Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

by Mark Manson

decide whatever you like in a woman by your own standards. If you like big girls or curvy girls, go for it. If you prefer black girls with dreadlocks, more power to you. If you like older women or younger women, cool. Don’t pressure yourself to live up to someone else’s standards. And again, for the love of god, if you don’t find her attractive, don’t pursue her.

Many men waste a lot of time convincing themselves that Unreceptive women may actually like them. A good rule of thumb here is, “if you have to ask, then that’s your answer.” That is, there should be no ambiguity here. And if there is, you can quickly solve it by simply stating to her, “I think you’re cute/pretty/attractive/funny/whatever, want to grab coffee/dinner/a drink sometime?” Problem solved. You’ll find out where you are very quickly.

The Friend Zone typically occurs when a man meets a Receptive or Neutral woman but never makes a move or expresses his interest. Instead, he behaves pleasantly, like a good friend would. In his mind, this is great because it means she likes talking to him, laughs at his jokes, etc. But because he’s withholding his sexual interest, he’s placing himself in her mind firmly in the “friend” camp.

Typically, if men have been friends with a woman for even a month or two without ever explicitly indicating their sexual interest in her, it’s likely too late.

Men also struggle a lot with the rejection, “I have a boyfriend.” Some men seem to get obsessed about whether this is actually true or she’s just saying it to reject him. Once again, it’s not about whether her statement is factual or not. It’s about her intention. The intention is, “I’m not interested.” Take that at face value and move on. Even if she doesn’t have a boyfriend, there’s no point in trying to win over a girl who is willing to lie about something like that to you. And if she does have a boyfriend, then she’s probably happy with him, otherwise, she wouldn’t have brought it up.

The goal with Neutral Women is to get them to stop being Neutral as soon as possible. As we mentioned earlier, women who are Neutral and who stay Neutral tend to eventually end up Unreceptive. You do this by expressing your vulnerability and your identity to them freely. When you express your truth to women, you will polarize them — they will either become Receptive to you or they will make themselves Unreceptive. When you express your truth, if you express more investment than them, then they will not be attracted to you and will therefore be Unreceptive. Also, if you express your truth and there is a high amount of friction between you and her that cannot be overcome, then she will become Unreceptive. If you express your truth and demonstrate not only that you’re non-needy but also frictionless for her (similar interests, values, life situation, etc.), then she will become very Receptive. And when I say very Receptive, I mean very.

A big misconception men have is that they think they need to behave in a way that makes every single woman like them – as if women were all the same. This is counterproductive because by altering your behavior to fit whatever she wants, it means you are not being vulnerable and, therefore, you are being needy and unattractive.

If there is one thing that narcissistic men accomplish well, it’s that they will polarize women quickly. Women will know more or less immediately if they’re interested in a narcissistic guy or not because he will be so overbearing and imposing she’ll have no choice other than to feel something for him. The problem with the narcissistic man is that the few women who become Receptive to him are not the type of women who are pleasant to be around (as they’re highly needy themselves).

Do Russian grammar lessons strike you as an effective pick up tactic? Probably not. But I dig it. And so did she. And she eventually became my girlfriend. My success was about expressing my identity, forcing her to make a decision about me and letting the chips fall where they may.

When you meet a Receptive woman, the goal is simple. You escalate. You make a move. You move things forward — assuming you want to, of course.

I’ve found that women who are Receptive to you to begin with will usually stay Receptive almost indefinitely. I think these are the only rare occasions when you can actually pry yourself out of the Friend Zone — these rare circumstances where she was always Receptive to you, but for whatever reason, you two weren’t able to be together (you had a girlfriend, she moved away for three years, etc.).

The percentage of women who are Receptive to you will increase proportionally to the quality of your lifestyle, your social status, and your looks. The percentage of women that you’re able to move from Neutral to Receptive will be proportional to how good your “game” is, or how well you’re able to communicate and express yourself with women. And your ability to sort through each type of women and meet as many as possible will be determined by how fearless and bold you are when it comes to meeting women.

Rejection exists for a reason. If you are a professor at a prestigious university, then you’re probably not going to enjoy your time with a high school dropout with an alcohol problem. Just because she has a nice ass doesn’t mean you want to be with her.

