With a quick flick of the wrist, imagine – just for a second – that you can beam off any superpower you desire. Maybe you could make anyone bend to your will, or perhaps you could read minds.
Whatever it is, you are damn good at it. So good that, as you become more settled into your superhuman ability, you develop the ho hums. You casually inspect your nails as a blinding beam of light hits your target – wham! Yawn. It’s just another typical day where someone’s putty in your hands and you’re still a badass.
But then one day, you lethargically flick that wrist of yours again on a new target, and for some odd reason, it’s not working. Flick, flick, flick – nothing! You panic. Have your superpowers disappeared?
You frantically work your magic on someone else and, to your relief, you still “got it,” baby.
But what is it about that person? Why is she impervious to your spell? Why is it that she cannot soften into clay under your charms?
You are now intrigued.
This is the one person that stands out from all the rest and, for the first time, threatens your dominion. It scares you, challenges you, and finally, excites you.
Now what the hell, you must be wondering, does this have to do with players and how to win their hearts?
Anyone who has truly mastered the art of seduction – luring unsuspecting victims into their “love lair” – lowkey believes they have an amazing ability that makes them all-powerful. Like our superhero, there’s also an element of feeling blasé. To the player, it seems as if everyone around ’em are gullible suckers who do not have the wits to challenge him or her.
Boring!
Sure players get a rush in having their victims wrapped around their little fingers. They get a kick out of confirming that their subtle strategies, whether it’s whispering bullsh-t sweet nothings or being manipulatively Machiavellian, are infallible and fail-safe.
But the thrill is momentary.
After winning the trophy – their target woman or man – they are, once again, swept with a wave of ennui, and they’re already looking for their next victim to snag a new gold medal to hang on their wall.
In their delusions of grandeur, they’re unbeatable. They believe they’re intellectually superior and everyone else is, well, stupid AF. That’s until they stumble upon that one person who is strangely impenetrable to their seductive schemes.
She doesn’t fluster when flattered.
She doesn’t deflate when he disappears.
She doesn’t soften as he slithers.
She is the one who intrigues him.
Though she may not defrost under a player’s spell, this doesn’t mean that she’s cold. Oh no, no, no – au contraire. In fact, she can do something no other woman has done before her and that’s warm him up – getting his heart thumping and his mind jogging – by challenging him, daring him to engage in a little brain-teasing bachata.
“I know what you’re doing,” she’d tell the player with a suggestive wink, “and that’s not what’s going to work on me.”
The player will try to exhaust every trick in the book on her – flick, flick, flick – as she dodges and swerves all his schemes, all the strategies that have worked on every other woman before her.
He’s met his match.
At the brink of defeat, he’ll then realize that the absence of game – his authentic self – is what revitalizes his puppetry over her. After a long time of dimness, a beam of light finally shoots out of his palm, hits her and she bends to his will. But this time, unlike all of his previous victims, she is a willing marionette.
He’ll fall in love knowing that he’s loved back as who he really is – not his “superhero” persona.
So the only way to win a player’s heart is to be the one person – the only person – who can knock him off his game. But then you must build ’em back up, electrifying his mind, body, and spirit, by being the challenger who’s always just one step ahead.
Kimberly Gedeon, founder of The Melody of Melanin, is a content creator with nearly 2,000 professional articles published online about everything from beauty and business to politics and pop culture. You can say hello to her on Instagram or Twitter – she doesn’t bite!
