For over a decade, both liberal academics and conservative critics have shared a false assumption about my past work in attraction and relationships. They believed it was all about tricks—ways to “get one over on the other person,” polished routines to tip the scales in your favour.
But lasting attraction—like love and connection—cannot be faked.
You can wear the sharpest suit, rehearse the best lines, play the part flawlessly for a while. But if the person beneath the performance isn’t confident, congruent, and honest, the act collapses sooner or later.
Tricks might get you attention, but they never earn you real respect. And without self-respect, every “success” tastes hollow.
The question underneath all this isn’t about dating or charisma. It’s moral. It’s about who we become when we trade honesty for control.
The False Promise of Tricks
Manipulation offers a simple bargain: comfort now, cost later.
It whispers that honesty is too risky. That people only want a polished version of you. That truth will drive them away.
And for a time, manipulation seems to work. It can get you the date, the applause, the temporary compliance from your team. You might even start believing that you’ve outsmarted the system.
But underneath the short-term win sits a silent saboteur. You know, somewhere deep down, that it wasn’t you who was chosen. It was the act. The mask.
So, you double down. You keep performing, hoping that if you never drop the act, no one will notice the difference. But with every trick, your confidence bleeds away. What began as control turns into captivity.
The performance becomes the prison.
Sartre called this “bad faith”—the act of pretending to be something we’re not, denying both our freedom and our responsibility. When we live in bad faith, we deceive not only others but ourselves. We lie about what we want, who we are, and what matters most.
And when we manipulate others, we don’t just deceive them—we steal their freedom too. We take away their ability to choose freely, because their choice was based on a lie. That’s not cleverness. That’s theft.
The Cost of Winning the Wrong Game
The cruel irony of manipulation is that it works just enough to keep you hooked.
You get short-term results—approval, admiration, attention—but at the cost of long-term peace. You win the wrong game. You start to measure your worth by how convincing your act is.
You gain followers but lose trust. You gain attention but lose intimacy. You gain success but lose yourself.
Self-respect withers quietly in that exchange. Because every time you manipulate, you teach yourself that the real you isn’t enough.
That’s where impostor syndrome grows—from the fear that if people ever saw behind the mask, they’d abandon you. And so, you keep the act alive, never realising the act is what’s suffocating you.
The problem with false methods isn’t that they fail to deliver results—it’s that they deliver the wrong kind of results. Success built on deceit or performance can never satisfy, because it’s not truly yours.
It’s like standing in a room full of applause and feeling completely unseen.
Authenticity Isn’t Naïveté
Many assume authenticity means blurting out whatever comes to mind or never improving yourself. That’s a misunderstanding.
Authenticity doesn’t mean avoiding growth. It means your growth is grounded in honesty.
It’s not manipulation to improve your posture or your voice. It’s not deceit to dress well or learn better communication. Those things don’t change who you are; they help you express it more clearly.
When you speak with confidence instead of mumbling, when you care for your body, when you develop emotional range or social ease—you’re not “gaming” anyone. You’re allowing your real self to come through, unblocked by fear or insecurity.
That’s not trickery. That’s self-respect in action.
The difference lies in intention. Are you trying to reveal yourself or conceal yourself? One path builds trust. The other breeds anxiety.
The Moral Core of Connection
Attraction and leadership both rest on one moral foundation: respect for freedom—yours and the other person’s.
To manipulate is to deny freedom. It’s to engineer outcomes by controlling what the other person sees or knows. You might get obedience or attention that way, but never true trust.
Authenticity, by contrast, honours freedom. It allows the other person to see you clearly and decide for themselves. It takes courage because it risks rejection. But it’s the only way to build a relationship that’s real.
C.S. Lewis once described love as “the gift of one’s self.” To love is to let yourself be seen, not the curated version, but the actual human being underneath. And that’s also what makes leadership noble. True leadership doesn’t coerce; it invites.
A great leader says, “Here’s the vision. Here’s who I am. You’re free to walk away if it’s not for you. But if this speaks to you, I’d love for you to join me.” That transparency doesn’t weaken authority—it strengthens it. It builds loyalty based on trust, not fear.
Likewise, in dating, honesty about what you want—whether it’s a long-term relationship or a casual connection—creates dignity for both people. You both get to choose freely. And the ones who stay are the ones who are right for you.
