This post by Sebastian was the precursor to the VAC Model.
A definition of attraction - and a way to consistently to get attraction from any girl - is long overdue. Perhaps the two most missunderstood parts of the community are attraction and one of the pieces of it, value.
I’ll set the record straight, and give you a gameplan for how to attract any woman in the world, as well as give specific examples of how attraction works. Since many people are familiar with it, I picked Neil Strauss’ New York Times Bestseller The Game for my examples on how attraction works - I’ll use a few excerpts from the book to explain how this all works.
Attraction is something desireable to someone, that much is obvious. But to create the kind of real, almost-tangible attraction that’ll cause a woman to sleep with you, you need two components:
The Two Components of Attraction Are Value and Deservedness.
I will explain both.
“Value” is value for her life, based on her perceptions. What is valuable is unique to every single person, but pattern of what is valuable can easily be seen. Some things are almost always seen as valuable, and some things are almost always seen as detrimental to value. But the value of any given thing to a person is different for that person than another.
What does this mean? A giant script will not appeal to every single woman. At best, a script can mass-appeal to a man’s target audience. Many sorority girls might have similar value for each other, so if you wanted that demographic, a script that’s useful on many could be devised. But for broader categories, like “college girls”, you’ll need knowledge of how value works for different people.
There are many traits that are almost universally valuable (and thus, attractive). These should be almost universally developed, so that you’re perceived as having them with minimal effort on your part. This includes confidence, charisma, leadership, intelligence, quick wit, sharp instincts, health, wealth, a strong sense of survival, purpose, adaptability, and so on. Very, very, very few women find these traits unattractive, so it’s in every man’s best interest to appear to have these.
This can be done in one of three ways.
1. Develop the trait: If you become confident, you will appear confident. If you become healthy, you will appear healthy. Et cetra.
This is the path that takes the longest to achieve out of the three, but is the easiest once you’ve achieved it.
2. Develop the appearance of the trait: “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 confident, nor a leader, it is still in your best interest to develop the body language and walking patterns of a confident leader. This will give you the appearance of these things, the benefit of which is twofold: You’ll be perceived as having the quality (useful in your immediate interactions) and by being perceived as having it, you might actually develop the quality (”fake it ’till you make it” at work). Developing the appearance of a quality you don’t have is actually a great way to help develop that quality.
3. Demonstrate you have the quality any time the occasion arrises. This is the fastest way to show one person you have a trait about you, but the least efficient way to show the world you have a quality. A good example for this would be kino: It demonstrates you’re comfortable with yourself and comfortable around others (among other things).
If a man wants to demonstrate he’s comfortable with himself and around others, one way might be to kino. After he achieves a base proficiency in kinesthetic interaction (kino, touching other people in a normal way), he can do so consciously to appear to be comfortable with himself and around others.
Over time, his kino will become automatic. At his point he’s developed the appearance of the trait, and most people he will meet will perceive him as comfortable with himself and around others.
Finally, if he 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. Because this is a universally attractive trait, he is now always a more attractive man and he knows it.
Outside of universally attractive things are things that are attractive to specific women. A gold-digger wants money and status. A 28-year old working professional may be looking for a stable husband/father type man. A 34-year old divorcee may be looking for a feeling of youth and excitement. A young girl may want maturity OR want fun and popularity. Or both.
What any given woman wants is different based on the woman. But you can make generalizations. I always ask students what type of relationships they’re looking for, and what their “type” is. Age, ethnicity, nationality, and social class are all ways that you can make an intelligent guess about what is attractive to a woman. It’s why many pick-up artists have to adjust their techniques when moving to a new location. Even in the same nation, such as the cities of Atlanta and New York City, there are some differences in what the majority of people are looking for.
That said, fine-tuning your game to your “type” is great, but a master’s proficiency in pickup will let you adjust what you’re demonstrating to the specific girl you’re with - and know exactly what to demonstrate.
Cultivating Deservedness:
Part of attraction is value. A large part. If you appear to have no value for her life, something that she’d specifically want, than it doesn’t matter how much of the second part, deservedness, you cultivate.
But it is relatively easy to appear to have value. If you have even some semblance of “a life” then you’ve got some value. If you do some basic things to improve your life (or alternatively, the appearance of having improved your life) then value won’t be your problem.
Attraction is not exclusively value. Value is a part of attraction, and necessary for it, but the second necessary component for attraction is deservedness.
Deservedness is broken into two parts: Attainability, and effort. Both require a comprehensive explanation and guidelines on how to produce these feelings in a woman.
Attainability, first, may confuse some. In all of life, people seem to strive for the unattainable. Something just a step beyond them.
But these things always seem to have some attainability to them. Think about it like this: While you may enjoy looking at a centerfold in a magazine, you are more likely to fall madly in love with the girl next door. Though a centerfold prompts a lot of physical attraction in you, you do nothing to actually GET the centerfold (well, most people…).
This comes down to an important concept called the Auto-Rejection Mechanism. In short, if someone believes they have no chance, they won’t try. It’s the reason master pick-up artists often struggle trying to pick up ugly girls: The girls have no sense of entitlement, so they don’t let themselves get attracted and get hurt.
