All Comments on 'The "Secret" of Attraction'

but i just do not give a damn any more. i will change when i have finally qualified for VA bebfits and will be able to buy life insureance so she will have money to live on when i inject the overdose of insulin. i figure about 3.5 years more or less. You have to love Agent Orange.

Great piece, Selena. It really got me thinking. Thanks! Good luck in the contest. ~Minx

You wrote a very thought provoking essay and whilst I currently have no partner willing to commit to me, I could relate to the points you made. As always, wonderfully written. Well done and good luck!!

This essay ought to be required reading. Excellent insights and wisdom - although clearly contrary to our culture's striving towards unisex. What a radical idea - let men be men and women be women. You have my vote. <p>Wade I sure hope you can make some progress with the dreaded VA.

Overall: love it! Will def be passing it on incl sharing with my boyfriend. Writing critique: could be tighter. Stylistically for an essay contest, could be more narrative and personal than all the generalizations. But as I said overall, the points were dead-on.

Just like my wife: ramble on and on to the point that I stopped paying attention cuz you couldn't get to a damn point.

Serendipitously we cover a bit of the same ground in our essays, albeit with different approaches to be sure. A piece that I'll be sure to reread from time to time. I wish you good luck in the contest.

An interesting essay and set of advice that will no doubt provoke a fair bit agreement, argument and hopefully discussion. Well done.

I found this very interesting, and it rang true to me. I only wish I had read it 2-3 months ago, when it might have helped kickstart my relationship with my wife and may even have saved my marriage.

I thought it was well written, and made me think. Great job as always.

Dear Selena,

I'm a single 43 year old man who s not so good in keeping relationships. U know as a man our hormones respond to a female sexually, and sometimes I lose my train of thought and do something silly like touching her, or playing w her hair while talking. I don't know why, most women are turned off in my part of d world(Malaysia) Perhaps I should think of marrying abroad where women are not so inhibited as here. So for the time being it's still wanking....

This is very helpful essay in the minefield of relationship navigation. Thank you for helping some of us dopes who lose ourselves in the sensitive new-age guy-ness we've been led into by our desire to be partners. Thing is, some of the best partnerships are polar in nature. And some of the most dynamic teams know that what makes a partnership really work is a complementing of positions, not a homogeneity of personalities. Yin and Yang are, after all, black and white.

It surely makes one think. I am sure it will help lovers everywhere. Thank you for sharing this.

Maharat

...an all-girl classroom in a hellish future (or is that past?) vigorously jotting down notes. The place is decorated with seashells and flowers. The girls are pretty as kittens and twice as cuddly.

Their lesson today is "Be a Woman Worthy of a Man", and between the fits of giggles and girly banter, the class is keenly interested. Not only is this lesson a part of the most important (and one of the few) courses this year, but its value in real life cannot be repeated enough.

Some of the girls are so spellbound that the teacher has to remind them of sitting in their most seductive poses, a habit never to be neglected at any time, and some use the occasion to reapply their lip-gloss. Only a few misfits sit hunched in their seats way down in the back.

The teacher, unbothered by their behavior, gives teenaged Sue an encouraging smile and braces herself in a charmingly vulnerable way. "Brrr! It's quite fresh today, isn't it, girls?"

A chorus of voices responds excitedly, chiming like silver bells.

The teacher smiles and fixates Sue, suppresses an almost imperceptible twitch of impatience, and turns it into a sweet, apologetic grin. "I guess I should have dressed better, but my husband just likes this dress so much!"

Once again, the girls giggle and twitter in enthusiastic unison, and even Sue, who is sitting by the window, tries her best impersonation, desperate to please.

The look the teacher gives her now is almost hurt, her graceful shoulders bent, signaling how much she is suffering. A few girls turn in their seats and look at Sue with open scorn. Others soak up the teacher admiringly and even mimic the delicate shudder that passes through her body. Sue realizes it's somehow all her fault, but doesn't know what to do.

"She means close the window, dumbass," her neighbor finally murmurs.

Sue's face turns crimson. Of course.

She disentangles from her chair and rushes to obey. The window is only a step away, but she manages to trip. She can never do anything right. She doesn't feel attractive in the mandatory high heels and her thinking is too straightforward, so much that she sometimes says what she wants and doesn't understand others if they don't do it too. In the days of her grandma, the days of which she so often fantasizes, she could dress in any clothes she chose, even pants and flats, and speak her mind the way it naturally flows. Now, no man would put up with a girl who doesn't even know how to circumvent a topic.

"She's so linear she should be a man," someone chirps in the front, and the harmonious giggles fill the room like gurgling of a mountain spring on a sweet summer day.

Despite the fresh layer of color on Sue's face, the teacher is pleased. The demonstration succeeded in more ways than one.

She gives Sue a soothing smile and proceeds handing the papers. True, it would be more fortunate if Sue accepted her excessive masculinity and stopped insisting on being straight, but there was always a student or two like that in every generation. In time, she'll either give up the class and realize her anomalousness, or embrace the one correct way of being a genuine woman worthy of a man.

The 'secret'? Obviously I've been too busy or haven't spent enough time in the beauty salon where they keep a good supply of magazines with articles on this subject. After reading deeper into your essay I did become absorbed by your discussion of polarity and attraction, as well as more familiar ideas on getting the two dissimilar sides of a partnership pulling together.

This essay verbalizes something I have been struggling to say for months now. Thank you for writing it.

Your non-fiction is on the same high level as you fiction.

I loved the Secret, and I love this article! Great take on the law of attraction.

Thoughtful and insightful. Good luck!

and thoght provoking read. Thank you.

...as a piece of fiction.