That’s what self-respect looks like in action: the courage to tell the truth, even when it costs you in the short term.
The Fear Behind Manipulation
Why do people still choose tricks over truth, even when they know the cost?
Fear.
Fear of rejection. Fear of being seen. Fear of being “ordinary.”
We all carry parts of ourselves that learned early on that honesty was dangerous—that being too eager, too emotional, too real would drive others away. Those parts still whisper, “Don’t show them who you are. They’ll laugh. They’ll leave.”
Internal Family Systems therapy calls these parts protectors. They were once useful. They shielded you from pain when you were too young to handle it. But if you keep letting them run the show, they trap you in a life of hiding.
Authenticity starts with understanding these fears instead of fighting them. You don’t crush them; you comfort them. You say, “I know you’re scared. But I’ve got this now.”
When your protective parts can finally relax, you stop needing the mask. You stop needing tricks. You stop needing to “get one over” on anyone, because you no longer see life as a battle for approval.
The Freedom of Being Seen
At first, authenticity feels like standing naked in the cold. Every instinct says to cover up again.
But then something surprising happens. You realise that being seen, flaws and all, isn’t as terrifying as you thought. It’s freeing.
You no longer have to perform. You no longer live with the background hum of anxiety, waiting for the mask to slip. The relief that comes from dropping pretence is profound.
And the people who stay—partners, friends, colleagues—are there for the real you. That’s what authentic connection requires.
Because connection without truth isn’t connection at all. It’s just an act.
The paradox is that authenticity looks risky but is far more secure than manipulation. When you’re honest, there’s nothing left to hide. You can relax into your own skin. You can respect yourself. And that self-respect radiates outwards—it’s magnetic.
What Authentic Attraction Really Means
True attraction—whether romantic or professional—emerges from congruence. From alignment between who you are, what you value, and how you show up.
It’s the difference between integrity and mere charm. Charm says what works. Integrity says what’s true.
In the long run, integrity wins. Because the people drawn to authenticity are capable of trust. They value truth over illusion. They’re the kind of people who build deep partnerships, loyal teams, meaningful lives.
And if someone still insists that attraction coaching—or any kind of personal growth—is about getting one over on the other, that says more about their own fears and insecurities and shame than anything else. They can’t imagine a world where self-improvement and self-respect and courage are enough.
But there is such a world. And once you’ve experienced it, you’ll never want to go back.
The Daoist Lesson
Ancient Daoist philosophy has a word for the state of authenticity: ziran 自然 (often translated as “naturalness”).
It’s the art of being spontaneous without artifice—moving with the grain of life rather than against it.
When you pretend, you create tension between who you are and how you appear. When you drop pretence, that tension dissolves. You move more freely, respond more creatively, live more lightly.
Ziran isn’t laziness. It’s harmony. It’s the courage to stop forcing and start allowing—to let the truth of who you are guide what you do.
That’s the same courage that underpins attraction, leadership, and love. It’s not about polishing a persona. It’s about coming home to your true self.
The Deeper Question
The deeper question, then, isn’t “How can I get results?” but “Who am I becoming as I pursue them?”
Because success achieved through manipulation always carries a shadow of self-disgust. You might fool others for a while, but you can never fool yourself.
Authenticity, by contrast, restores inner harmony. When your actions match your values, you no longer live in conflict. You sleep well at night. You can look in the mirror and like the person looking back.
That’s real success. Not applause. Not metrics. Integrity.
The Invitation
The choice we all face, in relationships and leadership alike, is simple but not easy:
Do you want the appearance of control, or the reality of respect?
Do you want mere compliance, or trust?
Do you want to be admired for the mask, or loved for who you truly are?
Every day offers small moments to choose—telling the truth instead of trying to smooth it over, admitting a fear instead of trying to hide it, saying what you mean instead of just what sounds good.
Each moment of honesty builds self-trust, and that self-trust becomes the foundation for true confidence, connection, courage.
The work I lead others in has never been about tricks or manipulation. It’s about helping people find that foundation again—the courage to stop hiding, the strength to be seen, and the wisdom to respect the freedom of others as much as their own.
Because only then can attraction, leadership, and love become what they were always meant to be: expressions of integrity, not instruments of control.
If this message resonates, listen to the full episode on the Beyond Success Podcast:
🎧 Episode 58 – “Why Manipulation Always Backfires (& Authenticity Wins In The End)”
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