Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

by Mark Manson

This book’s goal is to provide that model, to provide a model of what being an attractive man of integrity and maturity looks like in the 21st century. That means going past the standards of protector and provider, of strength and stoicism, and improving ourselves into something bigger and better, something more admirable and desirable.

Men are expected to initiate in all phases of courtship (the reasons why are explained in Part I) and, therefore, a man who is hesitant, anxious or afraid of initiating will not get very far with most women.

Emerson once wrote, “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.”

A man's attractiveness is inversely proportional to how needy he is. The less needy he is, the more attractive he will be to women on average.

Neediness is when a man places a higher priority on others’ perceptions of him than his perception of himself. A needy man’s actions and words will therefore be primarily motivated by impressing and winning approval from others.

A non-needy man’s actions and words will therefore be primarily motivated by embodying his own values and desires.

When people say vague things like, “I like the way he carries himself,” or “you just need to believe in yourself,” or, “he just has ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is,” they are referring to a man’s lack of neediness.

A man’s comfort and acceptance of the possibility that some people will not like him makes people like him even more.

A needy man is constantly investing in the perceptions others have in him. He is being extra nice and friendly when he doesn’t want to be because he believes he must do this to be liked and loved. He is buying a fancy watch and season tickets to the local sports team so that he will be admired and loved. He is coming up with fake compliments or pretending to be a bad ass because he thinks it will get him attention and love.

The needy man tries to control what others think and feel more than what he thinks and feels himself.

A needy man will be more invested in the woman he is with than in himself – he will be more concerned about her opinion, about him, about the weather, about everything other than what he actually thinks and feels.

By investment, I mean the degree to which you sacrifice/alter your own thoughts, feelings, and motivations for someone else. By less I mean that as a man, you should not be willing to sacrifice your thoughts, feelings, and motivations for someone else more than they sacrifice theirs for you.

It’s important to note that non-neediness doesn’t mean you should only care about yourself. This is narcissism, and although it might get you laid, it is not attractive and will result in dysfunctional relationships.

When you are attracted to a woman, you should be affected by her, you should be invested in her. That’s the whole fun of it! That’s the reason we have relationships in the first place, to be touched and moved by others. The important point here is how we prioritize other people’s perceptions versus our own. Which is more important? Hers or yours?

There’s nothing to learn or memorize. There is nothing to practice or study. It only requires one to move his yardstick for success from external goals (more dates, more sex) to internal goals (better relationships, more emotional fulfillment, overall happiness).

A man who becomes successful through a series of performance-based behaviors may have sex, but he is setting himself up for terrible and unfulfilling relationships with other needy women.

Learning techniques and pick up lines without doing genuine, identity-level work in order to permanently decrease your neediness ends up only being a band-aid solution.

Overcoming neediness is not about learning what to say or new things to do. Overcoming your neediness comes through a change in your mindset, your self-perception, and your self-respect. It's as simple as just changing your mind about women.

Take a moment to consider… …That before meeting a woman, instead of worrying whether or not she will like you, you could wonder if you will like her.

…That instead of waiting around for her to call, you could find something else to do while she waits for your call.

Changing yourself to become who you want to be, not what you think women want you to be.

You are what attracts (or repels) others — not the words, not the strategies. If you aren’t happy with the results you get, then it’s time to improve you.

I don’t care how hot she is. Is she good enough for you? Does she have integrity? Standards? Is she smart, personable, caring? Are you ready to leave on a dime if she offends you or breaks your trust?

The only real dating advice is self-improvement. Work on yourself. Conquer your anxieties. Resolve your shame. Take care of yourself and those who are important to you. Love yourself. Otherwise no one else will.

To become non-needy, a man must develop self-respect, a healthy sense of boundaries, social competence, and healthy life habits. It’s often a painful long-term process that entails quite a bit of introspection, questioning, doubt, anger, frustration, lifestyle changes, and so on. But there is a shortcut. And that shortcut is to objectify women, to treat them as objects or trophies to be accumulated or paraded around for others.

