You can become genuinely generally more attractive. Yes, by doing certain things you talk about appearance, you can increase your fashion and fitness is something we all can improve, no matter how your how many eyes you have or noses you have.
It's pretty simple, Like it doesn't it's not very hard, and honestly, like men have it way easier the women on that front, Like it's it's crazy, Like you just I don't know, like take a shower and like fucking comb your hair and put on a decent shirt and like you're halfway there.
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. I am doctor Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist interested in plumbing the depths of human potential. In this episode, I talk with best selling author and my friend Mark Manson about what women really want in a man. In addition to writing multiple best selling books such as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and Everything Is Fun, Mark has a past as a successful dating coach. Mark put a lot of his insights into dating and seduction in his
twenty eleven book Models Attract Women Through Honesty. The contents of that book are the focus of today's Really Fun and enlightening conversation. So that's for their ADO.
I bring you Mark manson Sunday podcast.
This feels like it feels more casual.
Yeah, okay, super task.
Yeah, like more chill. You know we're we're off the clock. Yeah, I'm off the call. I don't know about you.
But I am off a clock. I've gone down the rabbit hole of your prior life.
Oh boy, all right, I'm ready.
In seduction community, well, what was it called that, the pickup artist with the seduction community seduction?
I think we seduction community prior to the pickup artist community, and then these days, I don't know what it's called.
I think they've rebranded like red.
Pill or Manisphere something. Ah.
But I really want to have a really nerdy conversation with you at a really high level about whether nice guys really finished last. And there's multiple ways you could phrase the question. You could also do the inverse and say do assholes really get ahead in the dating walm And you know, maybe they're both opposite questions, or maybe
they're powerlell questions. But this question about we know for a fact, throughout the course of millennia there are many many self perceived nice guys who have been feeling like they are being left out of the you know, and understanding that and understanding like what's really going on? You know, what do women really want? Now, maybe some listeners would say, well I should ask a woman that, not ask you know,
Mark Manson. But you've done a deep dive into this at one point in your life, and you had a lot of experience. I mean you went out there and put yourself on the line.
Yeah. I was a professional and vating coach for men for four years, about four or five years. I worked with hundreds of men, wrote hundreds of articles, wrote a book which is still quite popular today.
It's called Models.
I tracked women through honesty.
Tracked women through honesty. So you put your you put yourself on the line where you were okay being ejected, you were okay learning what women wants and learning that not all women are the same too. It's something you've learned also true, right, Different women want different things at different ages. So there's a lot of nuance here. You know a major theme of your book is neediness. Okay, what what do you how do you even define neediness?
And why is that so important? When you're trying to attract someone.
And I define needingess as a prioritization of other people's opinions about you over your own opinion about you. So it's if I'm if I am, And the way that actually manifests itself in behavior is that if I'm prioritizing your opinion of me over my own, I will censor my own thoughts or I'll censor my what I actually think, and I will say and do the things that I think you will want to see from me, and uh, it never no, it's it's uh in this. I mean.
The sad thing is like that is I think a lot of people don't realize, like a lot of people just think that that's what dating is, what a relationship is, what friendship is, and it's it's not. So that's how I I mean to be fair. I wanted to when I was writing my book, I like I kind of distilled what everything I felt about attraction down to this concept. But I didn't know of a I didn't know of a label for it, so I kind of just anented one.
And neediness just struck me as like a very logical and obvious way to describe it.
There's something very human here that you're hitting on. It's not just like women are tuned to neediness. There seems to be a general principle here. The more need you are about something in general, the more you tend to push people away. It's a downward spiral in ala.
It's repulsive in all social contexts. So well, yeah, so like imagine, I mean you just I imagine as a guy, like you go to a friend's house to watch a football game, and there's a guy there who's like sitting too close to you, who's like smiling, asking you all these weird questions, you know, laughing at all, like way too hard at all your jokes. Like your immediate instinct is going to be to get away from that person, you know.
So it's it's I don't want to laugh at you now, no.
