Wild Attraction, a Ruthlessly Practical Guide to Extraordinary Relationship Hot

If you want to look at your existing or intended relationships, this book takes a radically different approach based on various energies in the human body, both physical and subtle. One of these energetic forces within us is what the authors call, gender attraction. What makes the book unique is the focus the authors bring to these feminine and masculine gender energetics and the enormous influence they have on our intimate relationships.
Candidacy is the term in the book used describe those individuals seeking new relationships and they provide many pointers from the perspective of this new paradigm on how to go about connecting with a suitable long-term partner. I found myself wishing I had been given this book years ago as it has insights that would undoubtedly have improved my long-term relationships.
Sprinkled throughout the book are Energetic Facts of Life many of which I was unaware until reading this book. For example, “The culture encourages people to believe that, deep down, they instinctively know all that they really need to know about love. In fact no single human endeavor demands more attention, study and insight than romantic relationship.” “People think that romantic love is about duos. This isn’t true. An extraordinary relationship is really a trio, a three-way connection between you, your partner, and the intelligent force of gender.” “Although physical beauty gives people confidence and thus is almost universally seen as the cause of attraction, in fact physical beauty is a relatively minor player.” Your personal confidence and willingness to engage the full machinery of energetic attraction are the key factors in sexual allure.”
The authors claim, “You can be taught to speak and understand a whole language of give-and-take with other people, and of separation and merging, that will allow you to do great things in the area of relationship and attraction and in many other worthy pursuits.” Further, “The more you pay attention to gender outside yourself, the greater the chance that you will respect the needs and interests of the gender within yourself and potential or actual mates.” The authors discuss how to distinguish unsafe or unavailable partners from those who are safe and available, and how to assess your own availability or ‘unsafeness.’.
Gender attraction goes much deeper than lust. “.. both gender essences are driven by one overwhelming demand: to experience the other as deeply and completely as possible, the ultimate expression of this being the complete merging of male and female essences of two people.” It can take many forms. “The drive is fundamentally energetic.” There are physical moves that can enable a person to control their own genderness and attractiveness. The authors demonstrate these powers by asking various volunteers to stand in various poses and having the audience evaluate their effects.
The book points out that the sitcom is one expression of the culture that serves to undermine gender attractiveness by glorifying male-female antagonism. They feel the effect of sitcoms on children serves to instill unnecessary pain in their futures. Quite a claim. Men and women out to get each other or insulting, abusing and making derogatory jokes about each other is no basis for an intimate relationship.
One of the most distinguishing differences between the genders is that men value themselves and therefore want recognition for what they “do,” women for “who they are.” “Extraordinary relationship depends on moving past need to a place where creative expression and mutual exploration of the Mystery becomes the predominant intent.” The partners must go beyond the merely sexual content and this book offers many clues on how to do that. For example, a frequent complaint by women is that they are not sufficiently claimed by their mates. The beginning of the essence of relationship is the exaltation of the feminine; the feminine is a first among equals and, in a sense is more fundamental than the male. Sorry guys. Celebrating the feminine is important. “Failing to pay attention is the number one shortcoming of men in relationships.” “The female person must feel this attention or she will feel unseen and unloved.” It is apparently possible to convey this attention even when reading the newspaper at breakfast when one’s mate comes into the room. Unfortunately, “People are trained to think they have a license to be who they think they are and still get love. No such license exists in the worldview of Wild Attraction.” “Perhaps the most single bit of wisdom Wild Attraction has to offer both men and women is this: anything that damages any person’s innate ability to love and appreciate both gender essences is a grave and terrible injury.”
The authors touch on what they call ‘noncandidate love.’ They use such terms as ‘the hobbled male’ and ‘the woman in a bottle’ to characterize these people, and go on to discuss the languages of gender. One of their energetic facts states: People think they love and need the male or the female. This is wrong. In reality you need what the male and female together create: a blended “supergender.” “Extraordinary relationships must in the end exist to affirm that love exists, rather than to serve the false good of need.”
Much of the second half of the book devotes itself to discussing ways in which relationships can be improved, and asserts that many if not most relationships can be made extraordinary. The three prime building blocks to achieving extraordinary relationship are composed of three lists, the six stages of relationship, the five steps to candidacy, and the power rituals required for extraordinary love.
Spirituality is important in that “The cultural model for engaging spirituality and the non-ordinary often involves a diminished, marginalized view of the physical body and the celebration of the imagination and personality.” Feeling the energy is more important than the visualization.
I found the Wild Attraction model to offer many new insights into creating and maintaining extraordinary committed relationships, even gay relationships. As an engagement or wedding present it has the potential to transform the relationship of a couple into a memorable one for all concerned, far more profound than some spoons or quilt or set of towels.