Roy went from being needy to overcompensating with narcissism. He went from worshipping women with no respect for himself to worshipping himself with no respect for women. The key to non-neediness is to have both: respect for both oneself and for women.

making yourself vulnerable doesn’t just mean being willing to share your fears or insecurities. It can mean putting yourself in a position where you can be rejected, saying a joke that may not be funny, asserting an opinion that may offend others, introducing yourself to a group of people you don’t know, telling a woman that you like her and want to date her.

Show your rough edges. Stop trying to be perfect. Expose yourself and share yourself without inhibition. Take the rejections and lumps and move on because you’re a bigger and stronger man.

These are all forms of avoidance. And they all come from a deep-seated neediness, and that neediness can only be cured through making yourself more vulnerable.

The things I just wrote above embarrassed me to the point that I wanted to die when they happened. Now I can talk about them without shame or regret.

We all have weaknesses, embarrassments, and vulnerabilities. A needy man is terrified to show them because he cares more about what others feel about him than what he feels about himself.

Stop looking at communication as the surface information and instead, pay attention to the emotions and motivations behind everything that you do and say. That's where all of the meaning

So the catch is that everything you say must be as authentic as possible. There’s no shortcut. There are no tricks. You say it because you mean it and mean it because you say it. The more nervous it makes you, the better, because it means you’re being authentic and making yourself vulnerable.

regardless of what you say to a woman, the intention and implications of why you are saying it are far more powerful than the words themselves.

You can say the lamest and grossest (or funniest, depending on your perspective) thing to women, and if the sub-communication is, “I really don’t care if you laugh or run away horrified, but here’s who I am, take it or leave it,” this sub-communicates a rock-bottom level of investment and an incredibly high level of vulnerability.

when a man comes right out and says he’s interested in a woman, the sub-communication is actually, “I’m totally OK with the idea of you rejecting me, otherwise I would not be approaching you in this manner. Therefore, I'm comfortable with myself and my prospects.”

Remember: what you actually say doesn’t matter; why you say it matters.

Always. No exceptions. You can have the best line in the world, but if you’re saying it because you’re needy and desperate for validation and approval from women, then she is immediately going to sense it.

You cannot fake non-neediness for more than a moment. The only women you will manage to fake are women who are drunk or who are extremely needy themselves. Truth.

Vulnerability requires honesty, and honesty only works if it’s given unconditionally, with no strings attached. That means everything you say and do must be done without any ulterior motive. You are simply expressing your thoughts and feelings as they come to you, without inhibition, without shame.

The truth is always shining through. Even if you lie about yourself or act a certain way, this is actually saying much more about you and your character than the content of your statements. Even if you are exaggerating or putting on a bit of an act to impress a person, your intentions will always shine through, eventually, and they will say more about you than any word ever could.

being a “nice guy” is never much different than being a narcissist. One only gives. The other only takes. But both are the same in their desperation for approval.

the more you invest in yourself, the freer you will become to care for others around you without looking for anything in response.

Your ability and willingness to establish boundaries is inversely proportional to how needy you are. Men who are needy and lack vulnerability will keep their boundaries loose and open, inviting manipulation into their lives and allowing people to walk over them. This is because they are more than willing to alter themselves in order to receive validation from the women they meet.

When it comes to making yourself more vulnerable, the first step is often to begin establishing your own boundaries. Learn how to say no to people, particularly women. Start having opinions on what you like and don’t like, what you’ll tolerate and won’t tolerate. Be honest with yourself, painfully honest. And then be painfully honest with her.

eventually realized that I was chasing a status symbol, a pat on the back, basically reliving and redeeming all of my failed high school moments where the pretty girls didn’t pay attention to me.

There are two main reasons that prevent attracted women from being with you, and they are both quite common: I call them friction and projection.

Friction is when a woman finds you to be an attractive man, but there are value differences or external circumstances that prevent her from acting on that attraction or being interested in you.

Men often used to ask me how to get a woman to cheat on her boyfriend or husband. My answer has two parts. The first part is: you don’t, they decide. The second part of the answer is: don’t fucking do it, what’s wrong with you? It contributes to the fucking of people’s lives and even if it didn’t, it’s never worth the headache it causes.

In Part I, we learned that male attractiveness is based on how non-needy one is and how comfortable one is in expressing one’s desire and vulnerability.