Many men are realizing that they don’t need to accept the limited social skills they were able to figure out themselves through their high school and college years, and are setting to making a real change in their lives.

And yet through it all, no one had defined attraction. You might have read somewhere that doing something created attraction, or that something else was unattractive, but WHY WAS THAT?

It was a million dollar question. That has finally been answered.

***

The bestselling novel “The Game” by Neil Strauss chronicles the journey of one man - Neil, a music critic and freelance journalist. In the book, he goes from being an uber-nerd to a veritable stud with women - despite being 5′6 and unaesthetically pleasing. We’ll use some excerpts from the book as case-studies in explaining attraction.

***

Attraction is a result of three things. Every time someone is attracted to something, these three things will be present. Every time these three things are present in something for someone, that person will be attracted to it.

If these things are present, a woman will be attracted to you. Every single time.

THE THREE COMPONENTS OF ATTRACTION:

Value, Attainability, and Compliance.

***

VALUE

“Value” is something that fills a conscious or subconscious need for a person. What is valuable is unique to every single person, but there are a set of traits that are valuable to almost everyone. These traits - like confidence, charisma, and leadership - are valuable to almost any woman. Many traits will be valuable to one type of woman but not another.

There traits that are almost universally valuable (and thus, attractive) should be universally developed, so that you’re perceived as having them with minimal effort on your part.

Many of our techniques focus on these, while some of them are traits from other parts of your life that are good to develop. Twenty of the most common universally valuable traits follow:

Ambition

Charisma*

Confidence*

Creativity

Desire to Reproduce*

Dominance*

Emotionally Steadfast*

Empathy*

Health

Humor*

Intelligence

Leadership*

Passion For Something in Life

Popular*

Protects One’s Own

Quick Reflexes

Quick Wit*

Sociable*

Survival Instincts

Worldliness

The items with asterisks are developed directly by social training. More than half of them - That’s more than any other sub-set of life. Our interactions with people dominate how our value is assessed. Many of the other traits on the list can be demonstrated even if not already possessed. How?

***

THE THREE WAYS VALUE IS PERCEIVED

1. Presence: If you’ve ever seen a great comedian, often he’ll walk onto stage, and just STARE at the crowd until - they start laughing. This is a person with the presence of a sense of humor. Likewise, a very confidence person seems to just ooze or eminate confidence. A healthy person need do no more than be present to show he is healthy.

This path takes significant time to develop, but once you’ve done it - you need make no effort. If you develop yourself into a charismatic person, which can be done with training and practice, then you simply need to do no more than show up for people to know you’re charismatic. You have that presence.

2. The Appearance: “A prince need not possess princely qualities. He merely needs the appearance of princely qualities.” - Niccolo Machiavelli

Machiavelli is largely right. If you’re not a leader, you can still develop the body language and walking patterns of a confident leader. This will give you the appearance of being a leader. You’ll be perceived as being a leader which is good for your value right away.

By affecting the appearance of a leader, you will be treated as others by a leader. You’ll become more of a leader over time. Developing the appearance of a trait you don’t have, such as popularity, is a crucial step on the way to becoming popular. This is “Fake it ’till you make it” done correctly, and actually making it.

3. Active Demonstration: Not funny? Tell a joke.

Active demonstrations are excellent ways to show people you have a positive trait that you might not actually yet possess. You can take an action or story from someone who does have it, and use it. Not a naturally sociable person? What if you were taught the exact way a sociable person approaches and interacts with people?

People will think you’re sociable. This is the fastest way to show one person you have a trait about you.

For universal value, it’s in your best interest to cultivative the appearance or actually become valuable with time. It can be tedious to have to tell a funny joke to every person you meet so they know you have a sense of humor. But while you’re learning, this is a powerful way to start.

***

KINESTHETICS AND VALUE:

The word Kinesthetic means touching. In the seduction community at large, it’s fondly called “kino”. It means touching another person.

