How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
7 Habits that Are Sure to Turn Off the People You Meet
The art of seduction is about more than just sex: it is the art of making people feel comfortable and the awareness to let someone be the best version of themselves at any given moment.
Seduction happens socially with friends and professionally with colleagues, clients, and prospects. It is the reason why you instantly click with someone you just met or finally begin to grow closer with someone that you’ve known for over a decade.
Seduction is the reason why you are closer to some colleagues than others, turn prospects into clients, and turn clients into long-term reliable relationships.
Seduction is a choice, and it is a choice we make either consciously or unconsciously. If you aren’t choosing to be seductive you are choosing to be anti-seductive, and by default, choosing to make others feel uncomfortable.
Seductive and anti-seductive character is an amalgamation of personal habits and both our actions and reactions to others. This list will cover some of the common mistakes people make in human interactions that lead others to reject us or crave space away from us.
Masking the Premise or Intentions of Your Interaction with Someone
You can also call this burying the lead. These are the interactions we have with people where you have a feeling that they want something or they have a point to make, but they haven’t asked for what they want or made their point. These interactions suck, not just because people don’t like to waste time on trivial matters, but mostly because inauthenticity is ugly and exhausting.
People like the truth because the truth is constructive: it makes it easier for us to navigate our lives with informed decision-making and saves us time. We show a lack of empathy when we delay the truth.
Excessively Talking or Texting without Giving Someone Else the Opportunity to Speak or Respond
The best way for people to consume information is in small doses. Regardless of whether you are telling someone a story; explaining a definition, theory, or insight; or asking questions based on what someone has said, the key to a good conversation flow is to allow for breaks in between your statements.
When we speak to people, we want to include slight pauses for reactions. People want to engage with you, especially if they're listening, so pauses make it easier for people to chime in with insights and feel like they’re a part of your story too.
What a good conversation flow looks like over text is best exemplified through what I call The Rule of Two: no more than two lines if one text message bubble is sent, and no more than four lines per text bubble if two text message bubbles are sent.
The Rule of Two should be followed as a rule with very few exceptions. It ensures that the information you send to someone to read is as digestible as possible, but most importantly, it keeps you accountable for being concise and articulate.
Conversations flow best when two people can comfortably keep up with one another, and without this, conversations are no longer fun.
Asking Questions without Showing Interest in the Response
If you ask a question you should stick with the response a bit because genuine interest in a person or thing is persistent.
When we like something we stick with it, so to show someone that we like them we focus on their story or insight and we follow up. Not only is it important to ask questions, but it’s also important to ask questions that you care about because two things happen when we do: people interpret the quality of our questions as an insight into who we are as people and how we ask questions either makes people feel more or less comfortable speaking with you.
Are you energizing or are you exhausting? Are you invested or are going through the motions? Bottom line: is speaking with you a good use of my time or is it a mistake to give my precious time to you?
Ignoring Someone Else’s Ideas or Insights
I’ve mentioned a few times already that everyone wants to be seen and heard, but no one feels seen or heard. Sometimes our insecurities are to blame, but other times we can blame others.
Seeing or hearing someone is about acknowledging them for how they show up in our lives. If you notice that your colleague has a cool new haircut you should acknowledge him for it; if you notice that your brother is reaching his goal of becoming stronger and more athletic, you should congratulate him for it, and if your girlfriend just bought a new dress, you should compliment her while she’s in it.
Everyone has small victories in their lives that make us all just a little happier, but victories feel even better when we can share them with people close to us. Acknowledging the small victories of someone else’s life not only makes us more likable but also supportive.
Displaying Oblivion to Help or Advice
There is nothing wrong with venting because sometimes the emotional release that comes with it can be helpful. Everyone wants to be heard, and when we allow someone to vent we are allowing someone to be heard.
Signaling something along the lines of, “I had such a tough day today” or “Ugh, I’m beat” is a great way to let someone know that you need their ear. When people are prepared for what’s coming, and when the information is disseminated in a well-paced and digestible manner, others are far more likely to earnestly listen.
The issue with venting is when people aren’t prepared for it, most likely because the venting comes disguised in the framework of seeking advice. The infamous, “Can I ask you something” or “I need your help” questions begin to lose their power if they are not followed with a question like, “What do you think?”
Even far more sinful than the mix-up of advice-seeking for venting is when people will repeat this exact scenario over and over again, likely with the issue at hand.
It’s hard for people to watch and listen to other people make mistakes, and it’s even harder to watch and listen when those same people have new insights to use to their advantage, but they repeat the same mistakes as if nothing has changed.
Venting and advice exchange are emotionally exhausting for everyone involved, but as the seeker of an ear to hear your story or seeker of advice to fix your problems remember this: someone is allocating time towards you from someplace else or someone else.
Be appreciative of the person listening to you by saying thank you or applying their insights to your problems. The best thing you can do after talking someone’s ear off is to figure out how to never do it again.
Bragging
Also known as qualifying one’s self. Bragging isn’t fun or cool because bragging is pompous and excludes the people that you are speaking with from any mutual conversation.
Anti-seductive people can confuse bragging with gratitude. It’s more than okay to say aloud what you are grateful for, especially if someone asks, but what isn’t okay is taking the opportunity to elevate yourself in the form of misguided compliments. Consider the following statements below after someone asks, “How has your week been?”:
Response 1: “Amazing! My manager at work loves me. I’m a badass.”
Response 2: “Really cool, thank you for asking. Seemed like one of those weeks where I had a lot to do, but I got it all done. It feels great to have that weight off of my shoulders.”
Response 1 is problematic because it is self-centered. Instead of taking the time to praise a manager that you love, you took that time to do the inverse. Confident people shine spotlights on others rather than themselves.
Response 2 is ideal because not only is it detailed but it is far more likely to be universal; therefore, just about anyone can relate. I purposely didn’t include the question, “How was yours” at the end of either statement because questions are not always necessary for conversations to flow. What is important is that the content of what we say is detailed enough to help others create an image in their heads and universal enough to be relatable.
It’s always great to craft a descriptive response when someone asks you a question, but the description should be of people, places, emotions, and events, not of yourself. The descriptions you use of other people, places, emotions, and events are a far more authentic avenue into who you are versus any description you could give yourself.
Demonstrating Incongruence Throughout Your Life
You complain about your girlfriend whenever you are around your friends, and yet you are still with her…
You tell people that things at your job are good, and yet you are visibly sad or angry whenever the subject is raised…
You call someone a friend, and yet you lament the fatigue you feel from their disrespect and patronizing behavior…
Your friends, your family, and everyone else you encounter want the truth, but they certainly won’t get it if you don’t know what the truth is. Incongruence occurs because what you say does not match or relate to what you do and vice versa.
Incongruence can also be viewed as the product of a lack of self-love coupled with misplaced accountability. It is up to you to fix something if it is bothering you, and when you decide not to break up with your toxic girlfriend, pursue a coveted career goal, or stand up for yourself against a bullying friend, you are denying yourself your happiness while simultaneously putting all the blame on someone or something else.
You always have a choice. It’s okay to feel what you feel, but eventually, you need to do something about it otherwise your cries, grunts, and complaints will fall on deaf ears.
It has often been said when it comes to seduction, that some people have it while the rest of us don’t. This is a misguided statement.
Seductive people are accountable for their relationships and impressions with other people while anti-seductive people are not. We can’t control other people, but we can control ourselves. We can control how we show up for other people, listen to other people, and communicate with other people.
Do the best you can with empathy and everything else will flow. Doing our best helps other people feel their best; and as a result, makes other people want to be around us more.
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