Seduce your way to VDay

(Find all of M.C.’s ongoing Valentine’s Day advice here.)

So, as of tomorrow, you’ve got seven days between you and Valentine’s Day.   The big mistake people make is that we think we can whip out flowers and candy and a candlelit dinner on VDay and in less than the course of an evening, we can sufficiently seduce the man or woman of our dreams.

In our crazy fast world where everyone texts and cell-chats incessantly, romance is losing out to overkill. Texting someone “Pic u up @ 8″ is not going to do it.  Calling up three days in advance and saying, “Hey, what are you doing for Vday?” is so lame (and anyone receiving a call like that should respond, “Um, not seeing  you!”)

Seduction should start long before a date.  Romance is something slowly cultivated — that is, if you want it to last.

To properly romance someone, you should never start off with a big show-boat move.  Romance is best grown at a snail’s pace –  creating layers of intellectual interest, physical and sexual tension, playfulness, and almost achingly drawn-out anticipation.

I remember one man in Boston who, one year when VDay was on a Friday, called me up three weeks in advance to ask me out for that night, I said yes, and never heard from him again until the week leading up to  Vday … , when each day a little something arrived at my office on Newbury Street — building the romantic tension before we saw each other on Friday night.  He was wooing me.  And it worked.

The gifts were simple — Monday, he had a large cappucino and the NY Times delivered by courier, the next day, a fountain pen (pricy, I know, but the perfect gift for me), Wednesday, he faxed a poem he’d written himself (yes, this one when people still used fax machines — and the stir it caused when the page rolled off the machine down in the copy room got the attention of everybody in the office — I think the fax was read by 10 people before it ever landed in my inbox! … and yes, it was slightly steamy); Thursday, fresh flowers with a single red rose in the middle, were delivered, with a note saying he was looking forward to seeing me and would pick me up on Friday at 7.   And on Friday … not a word, no delivery.  He just showed up that night to pick me up for our date.  To say I was looking forward to seeing him is an understatement.

His plan — to not speak to me directly, but to slowly lay a groundwork of romance and seduction — was the perfect mechanism for me, in particular, but I think it would work with almost any man or woman.

For romance, seduction, sex, or love to happen — you’ve got to create tension, anticipation, curiosity, surprise — it’s all got to work slowly to create that inimitable tingle in your head, your heart and your nether regions.

So, get busy today.  You’ve got seven days to seduce your way to VDay.