School of Pierre Mignard · oil portrait, 17th c. · public domain
1650s · Paris
Ninon de l’Enclos
She ended things warmly, on purpose
Saint-Simon, who lived at the same time, recorded that she kept one lover at a time and told him plainly when it was over. He wrote that the men she left never dared take revenge on the man who replaced them, and were "too happy to remain on the footing of friend of the house." She refused her lovers’ money, ran a salon that demanded real conversation, supported the young Molière, and left money so that the young Voltaire could buy books.
Source · Saint-Simon, Mémoires; Britannica
Principle 03 · our reading
Friendship is not a second prize
Taught in Topic 04 · Out of the Friendzone
Why we teach it
Not knowing where you stand keeps you going over things again and again. An unsettled situation keeps producing the thoughts that our Rejection Room exists to stop. A clear ending is easier to recover from than a slow fade.
The exercise
This month, end one unclear situation warmly and on purpose. Do not let it fade into silence.
The warning
It only works if the friendship is real. If you offer friendship as a way of waiting for them to change their mind, it is not friendship. It is waiting in a longer line.
Who Ninon was, and why we chose her
1620 – 1705
She was a French writer, musician and courtesan who ran one of the most important salons in seventeenth-century Paris. Her father played the lute and taught her to sing and play. She retired as a courtesan in 1671. After that, her gatherings became both fashionable and respectable, and they attracted Molière, Scarron and Saint-Évremond. She refused money from her lovers and kept her independence in a century that gave women very little. In her will she left money for books for the young Voltaire, whose father managed her affairs late in her life. Sources disagree about her year of birth. 1620 is given most often, and 1623 also appears.
Why we chose them · our reading
She is the only person in this course for whom we have a record of ending relationships well. A writer of her time recorded that the men she left never dared take revenge on the man who replaced them. Almost every book about attraction stops at the beginning. We chose her for what comes after.
Ninon’s principle is practiced in Topic 04, Out of the Friendzone: a 1:07 video and 10 real-life exercises.
The other masters
- Ovid — The first book anyone wrote about this
- Cleopatra VII — She made him come to her
- Giacomo Casanova — What his memoirs really show
- Madame de Pompadour — She brought a world with her
- Lord Byron — Why being unavailable is not a strategy
- Gabriele d’Annunzio — Proof that attention matters more than looks
- Grigori Rasputin — His enemies invented most of his legend
- Marilyn Monroe — She could switch it on
- Joséphine Baker — Being playful worked better than being polished