But it's it's like it's just a commonality of human of just human interaction. But I think we don't. There's a lot of subtlety to it like that, you know, what I just describe is like a very overt and obvious example of it, but it happens on a lot of subtle levels as well. And I think, particularly with dating, those those subtleties get.
Amplified quite a bit, definitely. And you know, a lot of what we're talking about here is they have attraction in trying to and a lot of it, let's be honest, is overcoming fear of rejection.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of self perceived nice guys who are terrified of rejection. They would rather not talk to a woman. Ever, if that means that they may be rejected, how can give any tips on how to kind of overcome that fear. Is it just like getting out there and doing it over and over?
Yeah, it's it's I think it's. I mean, rejection is just a fact of life. So the sooner you can get comfortable with it, the better.
You've been rejected in the past.
Dude, thousands of times, I mean, I don't know if it's actually you're like, maybe not thousands, but like it's just wow, okay, an insane amount. You even slapped Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh it's it's the act of trying to protect yourself from rejection. Yeah, is what makes you unattractive. So when you cater your thoughts and feelings to prevent rejection from another person, you make yourself less attractive and interesting to
that person. And so one of the concepts I talked about in the book is that attraction is is ultimately it's polarizing. Like the things that are gonna make you most attractive to some people are also going to get you rejected most often by other people. So you can't you can't play the middle ground. Like if you like to maximize your dating experience, you have to basically go all in on the things that are going to make you attractive to the partners that you desire and or
that are gonna make you happy. And then except that there's gonna be a certain amount of rejection that's just gonna naturally come as a collateral damage in that m Yeah.
So it's one thing to cognitively you know, but there's another thing, you know, to actually get through the experience, you know, because not pleasant experience, but a lot of it seems like there's different kinds of classes of nice guys. There's the nice there's like the entitled nice guy, the nice I'm just making up names labels on the spot, but there's the type of nice. They're like, I'm such a nice guy, and I don't understand why I'm not
getting laid all the time. I should be I should be getting laid all the time because I'm such a nice guy. Well that's the entitled nice guy.
Yeah.
I think there's like the nerdy nice guy. I think there's the well intentioned nice guy who is is just generally baffled and confused. Why it seems like they're always in the friend zone. I know some people like this. They're feeling they're always in the friend zone and the friend is always going after the seeming asshole, you know, and they're like, hello, what about They're like, why can't I find a nice guy? And then guy's like hello, Right, So I think that's you know, that maybe a different
class or nice guy. Something it seems important to recognize here is you know, we're not just attracted as humans. There's like a human issue. It's not just about women. None of us are just attracted to a nice person, right, Like, even from the male perspective, if you think about the women you're attract to, it's not just because they're nice.
It's like the most baseline, lowest bar that you can you can clear, it's just being a nice person. So there needs to be there needs to be something else going on.
Yeah, for sure, that's important too for for our well meaning nice guys who are listening this episode will want them to think about this.
And by the way, you know, the entitled nice guy, like, that's that's the harsh truth for that guy, is that it's it's it's like, dude, being nice doesn't earn you an award, Like you're gonna You're not gonna get a medal because you were like polite to somebody, Like that's just called being a decent human being, right, Like it's being like being a nice person isn't if the purpose is to get you things, then you're not actually a nice person. You're you're kind of a piece of shit.
And to the nerdy nice guy, I think the nerding nice guy, it's mostly just a you know, being a little bit out of touch with their own intentions and being you know, not not developed, like they haven't learned how to like speak up and state what they want
clearly and communicate what they want clearly. And then I think there's there's kind of a third class a nice guy, which is just it's just kind of clueless, like just doesn't it has no experience, has never been on a day, you know, like has never actually just like, you know, tried to get out there at all.
So experience sounds like it's so important and you went through a lot of experience. Yeah, you know, hopefully we got recorded earlier. Where are we talked about your background? I think that was when in the first four minutes.
So I my previous career. I was a dating coach for about five years. I worked with hundreds of men, both one on one and seminars. Took guys out the bars and coffee.
He did that, he went out in the scene.
Oh yeah, yeah, wow.
