What a pretty word!
Who hasn't enjoyed seducing or being seduced
I believe that in my case, both types apply. Now we need to explain what this is all about.
Of course, we are not talking here about being seduced by a landscape or a work of art, nor about having to seduce a high ranking person for some reward, we are rather talking about seduction between a woman and a man.

The man loves to be seduced.

Let's remember Adam who could not resist the fruit that Eve offered him. He succumbed with delight to the advances of the woman that he then called seductress.

Speaking of the Bible, we remember Potiphar's wife, the seductress who did not go out of her way to tell Joseph the dreamer: 'Lie with me', translation from Egyptian: 'Let's make a happy day'.

Do we ever escape from the woman, from her fresh and tempting body that smells of blue lotus and starry night? For there is no truce possible.

I remember a physiotherapist, who became a friend in the long run but nothing more, who confided in me her little secrets about what she likes in life: blue (the color of my eyes), tea (my favorite drink), Indian food (which she likes as much as I do), making love in all kinds of ways (I didn't let her hear anything about it), wine (which I also like), Vichy water and 'being seduced'.

I couldn't understand that she was seducing me, telling me about her separation from her husband, all with a rather languid look. Maybe she wasn't tempting me, although a little later, deprived of sex, I started to think of asking her again.
It remains that there was a cloud of seduction in this short relation and that it depends only on us to put the end to it which would please us. Did I have any pleasure in hearing her talk to me like that?

Quite possibly! Is temptation part of seduction?
Are we tempted to seduce or to be seduced?

I remember a passage I read about mating in animals. I found it very interesting because we find the same characteristics in humans.

It all starts around dinner, which is a form of courtship. Animals do it. The males especially who wish to copulate. They start by offering food to the females. Penguins do it, monkeys, scorpions and insects do it too. And humans. The object is to prove to the female that he can provide for her. Men can be the biggest seducers, but women are the ones who decide if they will sleep with them.

When a male tamarin wants to mate with a female, he appears before her, carrying a baby tamarin on his back. This gesture seduces the female. In other words, he seems to be saying to her: This is the kind of caring father I will be to your children. It is a fact that females prefer health to well-being.

To know more about seduction, you should read 'the seducer's manual' written by Ovid, the darling of all and who spoke about his experiences. Impotent as he was, he spent his time in a perpetual state of agitation, talking about his fetishism, his jealousy, and exposing the anatomy of his lust. His poetry, moreover, reflects the boisterous morality of the women of the high society who fought boredom. He married three times and had several adventures

He even wrote charming poems about his robust love for women, how they tormented his soul, and the flirtations observed during receptions in Rome.
He even wrote charming poems about his robust love for women, how they tormented his soul, and the flirtations he observed during receptions in Rome. It was an "asexual heaven" and he said: "No, thank you women, you are a sweet hell".

Wasn't it Plutarch who presented Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexual love, as a depraved seductress, causing the ruin of great men? It was indeed a Roman propaganda

As for Socrates, for him, the political art is that of flattery or at least that of handling appearances. The politician has indeed to move and to move crowds and masses, all in exteriority and he only takes on them from outside by the force or the seduction.

I discovered another seducer in the person of Thomas Moore. This man who chose to die rather than renounce his faith. He was accused of treason and executed for refusing to recognize Henry VIII's divorce. He was accused of having attempted to the lives of some heretical Protestants, even burning them. However, he managed to seduce the people who loved him and was not accused of it.

I will now touch on another aspect of seduction in this long sentence taken from here and there: "What the temptation of adultery is for the laity, and what the unquenchable pleasure of riches is for the clergy, the seduction of knowledge is for the monks.

And now it is Erasmus' turn to join in this waltz. He who left us the "Praise to Folly" knows better than all that the first age is the most joyful and the most pleasant to live. If we love our children, if an enemy even helps them, is it not because there is in them the seduction of madness.

With Shakespeare, it is quite different, the characters in his plays practice a courtly love, but there is an important difference, instead of aspiring to seduction, they aspire to marriage.

And I, who only wanted to talk about seduction between a man and a woman, was mistaken.