Men often want to have it both ways — they want to be able to avoid painful rejections, avoid saying something stupid, avoid embarrassing themselves, while at the same time being this attractive, amazing guy who women fall to their knees for. You can’t have it both ways. The two go together. You cannot be an attractive and life-changing presence to some women without being a joke or an embarrassment to others. You simply can’t. You have to be controversial. You have to polarize. It’s the name of the game. And getting good at the game is learning to open yourself up enough emotionally, learning to express your honest self enough and be comfortable enough with your vulnerability to take those embarrassing moments along with the moments of passion. A willingness to polarize is not easy. But it’s necessary. It’s why you’re here right now.

they feel about you. The amazing thing about polarization is that the simple act of doing it demonstrates non-neediness and will then inspire more Neutral women to become Receptive than other strategies or tactics. Like I mentioned earlier, the most common strategy by men who are inexperienced with women is “to be liked by all, hated by none.” But when it comes to being intimate and attracting women, this is a horrible strategy. Being hated by nobody usually means you’re not loved by anybody either.

The fact is that sexuality, attraction, and relationships are, by their very nature, confrontational and controversial. You have to either make the decision to accept being controversial and confrontational or you need to accept that you will go through life with everyone being Neutral towards you.

When you tell a woman she is beautiful, you are polarizing her. When you tease her about her earrings and put your arm around her, you’re polarizing her. When you wear a custom-made suit when you go out, you are polarizing women. When you tell a woman who’s late to a date to never be late again, you are polarizing her. When you smile and tell her how beautiful she is, you’re polarizing her. When you take her hand in yours and lead her somewhere, you are polarizing her. Everything that is attractive is polarizing. These are never wrong moves, assuming that they are honest expressions of yourself and you are showing your vulnerability.

A lot of men assume that this means you are inviting a mountain of rejection onto you. The surprising thing is this is rarely the case. Yes, you will get rejected when you polarize women. And yes, every once in a while it will be a harsh rejection. But surprisingly, a lot of women will react warmly to these advances, even if they’re not interested and reject you. They respect a man who is bold and honest. I’ve had tons of occasions where I approached women boldly and honestly, stating directly that they were beautiful and I wanted to meet them, and despite rejecting me, they were so impressed by my boldness and confidence that they promptly introduced me to a friend of theirs who was available. I’ve often been thanked by the women who I’ve unsuccessfully hit on, not because I did it, but for the way I did it. And even when things go nowhere, women at least respect me and the fact that I bluntly state what I feel.

Most of the harsh rejections I’ve had in my life came from when I was performing, seeking validation, when I was over-invested and needy and overcompensating. When I pursue women in a vulnerable way, almost every woman at the very least will respect my advances, even if she’s not interested.

As with any type of failure, it’s not until you’ve been rejected a certain amount that you realize how insignificant it actually is, how you spent so much time worrying about nothing, and how you’re free to act however you choose. The reason men fear rejection is because they’re operating on other peoples’ truths, not their own. In fact, men who fear rejection tend to be oblivious to their own truth because if they were aware of their own desires, needs and values, what would they have to be afraid of? Why would they ever hesitate to expose their vulnerability to others?

Most men, when they meet women, are thinking something like, “I hope she likes me,” or “I hope she doesn’t embarrass me or reject me.” It’s all about them. And therefore, when things don’t go anywhere, the men take it personally — they get upset or angry or butt-hurt that this random stranger with breasts isn’t laughing at their lame joke right now. Instead of thinking, “I wonder if she’ll like me,” think, “I wonder what she’s like?” Instead of thinking, “I hope she doesn’t reject me,” think, “I hope I'll find out if she’s right for me.”

I see every rejection simply as some form of incompatibility. Whether she thinks I’m a total creep, or she’s crazy about me but we live on different continents, or she’s in a horrible mood when I ask her out, or she thinks I’m cute but has different values and interests than me — whatever the reason, if a woman ever rejects me, it’s because she’s not compatible with me. It may be a permanent incompatibility. It may be a temporary incompatibility. But the point is that if she liked me enough, she’d be willing to work at making it happen with me. And if she doesn’t, then that just means it’s wrong person — or right person, wrong time. And that’s fine.

