On the commentary site Intellectual Takeout Barry Brownstein remarks about Elizabeth Gilbert’s saga of self-discovery, Eat Pray Love:

In a 2015 New York Times essay “Confessions of a Seduction Addict,” Gilbert confesses that in her youth she “careened from one intimate [non-monogamous] entanglement to the next—dozens of them—without so much as a day off between romances.”

“Sex was just the gateway drug,” she writes. Gilbert was after “seduction”:

Seduction is the art of coercing somebody to desire you, of orchestrating somebody else’s longings to suit your own hungry agenda. Seduction was never a casual sport for me; it was more like a heist, adrenalizing and urgent. I would plan the heist for months, scouting out the target, looking for unguarded entries. Then I would break into his deepest vault, steal all his emotional currency and spend it on myself.

“Steal…emotional currency and spend it on myself?” What can be more vicious?