Models: Attract Women Through Honesty – Book Summary

The four most important life areas for the majority of people are love, health, wealth and general happiness. If any of these life pillars collapse, the quality of life dramatically decreases. Out of these four, love is probably the trickiest one, since many factors are beyond your influence.

But here’s the thing. You can’t force somebody to fall in love with you, but you can definitely improve your odds. The book to go to if you want to improve your odds as a man dating women is Models: Attract Women Through Honesty written by Mark Manson.

Mark Manson is a well-established name in the personal development community. I’m not sure about his status in the pick-up artist industry, but in all personal development forums, his book pops up when it comes to threads that discus dating advice for men. So I decided to read it, a little bit out of curiosity (luckily I never had issues with dating), and also because of Mark’s unique writing style.

I was very impressed with the book. Not only is he probably the only author who strictly follows the recommendations for online writing (short sentences, short paragraphs, clearly described ideas etc.), the advice in his book made a hell of a lot of sense.

If you are looking to attract the perfect partner or improve your dating skills, Models is definitely the book to go to. That’s why I decided to write a short summary of the book, so you can more easily decide whether to read the whole book or not.

Don’t be needy if you want to attract women

It all starts with neediness. The less needy you are as a man, the more attractive you are to women on average. A needy man does things to impress others, a non-needy man does things because of himself, because that something is exactly what he wants.

A non-needy man doesn’t kneel before the opinions of others, he doesn’t look for approval, instead he does things for the mere pleasure of doing.

Neediness is a feeling that points to a man who has no spine. Women can intuitively sense it and it triggers a gag reflex in them. Once a woman starts to sense needy behavior in a man, she will run away at full speed. A man definitely has to be affected by a woman and invested in her, but he should never prioritize her over himself.

It’s about finding the intersection of where you meet your own needs and the needs of a woman. Self-betrayal, where you only look for what she thinks and cares about (or anybody else for that matter), is an obvious sign of a lack of character. And women are attracted to the opposite of that – a man they can respect and trust.

Examples of needy behaviors are:

Calling too many times or calling too soon

Sending dozens of messages

Laughing too hard at the jokes she makes

Being worried she’ll reject you

Looking for her approval

The only way to overcome neediness is to change your mindset, self-image, self-perception and self-respect. Only then do your appearance, impression, words and actions also change and women find you more attractive.

The rule number one to attract women is to be invested in yourself more than in anything else. And the only way to achieve that is through personal improvement and work on yourself.

Love yourself. Otherwise no one else will. Mark Manson

A shortcut that quickly backfires if you wish to appear non-needy is narcissism. Narcissistic men are the ones who care only about their needs being met and not about finding the intersection and balance. They often intoxicate themselves with false beliefs about the inferiority of women and try to appear larger than they actually are.

The narcissistic tactic may work to attract women in the short term, but in the long term it only leads to unpleasant, shallow and superficial relationships. Definitely not something you are looking for.

A narcissistic man is the other side of Mr. Nice Guy. One only takes, and the other only gives. But deep down, both of them are drowning in a desperate need for approval.

Open yourself up and honestly show your vulnerability

Being vulnerable is not about being weak. Being vulnerable is about showing how emotionally strong you really are. It’s not about exposing your fears and insecurities, but about putting yourself in a position where you can be rejected. It’s about sticking your head out, being bold, different and non-needy.

Examples of exposing your vulnerability are:

Saying a joke that may not be funny

Expressing an opinion that might offend others

Not agreeing with others on something

Introducing yourself to a group of people you don’t know

Asking a girl out and risk being rejected

An example of a strong vulnerable man is somebody who stands tall and looks straight ahead, looks people in the eye when he talks to them, always says what he thinks, and has no problem with other people disagreeing with him.

When he makes a mistake, he apologizes and corrects the damage, when he sucks at something he admits it, he expresses his emotions in a healthy way and he likes himself even if he gets rejected from time to time for who he is.

When you show your vulnerability, you give a chance to women to emotionally connect and relate to you and that is the strongest attraction that exists out there. Again, vulnerability is not about being weak and oversensitive, but about sticking your head out, taking risks, being bold and keeping the center on yourself.

Friction that prevents a smooth date

The thing that prevents many relationships from forging, even if you show your vulnerability and strong character, is friction. There is friction present in every relationship. Sometimes the friction is too huge for a relationship to even begin.

Friction in dating is when a woman finds you attractive, but there are obstacles preventing the relationship from unfolding. The three most common friction causers are:

Value differences – religious differences, personal characteristics that are not acceptable etc.