If a man wants to demonstrate he’s comfortable with himself, comfortable with others, dominant, and confident, one way to do all that is to kino. The man can learn about the three good kinds of kino - Playful, protective, and incidental. He can learn a few types of kino, like putting his hand on a woman’s lower back to escort her through a room (protective kino), or taking her hand in his, then spinning her salsa style (playful).

Now he can actively demonstrate he’s comfortable, confident, and dominant.

Over time, he’ll automatically do kino. It becomes normal for him to slap a friend on the back, or to lightly touch someone’s elbow during a handshake the way former President Clinton done, a proven kind of incidental kino that makes others feel comfortable around you.

The man now touches people in a confident, friendly way. He’s now developed the appearance that he’s confident, dominant, and comfortable around himself and others. People will perceive him as having those traits even if he doesn’t have the internal “mettle” yet.

And if that man allows his belief system to develop, he’ll come to actually be comfortable with himself and around other people. At this point, no conscious technique or tactic is necessary: He has simply become a person who is comfortable with himself and around others. He is more confident and dominant, and people see it just by being near him. He is now more universally valuable.

And he knows it.

***

DANGER AND RISK-ADVERSITY: Specifically Valuable Traits

Items like confidence and charisma are universally valuable. Most if not all women want these traits in a man.

Those aren’t it though. Take the example of the “dangerous” man - A guy who seems dangerous, lawless, taking senseless risks and who is just generally out of control.

This guy, leather jacket and long hair in tow, tends to be valuable to younger women who are bored and looking to be defiant.

On the other hand, take a stable risk-adverse guy. He’s got his act together, got a decent job, and doesn’t take risks. While he wouldn’t be very attractive the 19-year-old wild child-type girl, he’s very valuable to decent stable women looking to settle down and raise a family.

This is specific value at work. Some of it is counter-intuitive or surprising. Through field-testing and empirical evidence, us at theApproach have found that many women in their early 30’s who have just gone through a divorce or gotten out of a long term relationship are looking for reckless fun and excitement in their lives. Some popular literature and others’ experiences back us up on that one too…

A lot of men have questions about whether they can get the type of women they want based on certain unchangeable things in their life - Their height, race, age, or birth country.

The answer lies here: While specific value is a huge help to you, a man can get by without having a supposedly “necessary” type of specific value - if he has even MORE universal value.

I was talking to one of my students who I first instructed a few years ago. He’s gone on to become a veritable heartbreaker, I’m sad to say. See, I don’t believe in putting women down hard, I believe in always leaving them better than they were when I found them. But my man - we’ll call him Kaz - lives a busy life and winds up breaking women’s hearts.

Well, Kaz is Asian if you hadn’t realized that. And guess what he hears a lot? “You’re the first Asian guy I’ve ever been attracted to”. But then you know what happens? Post-Kaz-heartbreak, the women start dating Asian guys.

This is how the barriers get broken down. One really high-value guy that’s not normally on the woman’s radar breaks through, and then that specific value - “I only date black guys”, “I only date Asian guys”, “I only date older guys” - is gone. Specific value helps a lot to be sure, but if you’re better than the rest you can get what you want.

***

ATTAINABILITY

Value is a huge part of attraction. A tremendous part. If you don’t have any value, it doesn’t matter at all if she has a shot at that no-value.

But value is pretty easy to appear to have. You already have some in your life, no doubt. If you’re at all driven or successful in anything you do, you’ve got SOME value. You could get more, or at least appear to have more, and we’re going to help you with that.

This raises the age-old question then - “I’m a great guy, but women don’t seem to like me. Why?”

The answer is quite simply - they don’t see that you’re a great guy FOR THEM.

Attainability converts “value” into “value for her life”. It gives her a chance to believe she can have your value and it can enrich her life.

This confuses some men, especially men that have never had really great girlfriends, or are looking for really elite women that they might perceive as beyond them.

Consider this: What woman in your own life drove you absolutely crazy? Close your eyes and imagine her.

