Love secrets from Casanova
By Susan Swan

from Dating & Personals: MSN Match.com website

Born in Venice in 1725, Giacomo Casanova was a soldier, adventurer, spy, novelist—and perhaps the most famous ladies' man in history. Men often assume Casanova was so successful with women because he possessed some secret knowledge of the female body or was a master of 18th-century aphrodisiacs. Casanova did like to feed oysters to his companion with his lips, but his reputation as one of the world's greatest lovers was built not on secret potions or bedroom tricks, but on the fact that he adored women and devoted himself to them, heart and soul. Here are some reasons women loved Casanova as ardently as he loved them:

He thought every woman was special. No Bo Derek clones or one-to-ten rankings for Casanova. He loved one woman at a time, and although he lavished compliments on them, his praise was based on what made each woman unique. Nothing was too insignificant to mention; he may have admired the way she ate a peach. (When he met Henriette, his greatest love, she was disguised as a soldier; he told her he admired her “whimsical” uniform.) He also liked intelligence and believed that an ugly, witty woman seduced through the charms of her mind.

How can you put this lesson into practice? Look for what makes a woman different from everyone else, and tell her how much you appreciate it—one unique comment can be a hundred times more appreciated than a generic “you're so beautiful.”

He loved listening to women talk. Many women read books by or about men to find out what men think, but how many men read books to learn about women? No such fears troubled Casanova. Proud of his masculinity, he would be shocked by anyone who thought it was unmanly to listen to women talk. He once famously said, “I've never made love to a woman whose language I didn't speak because I like to enjoy myself in all my senses at once.” In his view, good conversation was the best foreplay—the first step in a seduction—and he liked both partners to take pleasure in it. So instead of taking the conversational lead on your next date, try engaging your date on a topic she's really interested in talking about. You might be surprised by what she has to say.

He treasured and respected women as friends. Being friends with women was just as important to Casanova as being lovers—he wasn't out to degrade or debauch. He once remarked that women were like books: You need to read more than the title in order to enjoy them. Because of his deep respect for women, he would never “love 'em and leave 'em”—in fact, he maintained close friendships with many of his lovers all his life. It may sound obvious, but treating a potential date with the same attention and respect you'd give to any friend will go a long way toward winning her heart.

He lived life to its fullest. Casanova felt that happiness was the world's greatest aphrodisiac. He knew that pursuing pleasure and love wasn't a distraction from personal fulfillment, but a worthy end in itself, and he would have laughed at our stressed-out, overachieving culture. To be loved by Casanova was to be well-fed and sensually satiated. Why not take a cue from him? Slow down and celebrate your life. A passion for living is always irresistible.

Susan Swan's new novel, What Casanova Told Me , is based on a long-lost journal linking two women with Casanova across two centuries.