– religious differences, personal characteristics that are not acceptable etc. External circumstances – she’s married, she’s just moving to a new location etc.

– she’s married, she’s just moving to a new location etc. Projections

The first two are quite self-explanatory. Projection as a psychological phenomenon is a special type of friction. Projection in dating is when a woman projects her past experience with men onto you. It happens because a past emotional traumatic experience (emotional or sexual abuse etc.) is projected to a current situation. That can lead to a woman being afraid of her own sexuality or harboring trust issues and resentment.

Friction can be managed to a certain degree. But in some cases, the friction is too big, and no matter what you say or do, or how attractive you are, things are just not going to happen. If the friction is too big, the best thing you can do is to move on. You can’t avoid incompatibility; you can only accept it.

You have to accept that many women will reject you not for who you are, but because the friction is just too high for whatever reason. Your job is not to date very woman in the world, but to screen for women with high potential to like you who you are, while there is minimum friction present.

Polarization and rejections

There are four categories into which you can put 3.6 billion of women or so who live on this planet. The ones you don’t find attractive, which means you shouldn’t try to hit on them, seduce them or do anything else with them sexually. And then there are women who are:

Receptive – women who respond positively to your advances

– women who respond positively to your advances Neutral – women who don’t respond to your advances, but don’t reject you

– women who don’t respond to your advances, but don’t reject you Unreceptive – women who reject you or ignore you

The vast majority of women you meet (if you are an average looking guy) will fall into neutral or unreceptive. That’s the hard fact of life you have to live with, but it’s the truth for most of the male population, you aren’t an exception, so there is nothing to worry about.

Women who are unreceptive are the ones who are unavailable or uninterested in a sexual or romantic relationship with you. Period. It may be that the friction is too big, they might be out of your league or they simply don’t find you attractive.

An unreceptive woman repeatedly shows signs of disinterest and doesn’t respond or reciprocate your signs of interest; or she rejects you in any kind of way.

In the dating world, you will get rejected a lot. You must get rejected a lot, because it’s a good thing. The purpose of rejections is to keep people who don’t belong together apart. Rejections are the ones helping you identify unreceptive women as fast as possible and move on.

Rejections are about finding out if she is the right one for you. If a girl rejects you for whatever reason, you wouldn’t enjoy being with her anyway. So it’s time to move on.

The second category are the neutral ones. While a man knows if he’s attracted to a woman or not a few seconds after meeting her (because it’s based on physical appearance), neutral women need more time to get to know you. But here’s the most important part.

Women never stay in the neutral position for long. Depending on who you are or what you do, they move into the receptive or unreceptive category. You must indicate some sort of sexual interest or you will automatically fall into the friend zone forever.

The goal you want to achieve with neutral women is to act in a way that she has to decide in which category she will fall. You want them to stop being neutral as fast as possible. That’s called polarization. She has to decide if she’ll be receptive or not.

You polarize her by making a move, and having game helps a lot in being successful at it. As mentioned, if you don’t polarize her she will eventually move to unreceptive by default and won’t see you as dating material anymore. Then it’s too late.

Your goal with neutral women is simple – make a move fast and then escalate. There are only a few exceptions to that rule. Some receptive women may initiate the start of relationship with you, but that rarely happens. It can happen if you have an extremely good lifestyle or it you’re extremely good looking.

But in general, women are far less invested into a man before sex, so they will rarely make a move. Here are some additional general rules regarding the three categories:

To increase the percentage of women who will be receptive you have to improve your lifestyle, social status and how you look.

To increase the percentage of women who go from neutral to receptive you have to improve your game or how well good you express yourself and communicate with women.

Meeting as many women as possible and successfully sorting them through these three categories will be determined by your boldness and fearlessness; and demographics.

Everything that is attractive is polarizing. Mark Manson

Demographics matter a lot, so mind your target segment

Demographics are the context, demographics are about deciding which women you want to date and what kind of relationships you want to have. The law of demographics states that like attracts like, that’s why you want to find women who like what you like (in the right places of interest).

When demographics don’t match up, friction occurs, and you want to minimize friction as much as possible, as we’ve seen. If you want to target demographics correctly, you have to develop your personal lifestyle and you have to know what you want in relationships.

You have to know what you value in women, what are the deal breakers, where are the boundaries (and assert them), and you have to know what are your hobbies, the things you enjoy in life and the things you like. When you know all these, meeting women is pretty simple. You can help yourself by making a persona of your ideal woman.

