Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

by Mark Manson

This is a book about people speaking and relating to other people, not obtaining objects or status symbols.

In our post-industrial, post-feminist world, it’s not as clear as it used to be what a man is or what he should be. Centuries ago, a man’s duty was power and protection. Decades ago, it was to work and provide. But now? We’re not quite sure. We are either the first or second generation of men to grow up without a clear definition of what our social roles are supposed to be and without a model of what it is to be strong and attractive men.

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.

Half the time I was going out to lose myself, to bury my emotions and hopefully wake up in the arms of a stranger. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. And that’s really all I knew. But this second journey had a purpose, had a meaning, and I found myself in need of an intellectual foundation. I couldn’t just do it, I had to teach it, explain it, and impart it unto other men and then get them to do it.

You’re reading this because you want to change. You want to change your interactions and relationships with the women in your life. You want these relationships to improve. You want these relationships to be abundant. You want to feel confident and empowered around women, both those you know and those you don’t know but want to meet. You want to feel in control of your relationships with them. You want to be sexual with women without shame or hesitation or regret or pain.

Because when you change your beliefs and mindsets, the behavior follows.

Nope.

Until you learn to trust your own actions and learn to pursue women with your own unique style and personality, you have learned absolutely nothing.

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.

A man's attractiveness is inversely proportional to how needy he is.

Implement purpose concept

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.

By investment, I mean the degree to which you sacrifice/alter your own thoughts, feelings, and motivations for someone else.

Neediness is a feeling. It’s intuited by women. It’s instinctual. It’s the gag reflex she has when a guy calls her twelve too many times. It’s the distaste she has when he seems to laugh a little too hard at her jokes. It’s the annoyance she has when he seems to make every decision for her rather than letting her fend for herself.

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 “it” that they intuitively know in their gut the second they see him walk, hear him talk, or look him in the eye is his level of investment relative her and, therefore, his lack of neediness.

Seduction is the process by which a man induces a woman to become as invested in him as he is in her.

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).

The vast majority of the dating advice out there for men (and women) is performance-based advice

meet girl in a situation of low emotional investment and low neediness, entered relationship with said girl, gradually invested more and more while letting the rest of your personal life slip away, until girl leaves you and dates some other guy who is less invested than she is again.

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.

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 feeling the need to impress her, you could wonder if she impresses you.

The only real dating advice is self-improvement. Work on yourself. Conquer your anxieties.

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.

Needy men only know how to care about what others want, even if it harms themselves. Non-needy men look for that intersection where they can get both their own needs and their partner’s needs met. Narcissistic men overcompensate and decide to only pursue getting their own needs met.

Narcissistic men usually do this by conjuring up all sorts of false beliefs about the inferiority or difference of women — how women are incapable of rationality, how they’re “hypergamous,” how they manipulate men, how women are destined to be dominated and controlled.

When a woman becomes merely another conquest, a number, something to treat like a trophy or a toy, it can be extremely easy to assert yourself around them, to prioritize your own values and beliefs over theirs, to risk rejection around them, and to dominate any perspective they might have — all attractive confident traits, merely expressed in horrible ways.

Narcissism is also taught to men as a form of dating advice. Much of the dating advice out there advises men to be selfish, to be “alpha,” to be dominant and aggressive and to ignore women’s objections or rejections, to pursue what you want no matter what and take it through pure persistence and aggression.

Narcissism in a relationship is built on the idea of always being dominant or in control. It is a nebulous mixture of selfishness, assertiveness, and domination that is achieved not through investing more in oneself, but by minimizing the importance of others.

The only permanent way to attract and date more women and more attractive women is to become more attractive yourself. And the way a man becomes more attractive himself is by investing in himself, in becoming less needy.

A man who’s able to make himself vulnerable is saying to the world, “Screw the repercussions; this is who I am, and I refuse to be anyone else.”

imagine other men in the same tribe who are unfazed by the neediness or temper tantrums of the other men around them. They focus purely on the task at hand and don’t change their behavior based on what others think of them. When challenged, they stand up for themselves, but when they’re wrong, they also admit their fault since they see no reason to hide their weakness. They have a sense of honor. They don’t react to any of the other men around them; rather, the other men react to them.

This non-needy behavior indicates a man who is comfortable with vulnerability, who isn’t afraid to express who he is, warts and all, to the world. This plays out in multiple arenas — in the life decisions he makes (Part III), the extent of his courage (Part IV) and the way he communicates to others (Part V).

the single common thread between every man I’ve worked with who has problems with women is either a lack of awareness of his own emotional motivators or an inability to express his emotions freely with those around him.

But I’ll say this: if you consistently find it difficult to keep a woman interested in conversation; if you suffer from large amounts of anxiety around women; if you constantly feel a need to prove something to others or yourself, then there’s something there. Trust me, there’s something there. And there’s something you’re not expressing or some emotion you’re not in touch with. And that’s fine. We all go through it.

sharing yourself with someone doesn’t mean just physically occupying the same area. It doesn’t mean exchanging facts with one another. It means opening up about your values, desires, feelings, and dreams. It means exposing your shame and insecurities and doubts and fears. It means living with somebody on an emotional plane, inhabiting that same heart-space together because that’s the one thing we can’t ever achieve by ourselves.

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.

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.

pursuing a woman without actually letting her know that you’re interested in her. Just typing that paragraph feels exhausting. Talk about a lot of work for nothing.

They think that when you say, “You’re cute and I wanted to meet you,” that translates roughly to, “Hi, I’m such a desperate loser that I’m just going to throw all of my desires out there right now and beg you to accept them.”

it’s not the actual behaviors or words themselves, it’s the intentions behind those words.

Because 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.

Vulnerability requires honesty, and honesty only works if it’s given unconditionally, with no strings attached.

human nature is such that we don’t trust people who like us if we don’t feel as though we earned it somehow.

When in doubt, check your intentions.

These are not gifts or compliments at all. These are deals he’s brokering. The terms may be implied or unspoken, but they’re transactions all the same.

True honesty is only possible when it is unconditional. The truth is only the truth when it is given as a gift — when nothing is expected in return.

I don’t use my compliments as a bargaining tool. I give them unconditionally.

Beautiful women are complimented on their looks often, and 99% of these compliments are given out of neediness, out of some idealization of who she is or what she can do for him.

A man who feels like he needs to buy or steal a woman’s attention or affection through entertainment, money or superficiality is a man who is not confident in his identity and who is not genuinely attractive.

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