Wow, you did all that. Okay, did you do the earpiece thing where you talk to them as they do that sometimes in these pickup trainings?
Now, I was too broke to do that back then. No. I would just take guys to bars and talk to girls with them and give them feedback and you know, help them out, take them to the mall, help them buy a decent shirt, you know, basic stuff.
And you've seen if you've seen some real big transformations.
Oh for sure.
You know.
One of the really cool things is is every once in a while I'll run into an old client and you know, like they'll come to an event or something I've had. I've had a couple of guys like bring their wives to events. So yeah, and just be like, you know, that's kind of beautiful. Yeah, it's really cool to know that you played some part in that. Yeah, it's really cool.
That is that's that is really cool.
Yeah.
See you say things like ask yourself this, why would you want to be intimate with someone who doesn't appreciate you? Why would you ever settle for such a person because she's hot, Come on, have a little more self respect, have some higher standards. Yeah, that causes a consciousness shift and a lot of nice guys I think from oh I got to perform and impress them to oh I
wonder if they're going to impress me. Now that's a real consciousness shift, and that seems like a game changing kind of mental shift in approaching the situation.
Yeah. Yeah, I think men who are needy they don't consider that like it. This is like you get on my soapbox for a second.
I love Mark on a soapbox.
I love it, so you know, obviously, like it's there's a lot that is said about objectifying women, how it's bad for women, which is true, right, you shouldn't objectify women.
What doesn't get said is that objectifying women is also bad for men, because if you are if you are basing like your your romantic relationship is such a large part of your life and your your attention, your your emotional energy, your mental energy, and if you are basically saying that none of that matters as long as she's hot, Like it's it's like she could be a bitch, you could be miserable with her, you could not trust her,
you could not feel respected by her. But if she's hot, you'll tolerate all that shit, you know, just because you think she's hot. Right, So it's like you are a man is degrading himself. Yeah, in the process as well.
And I don't think she'll respect you or she'll.
Just take advantage of you. I mean, well, it depends if she's If she has integrity, she won't respect you, and then she won't date you. And if she doesn't have integrity, she'll just take advantage of you.
I really went down a deep rabbit hole in studying your work and the work of pickup artists and the seduction committee whatever they fuck they call themselves these days, it just seems like there's a certain factor. Now, I did a factor in house something of the kinds of themes that they're obsessed with. So one of them is coming across as creepy. You know, fear rejection is one of them. But just coming across as creepy is a major fear of a lot of these guys that get
these trainings. But in my perception, a lot of them will creepy when they're doing their pigafaris then to make that looks creepy, but it's not.
I So I I thought a lot about what creepiness is. What is creepiness? So creepiness is I mean some of there is a physical attraction element of it, Like physically attractive guys can definitely get away with more creepy behavior. The thing that makes creepiness creepy is that it is it is it's incongruent behavior, right, So it's it's essentially it's when you are It's when you are saying one
thing but being another way. Like it's it's like a guy who's like telling you how much money he has when he's like, you know, he's dressed in in like you know, hobo clothes. Like it's there's like an incongruence in somewhere in their identity, Like what they're portraying is not lining up in some way or another. And I think creepiness it can happen. I think it's a signal. Like I think the reason it evolved is is that
it's a signal for women of manipulation and untrustworthiness. And I think to your point, I think the reason kind of pick up artist tactics come across as creepy is because they are fundamentally manipulative and dishonest, and so they trigger the creepiness red flag and a lot of women and like and then the But I think it's also it can happen with men who are also unaware of their own intentions and desires and impulses who they will
in their head, they're being honest when they express something. Uh, but the woman can see like something's off here. Yeah, Like he says this thing, but he seems this other way.
See. But that's a profound insight because I think a lot of men are kind of a conditioned or kind of think the way the world works is they will be more successful if they hide their intentions, right, Like, oh, can't show that I'm sexually interested kind of like Mike brit But that in some ways that actually makes you more creepy.
