Don Juan, the "serial groom," is presented as a conqueror, never as a lover. While beauty may be the initial awakening of desire, longing is about conquest, which takes place with strategic warfare and fades as soon as the victim is overwhelmed: "once you have overwhelmed her once [...] all the beauty of passion is over."
His speech is filled with warlike metaphors: I fight, I storm, I overwhelm, I conquer, I win, I soar from victory to victory, the young woman who surrenders her arms, are some of the expressions he uses to ultimately identify with Alexander the Great, seeking other worlds to expand his romantic conquests.
Erika Fischer-Lichte sees in Don Juan the humiliation of an entire social caste. As there are no longer territorial claims, the field of conquests shifts to the realm of love, and supremacy, as she argues, is exercised through seduction.
Additionally, the psychic pain that the hero inflicts on his victims acts as an aphrodisiac, most notably illustrated by the tears of his wife, Elvira.
