See, Cluin, here's the key for me in attraction. What is someone really after in terms of sex/relationship/love/whatever you call it?

Are they dealing in...

1. A search merely for fun?
2. A way to exercise their power (plus have some fun on the side)?
3. A search for intimacy and affection?

To search merely for fun is quite common, and I find no objection to that really. It's kind of innocent and a lot of people do it. Okay. But I take romantic involvement too seriously myself to just search for fun.

The search for power is a different thing altogether, and to me it's ultimately a dangerous and ugly thing. People have no business exercising that kind of power over each other. Now to me the classic vamp (or the classic male casanova/seducer) is primarily a person searching for power. They're using their sexuality to hold sway over another person and enjoy the thrill of their own power. The other person is merely an accessory to the act, and accessories can be easily replaced. I don't care for that approach at all, and I instinctively attempt to avoid it.

What attracts me is the genuine search for shared intimacy and affection, for mutual understanding.

Now many people, truth be told, are somewhat a mixture of those three qualities or modes of behaviour, but the aggressive vamp primarily works through the mode of exercising seductive power and achieving conquest. This makes for great entertainment in a movie, but in real life I would tend to avoid such people like the plague, because they are dangerous on a personal/emotional level, and they don't really give a damn, because they're strictly in it for themselves.

This is fully demonstrated in the plot of the excellent movie "Body Heat". The woman in the movie is undoubtedly very attractive, but she's also like a Black Widow spider. She's strictly in it for herself.