If you know your preferences and demographics very well, there are so many places to meet women:

Dance classes

Events

Concerts

Amateur sports leagues

Charities

Classes and meetups

Seminars

Travel groups

Exhibitions and shows

Business events etc.

The three fundamentals of attracting women

The three fundamentals of attracting women are:

Good lifestyle and presentation, overcoming social and sexual anxieties, being a master of communication and expressing your emotions.

Usually the average man is strong only in one of these three fundamentals and mediocre or weak in the other ones. What you want is to work hard on yourself with personal development to have the full package.

Before we look at the three fundamentals there is one more thing to mention – age, money and looks. They do matter, with some women a lot, with others not that much, but they always have at least some influence on the level of friction. There are two simple rules.

The first one is that the older you are, the more money and status you are expected to have. The second one is that the less money, looks and success you have, the more attractive behavior you need.

Nevertheless, you want to be careful not to go after women who only appreciate money and looks. Women who only value good looks most often have their own looks as the only thing to offer. And women who only go after your money usually don’t have other interests and opportunities in front of them.

But all things considered, looks, status and money always improve your odds.

The first pillar: Good lifestyle and presentation

Not everybody is born good looking, but you can always improve your lifestyle and presentation to be more attractive. A good lifestyle and presentation include developing a character, grooming, general maintenance of your body, body language, fashion and fitness.

The two Fs, fashion and fitness, are the two things that can very quickly improve your attractiveness and they should be your starting point in improving your personal presentation. Dress according to the fashion rules and standards. Your appearance must show that you are invested in yourself.

The second pillar: Overcoming sexual and social anxieties

Overcoming social and sexual anxieties is about stopping yourself from buying your own bullshit when you are looking for excuses not to approach, and opening up a conversation and then escalating things towards making love.

Anxieties are usually involved in every stage of the dating process, from opening a conversation and showing sexual interest to asking for a number or a date, going for the first kiss and initiating sex.

Social anxieties are often connected to other emotional and psychological issues, like a lack of a father figure in the family, childhood traumas, emotionally abusive and toxic home environments, strict religious upbringing, being bullied, and similar traumatic situations.

Excessive masturbation and watching porn usually only exacerbates the problem, so an important recommendation is to stop watching porn altogether and not to masturbate more than once per week.

Social and sexual anxieties lead to apathy, avoidance, blame game, rationalization and finding excuses, and in the end doing nothing. If you don’t overcome them, you will never approach women. If you don’t approach women, you will never go on dates and find the love of your life or be successful with women.

A few facts that might help you overcome sexual and social anxieties are:

Women go out to meet men, they want you to be the one, and they love to have sex. Women hate to reject men, it’s not a pleasant thing to do. But attraction isn’t a choice and you have to work on yourself to stir up the right feelings in a woman. Your role as a man is to take action, it’s on you and it always has been. You as a man move things forwards, that’s why you have to develop healthy assertiveness and show it in social situations. What you resist, persist – so stop persisting and start practicing approaching by incremental consistent exposure to stressful situations (don’t do one single extreme exposure). First ask 10 women what’s the time and then move on to more difficult exercises. Feeling fear and acting anyway builds courage and that’s what you want to do and achieve.

Courage is a habit, a discipline, and you can build it like you can build muscles in the gym.

Honest communication

The last pillar of being successful with women is honest communication. Women appreciate intentions in communication much more than men. Men are more about facts and women are more about intentions and the feelings underneath. It’s called sub-communication.

Intentions are what makes the difference between teasing and insulting, sharing yourself and bragging, being creepy and being funny. Women generally don’t see your features but how you present yourself, and they don’t hear your words but feel your intentions. Thus you have to be honest with your intentions and two ways to do that are flirting and building an emotional connection.

Part of honest communication in the dating world is flirting. Flirting means expressing your sexuality, while a woman still feels sexually secure and can express her sexuality back towards you.

By having “game” you build sexual tension, and there are many tools how to do that, like teasing, bantering, negging, being cocky and funny, push/pull method, roleplaying, word games, hand games and many others. It’s up to you to research them.

But flirting isn’t enough. You also need to build an emotional connection with a woman. Emotional connection with a woman happens when a strong, bold and attractive man is able to open up and share his vulnerability with a woman. That kind of an emotional connection is the most powerful type of attraction.