Well no, but it's it's it's that's there's an interesting paradox there. It's that's ultimately why I landed on just the prescription of honesty, because honesty, even if you get rejected, even if you fail, even if you don't get the girl of your dreams, you're not gonna like, You're not
gonna be creepy, You're not gonna be manipulative. You're still gonna have integrity and you're you're still gonna you'll be able to approach women and try to, you know, approach your dating life in a way that you can feel proud of and that you can feel you can maintain your self respect.
I get it. I mean I feel like I see you, I see you and what you're you know, underneath a lot of this comes down to just basic confidence, self respect, self worth, not coming at it from a sense of neediness, not from a sense of vulnerable narcissism, which is a topic that I study, you know, where like, oh, I'm I mean I think the need a lot of neediness comes from vulnerable narcissism. Well, let it out. All that sounds, but a lot of it does seem to come from
that vulnerable narcissism. Not you know, there is grandiose narcissism, yep, you know, but I also think you see a lot in the in the pickup ours community. You know, there's a vulnerable kind of narcis We just.
Talks about this before, how pickup is essentially just grandiose narcissist teaching, teaching vulnerable narcissists how to be grandiose narcissist, and that's the supply and demands. And see, grandiose narcissists will actually get laid by women who are vulnerable narcissists.
So like it's, oh, that's super interesting.
Yeah, it's there is an attraction there that happens across the narcissism.
Spectrum, and vulnerable narsism and women is highly correlated with worderline personality disorder. But maybe we don't want to go there, but there's there's something there.
I'm not surprised and and that's why when you also in these communities, the guys who do get laid a bunch and data tunnel women like they have the worst fucking horror stories about Like this is like ultimately, and I think I've talked about this in models. It's like you ultimately, you ultimately attract what you are.
And such a good insight and it's yes.
So if you are narcissistic, selfish, manipulative, untrustworthy, that's the woman you're gonna end up with. And you can kind of fake your way to appearing attractive in the short term. And guess what, You're gonna end up with women who fake their way to being attractive in the short term. So it's like there's a parallelism that that happens.
Well, have you seen the hot matrix, the hot crazy matrix? You don't think that's a thing.
You don't think that's sure, that's a perfect example of a story that no, no, no, I think that's a perfect example of grandiose narcissism attracts grandiose narcissism, or narcissism attracts narcissism, manipulation attracts manipulation. Really, yeah, you.
Think it's a good example of that. That explains why.
Because it's the hot crazy woman, Like this gets in the whole tangent of like what's hot, And you're right, that's a good point too, right, like it's if your standard of hot is like the porn star, you know, fake eyelashes, fake boobs, that's my standard, fake as fake everything.
Yeah, I like the fake ass. I like the fake ass. Yeah.
Guess what like the women that the women that look like that. No, you're right, Yeah, they look like that for a reason.
No, you're right. In reality, before people get the wrong idea about me, I'm usually the one. I'm usually the one who's falling in love with the girl. They're almost like, uh, what do you why hurt? You know, and I'm like, she's so quirky and cute, you know, like I love the nerdy, the nerdy, you know, glad, the glasses and freckles, and that's kind of my type. So you know, you say, the exact words you say are far less important than
your intentions and level of anxiety. So this is a formula I really want to nerd out with you today. That is a great formula. Yeah, you're saying that the anxiety part, I think is associated correlated with the neediness part of the equation. Sure, but then what you know, the intentionality in being more important than the words. If you could unpack that for me, because you have this whole story where you went up to women and your friend went up to can I pe in your butt? Now?
Doesn't that illustrate this point you're trying to make.
Oh my god, the p and your butt story?
Am I wrong? Yeah?