The concept of “success” in modern dating advice is often skewed. It’s influenced on the one side from traditional roles and rules — get a nice girlfriend, get married, etc. — and on the other side by unrealistic expectations and social pressures by other men — to be “the man,” you have to bed dozens of women, that you should never be rejected, you should be banging models and “10’s,” etc. Men put a lot of pressure on one another and shame one another for being rejected and this develops an unhealthy culture of masculinity based around neediness rather than genuine self-expression.

men who define success for themselves as how many women they can have sex with will waste away time pursuing and manipulating women whom they don’t necessarily enjoy or aren’t even that attracted to in the name of achieving the “success” which they’ve defined for themselves.

If you choose to believe “success” with women is determined by which woman chooses you or how much money you can provide — well, then there’s a good chance you’re going to be quite lonely followed by ending up with the nearest woman capable of tolerating you for a lifetime. If you choose to believe “success” with women is a lay count or some other statistical data point, then your love life will become just as objectified as the women you meet, and although you’ll have the quantity of interactions to back you up on paper, all emotional quality will be lost, along with your happiness. I define success in a qualitative way: maximizing happiness with whichever woman/women I prefer to be with.

When we define success as finding the relationship(s) that will maximize our happiness, our approach takes a completely new light. Instead of waiting and hoping for a woman to select us, instead of racking up numbers, instead of winning bragging rights, instead of avoiding rejections — our success is defined by screening through as many women as possible until we find the ones we enjoy and the ones who enjoy us. Suddenly, rejection goes from hurting our success rate to often helping it. Having a great date with a woman who wants to wait to have sex with you can become a far greater success than that woman who bangs your brains out an hour after meeting you. We screen through these women by polarizing them. We are polarizing them by sharing our truth with them openly and freely. And when we do this, women will either become incredibly attracted to us or they will reject us. Either way, we’ll be the happier for it.

Some men become satisfied with how many women they can kiss or how many phone numbers they can collect. This is not success. This is not success because you are not maximizing your relationships with these women. These metrics are part of the process. There is no happiness inherent in owning more phone numbers than anyone else. You’re chasing validation, not fulfillment. You are not dating them, sleeping with them, becoming intimate with them or even committing to them. Get out there and expose yourself. Open yourself up and find what makes you happy. Yes, that will mean you’ll probably get hurt. But so what? The best things in life don’t come easily.

There are three ways in which we are honest. And those three ways will make up the bulk of this book. The three ways are 1) living based on our values (lifestyle); 2) becoming comfortable with our intentions (boldness); and 3) by expressing our sexuality freely (communication). The first way of expressing our truth involves developing a lifestyle that makes us happy. The second way of expressing truth is by being courageous and fighting through our fears and anxieties. And the third way of expressing truth is by communicating well and being uninhibited in our sexuality.

If you see a beautiful woman and have a desire to meet her, to not take action and meet her is a form of being dishonest with yourself. If you’re standing in a bar, and you see a woman who catches your interest, and you keep looking at her all night because you’re afraid to do something, on a deep level, you’re being dishonest about your intentions and sexuality. You’re being overly invested in her and others’ opinions and are unable to expose your vulnerability.

Overcoming your fear and anxiety will correlate with your overall results with women. The reason being that once a man overcomes his fear of rejection, he’s willing to more or less pursue any woman he wants when he wants. Even if he’s a deadbeat (lacks a good lifestyle) or even if he’s terrible at expressing himself (lacks good communication skills), he will eventually meet women who want to date him and sleep with him by no other means than pure numbers. If he’s willing to approach 500 women with no fear of rejection, eventually at least one of them is going to stick. Honest Action correlates directly to the quantity of women you meet and attract.

If she loves to ski and ride horses, and you hate the outdoors and traveling, then that’s going to cause friction — perhaps not immediately, but at some point. If she values expressing her emotions openly and what her friends think of her, and you value serious conversation, intellectual pursuits and don’t care much for social gatherings, there’s going to be a large amount of friction from the get-go. This is unavoidable. Clever lines won’t change it. Being good-looking won’t change it. Being rich won’t change it. If you hate what she loves and she hates what you love, it’s not going to go anywhere. Period. The answer isn’t replacing your identity and passions; the answer is to expand your identity and passions. Expand it to include new and interesting activities, new modes of expression, and new ways of presenting yourself. Demographics explain why you meet women you just “click” with sometimes, and why, more often than not, you meet these women in situations where you’re having fun and doing what you love.

if you play to your strengths — i.e., if you focus your time and energy on meeting women in situations where they are likely to share your values, interests, and needs — then you’re going to not only experience a much higher degree of success, but you’re going to meet women you enjoy a lot more.