Got her? That girl that kept your up at night?

That you daydreamed about? Know who I’m talking about?

Okay. Got her?

Is it…

Pamela Anderson?

Cindy Crawford?

Lucy Liu?

Mariah Carrey?

Carmen Electra?

Charlize Theron?

Or any other really beautiful actress/model/singer type?

Of course not. It’s probably a neighbor, or a classmate. A girl that lived near you, or was part of your social circle.

The reason is that that woman seemed attainable to you, in a way that a centerfold didn’t.

This comes down to what’s called the Auto-Rejection Mechanism. If someone believes they can’t have something, they’ll rationalize they don’t want it so that they can be happy.

This is the reason that very unattractive women get extremely rude and nasty when hit on in bars - They assume it’s insincere and they have no chance, so they become absolutely rude.

Being attainable does not mean being available - the woman shouldn’t believe that she has you no matter what, and can’t lose you no matter what she does. She should believe she has a shot to get you if you want to attract her.

***

COMPLIANCE

Ever been to a carnival? Or an amusement park or anything with those games you pay a couple dollars to play to try to win prizes?

Ever win? Or see a guy who did?

How do they feel?

They pump their fist, get excited. They get a stuffed tiger for a prize, and usually either give that tiger as a sign of affection to a girlfriend or put it on a shelf like a trophy.

This comes down to the Cost-Worth Conception. People think things are worth what they cost.

So no cost? Free? Must be worthless.

That little stuffed tiger the man got so excited about when he won? Would he even take it if it were being given away on the streets as a promotion for a sugary cereal?

Probably not.

***

The more effort a woman puts into an interaction with a guy, with pleasing or impressing him, or handling logistics so they can see each other, the more she’ll be attracted to him. Since his cost is high, his worth must be high too.

But there’s more to compliance than just work and effort.

Listen to a woman talk to her friends who is really, really attracted to her boyfriend. Does she go on, gushing about how he’s absolutely perfect and she wouldn’t change anything about him if given the change? Oh no!

Women who are very attracted to their boyfriends are often complaining about how he’s such a jerk, or doesn’t take care of her, or has bad habits or whatever else.

The reason is that accepting things she doesn’t like is compliance too. If she accepts something about him that’s not ideal in her mind, then he must be even MORE worth it in his other areas. That’s another reason Kaz was such a heartbreaker - The girls would think, “I don’t normally like Asian guys. He must be something really special.” Then he’d still see other women, have condom wrappers at his place, lipstick on wine glasses and all sorts of unsubtle things like that. And a few women would stop seeing him right then, but of the girls that stuck around - they got even more attracted.

When a woman is forced to work for something, she’ll feel like she deserves it and want it even more. To have a woman really attracted to you, she’ll need to feel like she deserves you. This comes down to attainablity, which is the feeling she can have you, and compliance, which is working to get you.

***

The Game by Neil Strauss was a New York Times Bestseller, and details Neil’s road to success with women. Under his pseudonym, “Style” as in “Man of Style”, he has many adventures. All excerpts are used directly from the book under fair use, and all rights are reserved to Neil and his publisher.

I chose The Game for this article’s teaching tool because it’s a fun read many people have with them, and because using anecdotes from someone’s life other than my own lets me stay unbiased and teach you as a social scientists. Page numbers are included so you can read along at home.

(and many of my friends who I gave an early draft of this article to said The Game read completely differently once they understood VAC)

***

Pages 312-317. Neil has completed an interview of Britney Spears, a beautiful coveted celebrity. He gets her phone number in a feat of true prowess, but is waffling on calling her. His friend “Mystery” tries to convince him to.

THE GAME PAGE 317:

>>>

“Just call her,” Mystery constantly prodded me. “What do you have to lose? Tell her, ‘Can you not look like Britney Spears? We’re going to do some crazy shit, and we can’t get caught. We’re going to wear wigs, climb up to the Hollywood sign, and touch it for good luck.”

