Seduction According to the Tao of Steve, Pt. 1: Be Desireless

The Tao of Steve gives men 3 rules to seduction. The first of these is “Be desireless.” But just how does being desireless help you hook in girls?

In the early days of the seduction community, a little-seen romantic comedy became a hot topic of discussion among seducers.

That film was 2000’s The Tao of Steve, about an overweight male kindergarten teacher who routinely beds new women following a simple formula:

1. Be desireless
2. Be excellent
3. Be gone

The film (which won an award at Sundance) isn’t something cooked up from nothing in the brain of a Hollywood scriptwriter.

It’s actually a biopic of a man named Duncan North, who the scriptwriters became intimately familiar with (pun intended – he slept with one of the writers & actresses when she was in her early 20s – the one who plays his counterpart Dex’s main love interest in the film, Syd. Another fun note: Dex’s house in the movie was actually Duncan’s house in real life).

Here’s how they described Duncan in an interview:

He’s a good-looking heavy guy. You wouldn’t suspect him of being any sort of lothario. One friend of his told him if he lost a little weight maybe he could get some women. And he said, dude, I’ve had more women than you’ll ever have in your life. Another time, Duncan had this really good-looking roommate and they ended up liking the same woman. The good-looking guy said, “You’ll never get her.” And of course she went for Duncan.

Jenniphr Goodman, the lead scriptwriter, lived with her husband and Duncan for 1.5 years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and while there she picked his brain on his approach to life and women.

The result was The Tao of Steve, and Dex’s (Donal Logue’s) three rules for success with women, a sort of boiled down, structured approach to Duncan North’s method.

Many guys have gotten a lot out of the movie. One online quote about from a now-deleted Reddit board reads

The first time I saw the Tao of Steve, it had a major effect on my game. In fact, it was the first time I had really thought about game and why and how it works. I had always been vaguely aware of the fact that some people simply held more attraction than others, and that this attraction didn’t neatly correlate to physical appearance. But the idea that a person could actually learn and perfect the art of attraction, regardless of their physical appearance, was a new, and captivating, concept for me.

What’s so great about the Tao of Steve?

I’m going to put the Tao of Steve under a microscope in this series.

It’s a fun, different method from most of what you’ll find in modern game styles – but actually had quite a bit of influence on the early seduction community.