Attraction is as fleeting as a snapping of fingers.

Real friendship is the only thing worth having. If you feel you can count on your partner, you've won.

i really loved this article as my wife is struggling with this empty feelings and i thought oh no its all my fault and i wasnt giving her enough of something that i didnt know what the heck she was talking about and she couldnt put her finger on it to even exlain it to me..after reading tis i am going to use your advice,,advice that i think i knew at the begging of the marriage but somehow i lost it,,that loving feeling..i remember now how i used to respond when she needed something m o r e ..i would look her in the eye and say come with me im going to take the bitch outta you,,, with that i would lead her upstairs and love her ..now you have given me more to work with THANK YOU denny

and compelling piece of writing. Thanks, Selena.

of non-fiction, expertly written and a joy to read!

....some of your comments really resonated with me,Selena, thank you. This is definitely worth another read when I have more time to contemplate its meaning for me.

and informative and well-worded, but I thought it was a bit long to say what was being said.

This was a truly worthwhile explanation of a viewpoint that's been suppressed lately in our society because of its potentially gender-discriminating aspects, but you pull it off with an egalitarian twist. I loved it, and it explains exactly what that invisible thing is that attracts one gender to another. I think it's the best, most succinct account of what is useful about gender (i.e. how it can give identity, and what the identity is that it gives) that I've read in quite a while.

This article has been written comprehensively from a reasonably well thought out and informed perspective. It is as a breath of fresh air to hear an intelligent assessment made of the masculine/feminine experience.

The writer has captured the essential dynamics involved whilst leaving room for further development to be included.

This is real wisdom...no fooling. Selena, you are one awesome creature you are!!

All things most of us know... and most of us have forgotten. Thanks. I highly recommend this.

JPM

It took me a long time to find these truths and I was still trying to put into words these ideas. And now I find the words all beautifully organized and they sing to me. Thank you. Xantu

One afternoon spent with you, coffee shop people watching or walking through a park or down the beach or a simple coffee at home would just to hear the amazingly random but insightful thoughts that come from you. Always looking for ways to improve my relationship with my best half and you are an absolute wealthy fount of information. Thank You

You've identified much of what is so destructive in relationships + given us some very practical EFFECTIVE solutions to make things right!

Bien Merci

Thank you very much. You have captured much and offered it as a gift.

Truer words about polarity are hard to find. This article is full of wisdom. Dom/sub relationships generally already know this, and practice it exponentially, but the rest of us "egalitarians" forget that a little bit of domination and submission goes on in every relationship, even friendships, and that tension and passion are fueled by that dichotomy.

Beautiful article. <3

Selena is right on the money! I followed her advice and it works! Thank you selena!

my lover and I broke up a couple of weeks ago because we had gotten...side-tracked from why we were actually together & I didn't feel it was working out... Today, just reading this & looking back over the 6 months we were living together - I can actually see how much I, personally, messed up...and after some encouragement on how to act from his dad (which has had AMAZING results), I can see that what you've written here is honest-to-god the best advice ever...his dad has said about the same thing essentially, about being feminine & not talking to much; giving him the opportunity to step up and be "the man" in the relationship & it actually looks like we're going to get back together...so thank you :) this how-to has actually come at a great time because now I know to keep doing what I've been doing for the past week or so, to get to where we both want to be <3

This is such a truthful article, it means so much to me. Reading this I can reflect on how beautiful sexuality can be, and how shitty it is to be a two-spirit in this instance. But really great!

It has taken me quite a while to figure so many of these things out and wish I had the chance to read this 8 and a half years ago. Me and my Husband have been married 7years this September and I feel no security of any kind with him. In fact over the years I have found He scares me more and more. I was'nt sure I had the right to feel this way because I did'nt know if my P.T.S.D. was just making it seem worse. Now I feel like an idiot for trying to rationalize a perfectly normal instinct. One thing that stuck out for me was the part about the man having that sense of humor and how much it helped when I look back at past relationships. My husband just does'nt seem to have one at all and what's worse is when I recently to his mother, at my wits end last attept effort to fix it, being funny to pull him out of his bad mood was something She suggested. All I could say was I'd even tried that and it just seems to make it worse at this point or just not help.

What an eye-opener. I could not for the life of me figure out what has been wrong in my marriage for the past couple weeks. I got paranoid that he was cheating (completely baseless and unfounded) and as a result I started getting myself in the mindset that I was going to be left alone with a child. So I started looking for jobs and apartments and day-cares. I'm a stay-at-home mom. That's a lot of stress to put on myself over literally nothing. This just opened my eyes to the polarity shift that I did that has been making it difficult for me to be 100% open with my supremely alpha-male husband lol. Delightful read. Thank you for sharing!!

Jaw-dropping mind-blowing, thanks

Incredible. Where do I get more of that?

This is similar to David Deida's writings.

I came here today looking for light, looking for how to repolarise and it is here in such clarity. You have a gift, you have wisdom, you are blessed.

An amazing insight into the complexities of gender relationships and assumptions

Thank you so much for this thoughtful article! I will definitely send my contacts here when they crave information about attraction!

Wow, simply fantastic.

Wow ! Incredibly thought provoking.

Many good points, that we frequently forget after being together for half a century. Thank you for your insight.

I stumbled across this little essay years ago, and at that time it helped make sense of my own life experience, and better understand what had worked or not worked in my first marriage and other relationships. Since then, it has been one of the basic concepts that guide me in romantic relationships with women. The concept of polarity dovetails with those of David Deida (The Way of the Superior Man) and many others. Deida, in the introduction to his book, talks about the cultural history of gender roles and polarity, and how it has evolved since the 1950s' rigid and prescriptive concept.