“If I had met her socially, fine. But this is a work assignment.”

“You’re playing the game at another level now. When the article is finished, it isn’t an assignment anymore. So call her.”

But I couldn’t do it. If it had been Dalene Kurtis, the Playmate of the Year, I would have called her back in a second. I had no fear of women like that anymore. I felt worthy. I’d proven that over and over since meeting her. But Britney Spears?

One’s self-esteem can only grow so much in a year and a half.

<<<

VAC ANALYSIS:

Neil decides against calling her because he thinks she’s unattainable. The telltale lines are, “I had no fear of women like that anymore. I felt worthy.” (shows he feels Dalene Kurtis is attainable to him) And “One’s self-esteem can only grow so much in a year and a half.” (shows he doesn’t think Britney is attainable)

Now, if Britney had wanted Neil, she could have fostered a sense of attainability about herself for him. A phone call or two, or perhaps something akin to some of the techniques we use to ground herself as an average person beneath all the celebrity. And if she had done that, Neil would have became much, much attracted to her than he was.

***

Towards the end of The Game, Neil becomes very attracted - and eventually goes completely exclusive for - a woman named Lisa. What did Lisa have that the other girls didn’t? Well, she had value for his life, being beautiful, intelligent, and with a better personality than most of the girls Neil has met. And since Neil is a top-notch Pick-Up Artist, he feels all women are attainable: He’s unlikely to feel an Auto-Rejection Mechanism except on the most elite of celebrities.

But what about work? At this point in the book, Neil is used to getting huge amounts of compliance from the women in his life. He runs his game for a while and they like it. He phase-shifts and kisses them. They begin to fall ga-ga for them, and if necessary, he uses his techniques to blast LMR and bed them. When and how he pleases.

THE GAME PAGE 365

>>>

I held her eye contact and moved toward her for the kiss, holding the camera in front of us to capture it.

“I’m not kissing you,” she barked.

The words scalded my face like hot coffee. There was no girl I couldn’t kiss within a half hour of meeting her. What was her problem?

I froze her out and tried again. Nothing.

It is in these moments that, as a PUA, you start to question the work you’ve done on yourself. You begin to worry that maybe she sees the real you, the one who existed before the silly nickname, the one who wrote poems about this exact situation in high school.

I delivered a moving, impassioned performance of the evolution phase-shift routine. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a thousand PUAs applauding.

“I’m not biting you,” she said.

I wasn’t through. I told her the most beautiful love story ever written: “On Seeing the 100 Percent Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning” by Haruki Murakami. It is about a man and a woman who are soul mates. But when they doubt their connection for a moment and decide not to act on it, they lose each other forever.

She was ice cold.

I tried a hardcore freeze-out: I blew out the candles, turned off the music, turned on the lights, and checked my email.

She climbed into my bed, curled up under the covers, and went to sleep.

I finally I joined her, and we slept on opposite ends of the bed.

<<<

VAC ANALYSIS:

There is no doubt at this point in the book that Lisa will end up with Style if she wants him. She has value for his life, he feels she is attainable to him, but he will be made to work for it. If he “catches” her in the end, he will be astronomically more attracted to him than if she had bedded him that evening.

The old addage that a woman must make her man wait to have her for him to respect her isn’t necessarily true. But it is one of the simplest and easiest ways of making a man work to get her and become more attracted.

The only way, the absolutely only way Lisa could lose Neil at this point in the novel is for his sense of attainability to fall off. This would be a difficult proposition, but because Style is a man of some character and self-esteem, he won’t hang around forever if she makes it clear she won’t be his. The value is there. He’s worked for her. Now, if she keeps herself appearing attainable, she can have him when she likes him.

THE GAME PAGE 368:

>>>

So we [Neil and Lisa] spent another platonic night together. It was driving me crazy. I knew she liked me. But she wouldn’t get intimate. I was teetering on the border of being LJBF’ed.