You can see examples with people aiming for a bit more than they have, too. The people that get very attracted to wanting a yacht are people that can either afford it or come close. Rarely will you see someone that is very poor strongly desire a yacht. Since it does not have attainability in their mind, they can not be seduced by the idea.
The second part of deservedness is effort. Specifically effort the woman puts in.
This is all based on the Cost-Value Conception. In short, Cost-Value says this: You will value something that costs a lot over something that costs little, largely irrospective of their real value. If you’ve ever won a stuffed animal at an amusement park or carnival, you know what I’m talking about. While you might not even take one for free if they’re handing them out on the street as a promotion, by winning it at the carnival (putting in effort and probably more money than thing is worth) it gains a lot of value. The cost determines the value.
When a woman is forced to work for something, she will want it more. However, in the beginning, if she sees it as unattainable, she likely won’t want it. This is largely true of men, too. While a man might like and desire a beautiful woman he sees passing, or a model, he’s more likely to grow very attached to a woman he had sex with who broke up with him, or a woman who keeps saying she really likes him as a friend.
To make someone attracted to you, you simply need to have value and for them to feel deservedness. For value, you need value for their life. There are universally valuable/attractive things like confidence, charisma, health, wealth, loyalty, faith in oneself, purpose, fun, leadership, survival ability, and so on, there are also traits that are more or less valuable/attractive at different points in a woman’s life. Some of these, like wealth and fun, are universally good but are larger priorities for some women than others. Other characteristics, like danger, eccentricity, risk-taking, and so on may be very attractive to certain women, but unattractive to others. It is a sad testament that even many traits that are mostly UNattractive are attractive to certain people, such as abuse and control. These people are mentally unhealthy, and though I advise you to stay away from them, it’s worth noting that sometimes negative traits may be attractive to certain types of women at certain points in their lives.
For deservedness, make sure they feel you are attainable. This would mean not demonstrating all kinds of value to them without them knowing why: This makes you look desperate most of the time, but the worst part is that it can make many normal women feel insecure and that you’re unattainable even when you do it well! Solid screening and qualifying can increase their sense of your attainability if you know how to target your questions and responses. The “special advantage” that Vincent is always talking about making her feel like she has is another good way.
The second part of deservedness is having her put in effort. If a woman works for a man, even just a bit, she’ll be more attracted to him and want him more. Over time, you can use this to change the compliance scales between you two and make sure you keep getting compliance out of her. The result will be that she feels she’s earned you and wants to keep you. If you continue to bed a woman for long periods of time, and she isn’t helping you build your lifestyle, then you may run into problems where she isn’t putting in enough effort and doesn’t feel like she’s worked for you, and therefore deserves you. So she loses attraction.
Examples from The Game by Neil Strauss:
I choose The Game by Neil Strauss as a teaching tool for this article. It’s a cool read, and instead of using anecdotes from my own life of which I’m obviously biased, I can use a well-known good guy and objectively point out why people are or aren’t attracted to each other in the book. I’ll use some short excerpts and reference the page numbers, so y’all can read up the background at home if you have a copy.
On pages 312-317, Neil starts doing an interview of Britney Spears, a very coveted celebrity. He gets her phone number in a feat of true prowess, but is waffling on calling her.
THE GAME PAGE 317:
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"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.
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MY COMMENTS:
You see Neil deciding 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
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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.
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MY COMMENTS:
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:
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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.
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MY COMMENTS:
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:
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[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.
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MY COMMENTS:
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
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"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.
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MY COMMENTS:
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 traits of independence and choice, which also isn’t necessary.
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:
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"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.
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MY COMMENTS:
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 (been more compliant for lower rewards, as per Vincent DiCarlo’s Value/Compliance model) 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, and she felt she deserved him (he was attainable because she had already been bedding him, she worked to get him by accepting terms she didn’t like such as non-exclusivity).
Or I could be completely, totally off-base with my comments, and other stuff was going on.
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 + Deservedness
Value is the value for her life. Cultivate the appearance of all universally attractive traits, and selectively demonstrate specific traits to specific women.
Deservedness is comprised of two elements. The first is attainability: If a woman thinks you are unattainable, her Auto-Rejection Mechanism will kick in. She’ll blow you off so she doesn’t feel hurt, and then backwards-rationalize it, halting attraction from growing and sometimes killing it all off. So you must let feel that you are potentially attainable. Conscious tactics for this include screening, qualifying, and making her feel like she has a special advantage. It can also be accomplished with looks and certain body language and tonality.
The second part of deservedness is the woman working to earn you, the cost/value conception. When someone works hard for something, they feel like it should be belong to them and it’s to be prized. She’ll feel like she deserves to be with you and she’ll be attracted to you because of it.
Use these teachings wisely, friend. I documented some examples and you can see how negative emotions ran through some good people because of some missteps in attracting each other. These techniques can be a bit powerful and can mess with a woman’s head, so do make sure to, as Neil puts it, not violate Ross Jeffries’ only ethical rule of seduction: Leave her better than you found her.
