Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

by Mark Manson

Part IV covers developing courage and becoming a man of action. 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.” Seduction is

the interplay of emotions. Your movement, or lack of movement, reflects and alters emotions, not the words. Words are the side effect. Sex is the side effect. The game is emotions, emotions through movement. If you learn anything from this book, let that be it.

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. The needier he is, the less 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.

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 non-needy man will be more invested in himself than the woman he’s with.

To most women, a man with no neediness is like a woman with perfect tits and a gorgeously sculpted ass. To a woman, a man with a lot of neediness is like having the worst breath and missing teeth.

speaking to Jeff, and often even before speaking to him, women sense that not only does he have a strong sense of identity, he’s also unwilling to compromise that identity for her. This sub-communicates his high status to them and elicits attraction.

When a man approaches her and induces her to become as invested in him as he is in her, this is the process of seduction. Sex occurs as a natural side effect of this process.

There are two ways for seduction to happen: 1) a man creates the perception that he is far less invested in her than he actually is (neediness disguised as non-neediness), and 2) a man actually is less invested in her (genuine non-neediness).

I can tell you that I’ve seen both of these stories play out over and over and over again, in hundreds of different forms between hundreds of different people. Guy meets girl. Guy shows less investment in girl than himself, sex and/or relationship occurs, guy becomes more invested in girl than himself, sex stops and/or relationship falls apart.

Women are attracted to a man they can respect, to a man they can trust. If you’re constantly looking for approval for what to say and how to feel, how could anyone respect or trust you?

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.

Become comfortable with being imperfect. It’s your rough edges she’ll be attracted to.

No. Wrong. It’s not about words or behaviors, it’s about intentions. So if you’re going around telling sob stories and talking about insecurities to get laid, women will sense that and you will be a creep. That is not vulnerability; that is merely another form

of performance. And all performance is neediness.

Here’s a piece of advice: if you ever find yourself thinking, “That didn’t work,” or “This doesn’t

work,” then you are performing and you are needy. Point blank. Period.

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.

How attractive you are is based on your lack of neediness. Your non-neediness is based on how vulnerable you’re able to make yourself. And how vulnerable you’re able to make yourself is based on how honest you are to yourself and others.

To this day, this was one of the most pivotal nights for me as far as understanding attraction is concerned. Was it that I learned that “Can I pee in your butt?” is the right thing to say?

But what I learned is that 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-bot...

This is why using pick up lines is ultimately a futile process. I could sell you the best 100 things I’ve ever said to women, but I can’t ever sell you my intentions or my confidence in myself. You must develop those on your own. And once you do, the actual lines you say will be personal and congruent to you and nobody else.

And not only does she know we’re hitting on her, the fact that we seemed so concerned about getting rejected turns her off. The fact that we had to contrive lines and fake stories in order to start a conversation with her, whether consciously or not, signals to her that we are highly invested and not a truly attractive man.

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.

Non-needy and truly high-quality women who are not invested in the attention they receive from men are not going to have much patience for your lines and games. They will either see through them and see you for who you really are — scared to expose your vulnerability — or they will simply assume you’re not wo...

Here’s the problem: human nature is such that we don’t trust people who like us if we don’t feel as though we earned it somehow. Imagine if some stranger came up to you, started complimenting you incessantly, buying you things, how would you react?

That’s because they’re showing how invested they are in your approval without them actually

knowing you, without them taking the time to connect with you and understand you. And as a result, you don’t trust them. You find them creepy and weird.

A man with an attractive and interesting lifestyle, a man with high standards for himself and the relationships in his life, will take the time to get to know an attractive woman before soliciting her with gifts. He will wait until he feels strongly enough to genuinely give her a compliment. And if he talks to her and discovers that there is little that is interesting about her beyond her looks, then he will lose interest.

Ironically, it’s these high standards and self-regard that women pick up on and find incredibly sexy. And it’s these same standards and self-regard that most men spend a lot of time trying to fake.

Again, 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.

An attractive man expresses his interest unconditionally, expecting nothing in return. This arouses women and when they do reciprocate his interest, their interest is, in fact, a gift in return.

When I tell a girl that she is beautiful, I say it not expecting anything in return. Whether she rejects me or falls in love with me isn’t important in

that moment. What’s important is that I’m expressing my feelings to her in that moment.

I don’t use my compliments as a bargaining tool. I give them unconditionally. A needy man will give a woman a compliment without knowing her and wait expectantly for her to repay him in either her company or with thanks or with sexual favors. I will give compliments only when I am honestly inspired to give them, and usually after already meeting a woman and displaying to her that I’m willing to disagree with her, will...

away from her and this ability to accept nothing in return is what gives my genuin...

Beautiful women have been conditioned for most of their lives to know when a man is being genuine or not, whether the compliment is a gift or a bartering tool. And when it is a gift, when it is honest, she recognizes and appreciates a man who genuinely appreciates her. These men are rare.

Here’s the litmus test. Look at your actions and words around women and look at the intentions behind them. These intentions are always speaking ten times louder than your actual words.

Again, it’s not about what’s being said, it’s about the intention and sub-communication behind it. When you’re willing to cut a woman off and tell her when you feel that she’s out of line, when you’re willing to tell a woman

what you will and will not tolerate in your life, this sub-communicates the most powerful elements of attraction to her. Far more powerful than an entertaining story or game.

Non-neediness means you respect yourself AND others. Narcissism means you only respect yourself. Neediness means you only respect others.

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.

Men who are non-needy establish strict boundaries because they value their own time and happiness more than receiving attention from a woman. They also see no reason to trample over other people’s boundaries.

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...

Ultimately, your values determine your behavior. And that’s kind of the point of all of this: YOUR values determine your behavior, not what you think she wants, not what you think others want, but what is best for you and best for the relationship.

The uncomfortable truth is that the majority of women are going to have high degrees of friction and projection when you meet them. With most of the women you meet, things are simply not going to work no matter what you do or say. This is to be expected. And this is fine. You are going to be incompatible with most of the women in the world and to hold any hopes of being highly compatible with most is an illusion of grandeur and a figment of your own narcissistic tendency.