Healthy Influence – Persuasion Blog

“So, tell me about this new fella of yours.”

“Well, he’s cute, he’s got a good job, he really likes kids, and he loves his mother.”

“Wow. Sounds like a catch.”

“Yeah, pretty much, but, you know?”

“The toilet seat thing?”

“Well, gee, I wasn’t thinking about THAT, but now that you mention it, I fell ALL IN the other night. Coulda killed him. And he’s OB-sessed with Sports Center and he’s ALWAYS checking out other girls. And, he drinks WAY too much with his POSS-e, especially with that LAMER, Dwyane. Definitely need to drop some persuasion on him.”

. . .

Ever heard a conversation something like that? Even without the toilet seat thing, everyone knows that men need a fair amount of training before they can truly become a good husband. So, why not a little touch of persuasion in the night?

Let’s work both sides of this fence.

We’ll start on this side of the fence. For your guy persuasion project, you might consider a swell book like my Persuasion Guide. A book with a little bit of theory and a lot of practical applications, a great sense of humor, and it’s written by a guy who’s housebroken. What more could a smart girl like you want from a book or a man?

Now, let’s try the other side of the fence. After you read my book (or Robert Cialdini’s classic, “Influence”), let’s sit down together and contemplate.

Consider with me, love.

Here’s Paul from I Corinthians.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy;
love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Now, Shakespeare in Sonnet 116.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Look at two key lines. First, Paul claims . . . love does not seek its own. Second, William asserts . . . Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.

Persuasion, Steve counters in contrast, does “seek its own.” Persuasion does aim “to alter an alteration” or “to bend with the remover to remove.” Persuasion is not love and indeed persuasion moves away from or, worse still, against love.

Persuasion disrupts, distracts, and dissolves love.  Persuasion surveils your lover to understand how best to make a change.  Persuasion puts your preferences in your lover.  And, even if the your lover benefits from this change, it is still a change you created in his head, heart, or body that he had ignored, dismissed, or resisted. Persuasion is not love.

Add persuasion to love and love will not absorb it. You possess not a larger love, but a love with a contradiction, a claim that my love accepts my lover, all the while that love alters or removes or seeks for itself.

So, must love fall in the water, suffer sports and posses, and always turn a cheek when he fancies other fair cheeks?

No.

If he loves you with a love from Paul and William as you do with him, then the distress you display or disclose should cause him to move with you as you would move with him. I urge you to love first and always before persuasion.

And, when that fails, as it will since we possess a human nature that includes selfishness disguised as justification, please search other sources for loving change that requires no persuasion.

But, if you bring persuasion to your lover, realize that you are not only changing him, but you are changing your love as well.