When you open up, she opens up and that builds a connection that can’t be replicated. You open an emotional connection with a woman by expressing your emotions, motivations and your personal life stories. It’s about relating to feelings, not facts.

Another important part of honest communication is the first impression. The words you say when you approach a woman are much less important than your intentions and how anxious you are.

Approaching women is no science fiction. Introduce yourself, and while doing it don’t scare her, startle her, linger or hesitate. And always smile. Approach, make a good first impression, flirt, and build an emotional connection.

Some other recommendations in the book for honest and effective communication are:

Say things with the fewest words possible while keeping the meaning and intent intact. Remove filler words from your vocabulary – ums, uhs and ahs. Create a conversation through statements rather than questions (“I bet you like…”). Cold read as much as possible. Make a statement that you assume is true and then find out if it’s true or not. In every conversation, find jump‑off points that can initiate a new topic. Tell stories and become an awesome storyteller. Relate and connect – open yourself up, make sure she opens herself up and then relate to feelings and each other’s experiences. Talk about passions, goals, ambitions, the best and the worst things that happened to you, your upbringing, family life, and so on. Use humor – there are many types of humor you can use if you know how to use it properly, from misdirections, teasing, sarcasm, wordplays, puns, roleplaying and fun games.

Creepiness happens even to the best

The opposite of flirting and building an emotional connection is being creepy. Some form of communication turns out to be creepy, even if you have the right intentions. Creepiness occurs when you make a woman feel sexually insecure.

But here’s the fact, there is no man who is adored by women and who isn’t also creepy some of the time. That’s because you have to stand out from the crowd.

Misunderstandings and miscommunications are impossible to avoid. That’s what you have to get used to. You absolutely have to improve your communication skills to not be creepy in general, but from time to time, it’s still going to happen. So don’t be afraid of being creepy, build up your communication skills and start approaching women.

Knowing the rules of the dating process and the answer to what women want

The last step is to know the rules of the dating process very well. The dating process is quite traditional and it goes from meeting a woman, getting her phone number, asking her out on a date, repeating the dates until it leads to the first kiss, and then taking her home.

At any point of the process you can decide to be exclusive, non-exclusive, a casual couple, friends with benefits, soulmates or to never ever see each other again.

Here are a few basic rules to follow during this process:

Only ask a woman for her phone number if she shows interest and attraction towards you

Don’t ask for a number with a creative pick-up line, just be straightforward

Flakes (girls who don’t respond to calling/texting) happen and you should get used to it

Send the text in 24 hours to set up a date, use phone more or less only for setting the date, because texting is an awful way to communicate in general

Dates are for nighttime, not for lunchtime or afternoons or you’ll end up in the friend zone

Don’t do movies, dinners and any other logistic nightmare options

Good locations for a date are all the locations where you can be active, participatory, and that allows touching and flirting (parks, exhibits, etc.). You have to do and experience fun things on dates (bowling, dancing, tasting drinks etc.). Chatting away time is not how a date should go.

You as a man should constantly be leading the date. At the end pay, unless she physically pulls out her wallet, stops you and insists on paying.

And the final question – what do women want? Women want to be desired; women are turned on by being wanted (by a strong and exciting man). They desire to be passionately and uncontrollably desired, but it has to be genuine desire.

The more assertively you pursue the woman, the more aroused she will become; if you follow all the advice in the book and don’t turn out creepy.

Models – a model of being an attractive man

Now you know the difference between having no girlfriends, many girl friends (and staying in the friend zone), and being a wanted man. It’s about getting physical with women quickly and comfortably, while staying honest, vulnerable and representative (fit, groomed, in style etc.).

You have to be bold, you have to polarize and you need to be good at flirting, you need to have game.

That’s when your odds of a woman becoming receptive to your advances greatly improve. And if she is receptive, she will give you many hidden clues (because she is cheering that you are the one) like longer eye contact, a smile, playing with her hair, being in your proximity, touching you, and putting you as her priority.

When you get these signals, it’s on you to act. The kiss is usually the first huge milestone and here is the rule to follow – if you think you can kiss her, you probably could have done that 10 minutes ago.

In the end, it’s better to be rejected than to live in regret for the rest of your life. So follow the rule to go for it and escalate when you are in doubt (but absolutely respect any form of no). That’s what the book Models is all about.

Providing a framework, a model, for being an attractive, mature man of integrity in the 21st century. If you are dancing on the dating floor, I absolutely recommend you to read the book. Even if I am already long gone from the dating scene, I learned quite a lot about relationships between men and women from the book.