I have a friend who is an excellent dancer and goes to local dance events every week. He’s successful, smart and professional. He’s cultured and well-traveled. He also networks through European entrepreneurs living and working in the US. Between these two groups, he meets tons of people and tons of attractive, intelligent women. To kick things off, he often brings them together by hosting events at his house. His consistent success with women comes not just from his charisma and his “game,” but the fact that he’s narrowed down the demographic of women who he likes and who are apt to like him and acts on it.

The idea is that our beliefs are reflected in our behavior, and behavior determines which (and how many) women are attracted to us. For instance, if you believe all women are sluts and untrustworthy, then the only women who are going to be willing to tolerate your judgmental attitude are promiscuous women who are untrustworthy. Social psychology refers to this as the assortment effect and it's been demonstrated in many studies. Another example is the belief that women want and enjoy sex as much as men do. This belief was a big one for me. Many men don’t believe that women actually enjoy or fantasize about sex.

If you believe women don’t or shouldn’t enjoy sex, then the women who do enjoy sex will most likely not feel comfortable expressing their sexuality around you. And the women who do not enjoy sex will feel like you understand them. Thus, you’ll be stuck dating a bunch of women disconnected from their sexuality and uncomfortable having sex with you. But if you believe that women do enjoy sex, then the women who do enjoy sex will feel comfortable expressing their sexuality around you, while the women who are not comfortable expressing their sexuality will not be comfortable around you. Yes, this will invite rejections, but remember, rejections are a form of screening for demographics and in this case, it’s doing you a favor. You’ll end up with a bunch of sexual and sensual women who enjoy being with you. Nothing wrong with that!

Becoming a non-needy man requires, first and foremost, a high level of honesty with yourself. Part of that honesty with yourself involves observing and challenging your own beliefs. If you have lived your entire life believing women are untrustworthy or that women who express their sexuality are immoral, then perhaps you should evaluate what kind of women those beliefs are going to attract into your life. And if you don’t want to attract those kinds of women, perhaps you should experiment with changing your beliefs. Now you’re probably saying: “Experiment with changing my beliefs? How the hell do I do that?” You change your beliefs by simply accepting the fact that you don’t know what you’re talking about and then you open yourself to coming to other conclusions. If you believe that all women are evil and manipulative, consciously decide that you may not know what you’re talking about, and then go out and test new hypotheses out in the real world. Go to an event and pretend that all of the women you meet are loving, caring, and honest. Get online and message women imagining that every one of them is interested in you for you and not for some ulterior motive. See what happens. Sure, it will freak you out at first, but you’ll quickly notice a shift in the caliber of women you attract and your relationships will improve.

let’s say you get a new job and your new boss immediately assumes you’re a dick. He talks down to you, rolls his eyes at you, and acts as if your mere presence is an insult to everything he stands for. How would you end up behaving towards him? That’s right, you’d start acting like a dick. He treats you badly because he expects you to be a dick. And you start acting like a dick because he’s treating you badly. The same is true with women and dating. If you meet and date women believing fucked up stuff about them, you will only encourage that fucked up behavior. If you never trust the woman you’re with and are always jealous, then you’re just going to encourage her to do things behind your back. After all, she’s going to get yelled at by you anyway, so she decides to start withholding information. If you’re condescending and treat a woman like she’s a child who can’t make any decisions for herself, then she will act like a spoiled child and stop making any decisions for herself. In the therapeutic world, this is often referred to as “enabling:” when our shitty behavior encourages the people around us to adopt shitty behavior.

ultimately, we attract who we are. And if we are a mean, vindictive, jealous or distrustful person – well, who do you think you’ll end up being with?