--Jim Ward, Echo Magazine

Imagine eating your way through a delicious soup, chewing succulent carrots, hearty potatoes, and tantalizing herb flavors; you glory in how you are being nourished and then notice they are all floating in a broth of shark spit. This image sums up my reaction to Wild Attraction, the Energetic Facts of Life, by Paul and Patricia Richards.

The author’s initial discussion about educating people to utilize energetics in daily relationships was promising for me. Wild Attraction specifically charges that by learning to activate and respect energies he calls male or female “gender essence,” people can conduct long-time respectful and terminally exciting romantic sexualized relationships. Each chapter is introduced by an “energetic fact of life” and many of them provide fair information: i.e., “pay attention to the minute details of a partner and praise them daily.” I also resonated with the concept that partners often speak “different languages,” meaning one person might literally want to be told what a great job they did on something to feel appreciated, while another might crave different words or gestures.

Wild Attraction poses the premise that everyone has male and female gender essences in each armpit when static, energies literally seen by some people. This energy, when activated, causes others to be literally drawn in attraction. The book indicates that by training, partners can keep this sense activated, thereby retaining the erotic thrill of electricity during long-time relationships. Some of the principles of mindfulness, mutual respect and actual listening to a partner’s needs are realistic and reasonable. Unfortunately, relatively soon into the book I started choking on the compulsively heterosexist and sexist language. He did, on 3 separate occasions, speak to “same-sex couples,” which, he felt, were still dealing with the basic “majority male’ or majority female” gender essence energy. The author states that any gender person might have more female or male essence at any time and that it could change over time. There is a ring of reality to this; as many people experience, “stuckness in rigid roles,” can be a deathnell in relationships.

The book’s sour broth of shark spit was the incredibly sexist perceptions of female and male gender essences. He reports physical movements activate gender energies; for females, raising hands above the head and shifting weight unevenly versus males who distribute weight evenly and put their hands on their hips. He describes that males (or those with more male gender essence) will feel “loved and appreciated” most when told they did a good job, versus female gender essence which “needs” to hear “I love you.” According to this doctrine, a male’s “job” in the courting dance is to demonstrate the ability and willingness to make quick decisions regarding the female without her consent “taking charge,” while a female gender essence needs to “provide a warm respite from the male’s world of daily demands.” Additionally, a female’s essence “thrives on loving adult indulgence, and men don’t need it or want it but thrive on appreciation for their doing. A daily dose of good job is enough for the aware male.”

I find this “in the box” thinking of “passive feminine versus active masculine” tiring and scary. It worries me to think this "self-claimed aware male” might not recognize the irony that he lists the “production of children outside the social support network of a pair bond” second in the list of “serious consequences” arising from sexuality and seems to connect “the awesome destructive power of rape and sexual abuse” to sexuality rather than dominating power and anger. This type of thinking honestly made me embarrassed to appreciate ANY of this book. People could find some basic energetic or relational positives from it, but I would highly recommend being prepared to cast off some dangerous basic beliefs about the ‘true energetic nature” of feminine and masculine.

Alaina Zipp