How To Be A Heartbreaker
I’ve broken more hearts than I care to discuss. Growing up, my uncles and the older boys shook their heads, clicked their tongues, and chastised “Oh just you wait, she’s gonna be a heartbreaker” when I walked in a room.
But I didn’t want to be here!
Knowing I’ve broken hearts fills me with guilt and agony. All I wanted to do was fall in love, find someone to share my deepest secrets with and cherish always, then get married and make a lot of pretty babies, and grow old together. Yet somehow again and again we wind up in a mess. The game of broken hearts – leaving my suitors forever despising me when all I wanted to do was love them. How did this happen? How did we get here?
Really, this isn’t about how to be a heartbreaker. At least not in intent. It’s how to make people instantly and immediately fall madly in love with you. Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll last forever. My statistical analysis concludes it more frequently ends in heartbreak, and “How to Be a Heartbreaker” seemed a more apt title. And yet, here you go – a few helpful hints to make people crazy about you.
1. TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE
“And this must come as the night, the day.” I promise, Shakespeare isn’t outdated and contains plenty of advice which holds true even still. You’ve probably heard at some point to “Fake it until you make it” because being confident makes people trust and believe in you. True confidence takes time, but learning the affect of it doesn’t. We’re primates so interactions between people aren’t so often about content as they are about body language and micro-expressions. Oh, you just got done describing about how you’re a radiological chemist at a nuclear plant who enjoys reading Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” in her spare time. And this bitch decides she’s going to give you an eyeroll to let everyone know she thinks you’re trying to hard? Look her dead in the eye, pause, and go right back to your conversation be it Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever other nerdy stuff you want to talk about. The act of acknowledgement and dismissal is all in the game of demonstrating who is the alpha, and the alpha is someone who knows what they want, how to get it, and doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. Project confidence about the things you love and people will believe in you. They’ll also be interested because you’re acting like a boss.
2. PEOPLE ARE MOSTLY INTERESTED IN THEMSELVES
I don’t mean this in a cynical way. It’s inevitable and natural. Living for others is virtuous, but you’re stuck with yourself all the time. Why wouldn’t you care about yourself the most? Knowing this fact is a tool. Say you’re alone at a part or bar sitting near someone you don’t know. You make awkward eye contact. Clearly you should say something to break the tension, but what? A lot of people will start babbling about themselves. An article they read, a thing they did, etc., etc. If you want people to like you, you’ll ask them about themselves instead. Honestly, it doesn’t matter what you get them started on. Continue walking them down the rabbit hole of their own psyche. Ask them questions about what they want and what they think. Even the shyest introvert enjoys an intimate conversation, and the direct focus of a stranger asking questions about you and only you is terribly flattering. Unlock their souls; you’ll unlock their love.
3. BE UTTERLY SPARKLING
Please don’t take this like I’m a creepy dude telling a woman to smile. “Sparkle, baby! Sparkle!” Have you heard that just the act of smiling at a person will trigger them to become happier? It’s scientifically proven! Even if you’re feeling grumpy, when a person smiles at you, there’s a trigger in your brain to get some oxytocin flowing and mellow you out. Then, blessed with your new good mood, you do it to another person and the happiness propagates. If you’re a happy –what I like to call a sparkling – person, people will want to be around you. A lot. We’re in short supply these days. But I’ll warn you, becoming a happy, sparkling person is the hardest heartbreaker category to obtain. It’s not like you snap your fingers and become a happy person. It takes years of soul searching rumination about life and existence to create a state of effusive happiness you’re able to radiate. In a world of tragedy and injustice, you must find a way to be at peace with the universe. Knowing and accepting that bad things will happen while ever maintain hope and faith we’re improving the world.
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Not what you were expecting was it? But this is what happens. I meet a person. I talk to them. I ask them questions about themselves and their lives. I radiate warmth and good charm, ever nodding and smiling. I ask them more questions. I make them think that in the instant they are talking to me, they are the most important and fascinating person in the universe. No one else is as wonderful or interesting as they are. And they can open themselves because here is a person who truly understands. And they fall. And they fall hard. Because it’s so utterly addictive to be looked at in this way.
And then I move onto the next person, leaving a wake of shattered, disillusioned hearts along the way. Regretful, but unremorseful for you are all such wonderful puzzles to be solved.