Maybe I just wasn’t her type. I imagined her with tattooed, muscle-bound, leather-jacketed Danzig types, not a scrawny metrosexual guy who had to take pickup workshops. She was killing me.

For the first time since I’d learned the word one-itis, I knew that I was doomed. No one ever gets his one-itis. He gets too clingy and needy and blows it. And, sure enough, I blew it.

<<<

VAC ANALYSIS:

At this point, Neil is questing whether she’s attainable or not. And then when she blows him off later, leaving him at the airport with a limo, liquor, and a fancy date planned, his sense of her attainability is near-gone. He continues to pursue her, but details on page 372 that he leaves a message for her and she doesn’t call back.

Neil does his thing, and goes on a little tear of his own, sleeping with a bunch of different women. He thinks of Lisa from time to time, but you can even see what happens in the pacing of the book: There’s barely a mention of her for the next 24 pages as he talks about sleeping with other women and all the ProHo drama. Though no one can be sure, pick-up artists would like to think Neil didn’t spend all his time pining over Lisa in the days that passed until he ran into her again. Though this will happen occasionally with women, most of the time high self-esteem men won’t think constantly over a one-itis once the sense of attainability is gone. At the very least, they’re unlikely to take rational action unless the woman first makes a move of her own.

Which Lisa does, incidentally. If you’ve read the book, you know what happens. She shows up in her convertible, and Neil is ecstatic. She expresses interest in him on page 396 and his sense of her attainability is back.

THE GAME PAGE 410:

>>>

[Strauss:] “So what made you drive up the hill the other day to see me again?”

[Lisa:] “while you were gone, I realized how much I missed you.” I loved watching her lips part over her front teeth when she talked. It made me think of salmon on rice. “My friends were making fun of me because I was counting down the days until you came home. I actually went grocery shopping while you were gone so I could cook you food. I don’t know why.” She hesitated and smiled, as if she were offering information she’d never planned to divulge. “I bought a fresh piece of swordfish and had to throw it away because it went bad.”

A warm flush of confidence filled my chest. So I still had a chance with this girl.

<<<

VAC ANALYSIS:

Neil, again, sees Lisa as attainable and you can actually see him immediately feel attraction! She says she misses him, and then he thinks about how much he loves watching her lips part over her front teeth. He analogizes it to salmon on rice.

This is going to lead to more effective seduction on her part: She likes him, and with all the work she’s made him put in, she has a definite shot at exclusivity with a top-notch pickup artist if she wants it. Her own “game” is definitely top of the line.

The rest of pages 410 and 411 are provide even better examples. Why did Lisa act the way she did and lose attraction for Neil? She, herself, wasn’t sure about his attainability. She was thankfully sure enough to reengage him, but there was a little mixup that caused her Auto-Rejection Mechanism to set in - and tell a guy that she liked that he had no chance.

She’s not rejecting Neil, she’s rejecting HERSELF! This is what happens when the sense of attainability is removed.

THE GAME PAGE 410

>>>

“But it’s too late,” she said. “The window was open with me, and you blew it.”

David DeAngelo would have said to go cocky funny here. Ross Jeffries would have said not to buy into her frame. Mystery would have said to punish her. But I had to ask: “How did I blow it?”

“First off, you didn’t call me when you came home from Miami. I had to go to you.”

“Hold on. I thought you were blowing me off. You never even called while I was away.”

“Well, your voice mail said you were out of town and you weren’t receiving calls, so I didn’t leave a message.”

“Yeah, but I would have returned your call. I wanted to hear from you.”

“Then you came to Whiskey Bar and hardly talked. And the last straw was when we went to your house to go surfing. I told Sam I was starting to like you again and she said, ‘Get over it. When I went up to his room to use the bathroom, I found a used condom on the floor.’”

My brain leaped up and slapped itself. I had been careless: I’d forgotten to throw away the condom I’d used with Isabel. So that’s what Sam and she were whispering about in the car on the way to Malibu.