Social proof only functions within a demographic itself. That’s why once you’ve narrowed down your demographic, you want to cultivate your connections and put yourself into as big of a leadership position as possible. Don’t just join the intramural ultimate Frisbee team, start organizing it. Don’t just volunteer at a charity event, help find sponsors for it. Don’t just go hang out at a local club, but become a promoter for it. Part of living the honest lifestyle is to pursue what you’re passionate about to the fullest extent. If you absolutely love visiting art exhibitions, don’t just visit a bunch of art exhibitions, but take an active role in the organization, start a meet up group to find other people who want to visit them, or create a forum for commentary. Don’t just pursue your interests, become a leader in your interests. Don’t just choose a demographic of women to meet, dominate the demographic.

Not everybody is born good-looking. But any man, with some time and effort, can become attractive. And in the end, what women want is a man who is attractive.

fitness and fashion will do more to attract women in a shorter amount of time than anything else you can do. Being in decent shape and dressing well will make every phase of the process easier and smoother, from meeting women, to attracting them, to getting physical with them, to dating them, to staying in a relationship with them. There literally is no downside to either one.

The first step to overhauling your wardrobe should be to go through your closet and pull out anything and everything that does not fit well.

An easy starting point that will give you 80% of the results for 20% of the effort is simply cutting out the following things: sodas, fast food, desserts, and candy. If you just cut those things out of your diet, you’ll see a drastic improvement.

if you start with the most fundamental basics and cut the above things out of your diet (and start exercising regularly), it’s impossible to not see major benefits within a few months.

As you walk down the street, remember: shoulders back, chin up, eyes straight, feet straight, shoulders swagger, arms swing. Always look straight ahead. Don’t ever look down at the ground unless you think you’re about to trip. Look people in the eye as they walk by — particularly attractive girls. You’ll catch people making eye contact with you. You’ll feel the urge to look away. Don’t. Always make other people break eye contact with you before you break it with them. Do it until it becomes a habit.

There’s nothing wrong with being amiable and enjoying similar things to your friends. But one thing that will always make you stand out, particularly to women, is if you’ve not only expanded your horizons, but you’ve also made your own decisions about your personal tastes, your experiences, and what you think about various topics.

Get your life taken care of. Get healthy. Find a happy group of friends. Find a few hobbies that you love. Develop opinions. Start caring about what you spend your time doing. This increases your self-investment and will make you less needy around others. This, in turn, will give you the courage to take the correct action and the wherewithal to communicate effectively. This is honest living. And once you’re living a life true to yourself, your values and your ideals, then it’s time to take action.

People talk a lot about the idea of “skill” in all of this stuff. “Pick up is a skill. It needs to be practiced,” blah, blah, blah. I think as the years go on, it’s being proven over and over that what you say isn’t so important, how you approach isn’t so important. What’s important is that you move things forward without hesitation, without that resistance that you’re obeying right now by doing nothing, by remaining in the status quo — the same resistance I listened to today at the gym. That girl could have been the love of my life, the absolute perfect girl for me. Who knows? I never will. The only important "skill" in dating is learning how to stop buying into your own bullshit, to stop believing your own stories. The resistance is constant. So you must constantly fight against it, acknowledge the stories you create for yourself, look them in the eye and say, “You know what, I don’t care if she’s on her phone and her ass says ‘PINK’ on it, I want to meet her.” And then do it. Without hesitation. Without fear. And without apology.

Honestly, if you went out and talked to women for a year without ever reading a word of dating advice, you’d probably do OK, assuming you were honest with yourself and able to learn from your mistakes. Sure, this stuff all helps, but in the end, your best teacher is your experience. There comes a certain point where learning more about a subject is no longer beneficial and on the contrary, is just going to get you more mixed up and confused, since you have no experience to actually apply your knowledge to.

Men make negative assumptions and stereotypes about millions of women for no other reason than to shirk responsibility for their own shortcomings. This appears to me to be nothing but a victim mentality and it pervades a lot of men’s thinking, some in more obvious ways than others. This doesn’t necessarily mean the general observations are wrong, it just means you’re interpreting them in such a way to victimize yourself. Sure, American women may be more fickle and pretentious than their European counterparts (then again, they may not be). Women in your town might actually be more closed off than women in a bigger city (or they might not be). But you’re choosing to let those observations be responsible for your own actions. This is the definition of being over-invested in others and being needy.