“So then why did you agree to go out with me tonight?”

“You asked me out on a proper date. And you were a little nervous, so I figured you must really be into me.”

I propped myself up on the pillows. I was about to say the most AFC thing of my life. “Let me tell you something. The pickup artists have a word they call one-itis. It’s a disease that people get when they become obsessed with just one girl. And they never end up with this girl because they get too nervous around her and scare her away.”

“So?” she asked.

“So,” I said. “You’re my one-itis.”

We were looking each other in the eyes now. I could see hers sparkle. I knew mine were sparkling. It was time to kiss her.

There were no lines, no routines, no evolution phase-shift–I’d tried them all unsuccessfully anyway. I leaned in. She leaned in. Her eyes closed. My eyes closed. Our lips met. It was just like I’d always thought a kiss was supposed to begin.

For hours, we lay there making out and dissecting the connections and misunderstandings of the past few weeks.

<<<

VAC ANALYSIS:

You can see her ARM (Auto-Rejection Mechanism) in motion. “I told Sam I was starting to like you again and she said, ‘Get over it. When I went up to his room to use the bathroom, I found a used condom on the floor.’”

“I told Sam I was starting to like you again” is a classic example of attraction rebuilding. Neil invites Lisa surfing, so Lisa thinks Neil is attainable. Attraction grows. But then Sam tells Lisa about the condom on the floor. Attainability fades. Attraction fades.

BUT, Neil Strauss is a man of exceptional character, and shows why he’s been crowned one of the best pick-up artists of this era. Though he’s not exactly sure why, he knows intuitively that David DeAngelo’s advice is based on making her work for him, which isn’t the answer. Ross and Mystery are suggesting to do things that demonstrate value through independence and choice, which also isn’t necessary for this spot.

So Neil opens up and shows Lisa he’s attainable. He goes as far as to tell her that he’s obsessed with her: And it works. The value for her life was there (Neil’s a great guy with a good career and lots of interesting stuff going on). She’s had to work for him, charming and seducing him. When he shows her that he’s attainable to her, she falls for him.

Deciding to be faithful now, Strauss sets about dumping his other girlfriends.

THE GAME PAGE 411:

>>>

“So you’re choosing her over me?” Isabel asked angrily.

“It’s not an intellectual choice.”

“Is she better in bed or something?”

“I don’t know. We’ve only kissed.”

“So you made out with some girl,” she said, with a weak attempt at a cruel laugh, “and you want to get rid of me now.”

“It’s not that I want to get rid of you. I’d still like to see you, but as a friend.” I could hear the word pierce her heart like a dagger, as it had my own heart so many times before I’d joined the community.

“But I love you.”

How could she love me? She needed to go fuck a dozen other guys to get over her one-itis.

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was.

There is a downside to casual sex: Sometimes it stops being casual. People develop a desire for something more. And when one person’s expectations don’t match the other person’s, then whoever holds the highest expectations suffers. There is no such thing as cheap sex. It always comes with a price.

<<<

VAC ANALYSIS:

Neil, in a way, touches on value and working for someone here. Neil has more value for Isabel’s life than Isabel has for Neil’s life. And Isabel has worked harder for him than he has for her. The two combined together means she feels she deserves him and is attracted to him - so of course it hurts. Many men that read this will understand how Isabel felt.

While it’s not nearly as common for women to feel this pain as men, it does happen. She was attracted to him: Neil had value for Isabel’s life, since he was a good guy with a lot to offer. He was attainable since she’d already been bedding him and spending time with him. And she’d put in a lot of work - compliance - by doing things to please and impress him, and accepting conditions she didn’t like such as non-exclusivity.

Though I won’t ruin the specifics, I’ll let you know there is a happily-ever-after to this book, and Neil and Lisa do metaphorically ride off into the sunset together.

***

As for creating attraction in your own life, remember this formula:

Attraction = Value + Attainability + Compliance