No, I mean it's it's this is one thing that I just learned going out and speaking the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women, is that ultimately, like the line, the line, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it's it's who you are, and it's the attitude that you show up with. I would also in the context it contexts, absolutely, you have to be socially aware, but it's much more about your identity, who you are, who you are, who
you present yourself as. And then and then the attitude that behind it, Like the words themselves are like like you can give the best line in the world to the neediest dude and he's still gonna get rejected left, right, and center. So it's a great point, you know, back to the intention thing, it's it's it's the intention, it's the why you said. It's not what you say, it's why you said it, you know, And and it's if you're you can say anything and if you're looking for
a reaction, it's gonna come across as needy. It's potentially
gonna come across as creepy. If you say something and you're just like fuck it, having a good time, having a laugh, expressing your thoughts, you know, if there's an unconditionality to it, And by that what I mean is that you're not looking for a reaction, then it's it's either she's gonna pick up what you're putting down and she's gonna love it, or she's gonna say no, thank you and move on, and then you know she's doing you a favor because she's not she's not vibing with you,
or throw a drink in your face. I mean, if you're an asshole, yeah, she might do that.
Yeah, well even if you're a non asshole. Sometimes wires get crossed, you know. Sometimes you can have sometimes you can have the best in intentions and you can't control someone else's perception of it, you know. Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Should have happened?
Should happen? Yeah, you actually say allow yourself to be creepy. So you know, like you say, like things happen, things happen.
You have to understand that like you're never going to communicate yourself perfectly all the time, so you.
Know, you can have that. That's the only point I wanted to make there is you can have the best of intentions and still be horribly rejected, and to be able to not take that personally also to not be mad at the person, you know, like, you know, like in some sort of entitled sort of way. You know, Hey, there's something I did want to bring up, and that's this idea of like can you be too cool for school?
You know?
A lot of this seems to make a lot of sense in the early stages of relationship, but like, you know, like there are times in a relationship where you really are needy on the you know, you're human, right, and and honesty is being needy, and you know, let's say you're you get sick and you need your partner to
take care of you for a certain part. Or let's say you're starting to notice and in balance in liking and you're starting to feel within yourself a little bit neatier because you're invested in the relationship, you know, so I'm trying to reconcile that, you know, Like, so there's a lot of advice more about like attracting someone who's new than like being in a relationship over many years.
It is primarily about attraction, although I would say I do think neediness is important as a principle throughout a relationships. Again, as you point it out, like it should happens in life, there are moments of weakness, you know, moments of insecurity, and I think in a long term relationship there's a lot of leeway to like support each other. But I don't. I think if there's ever needingness for an extended period of time, that results in kind of an imbalance within
the relationship. So I do think it's still holds as a guiding principle within a long term relationship, with the understanding that they are going to be like short term moments here and there, that one person or the other is going to be in a very vulnerable position.
It seems like demographics are super important, and you see a lot of guys with midlife crisis you know, going on, and then they're only going for like that, you know, the the hot you know, twenties, you know, in twenties in there, like why why AREM I getting rejected? You know? It seems like knowing your target audience and what's going to be a real authentic fit seems to be really important part of this story, right for sure.
It's it's I think what I think men tend to the men live in one or two one of two different fantasy worlds when it comes to what I would call like identity or lifestyle. The first fantasy world is that none of it should matter. That if you are like charming enough and charismatic enough and have all the right lines and jokes, that you should be able to hook up with any girl anywhere, under any circumstance whatever, like,
which is just fucking fantasy world that's not realistic. The second fantasy that men have is that that lifestyle and identity, you know, it basically all just boils down like money and and maybe how tall you are, which is also bullshit, Like those things matter, but they're they're a relatively small.
How much mon are we talking, I mean, just.
Money in general, Like it's it, but it's it's a relatively small amount of the pie. Uh, And it's I mean, ultimately, what matters is the life that you've built for yourself. You know, your lifestyle, lifestyle, your occupation, your interests, your friend group, what you like to do on the weekends, your relationship with your family, like the city you live in, Like all these things are Like are your age, All these things are big factors. You're religious or ethnic background,
Like all these things are factors. And I think it's important that not just men, everybody is realistic about what are the demographics that I'm going to naturally appeal to, and what are the demographics that I'm naturally not gonna appeal to.
And be honest with yourself.
Be honest with yourself, and then just play within those demographics. Like don't and I you know, back when I coached, I used to run into this occasionally. Get the forty five year old divorce guy midlife crisis, you know, wants to start going out to nightclubs and talking to college girls, and like wants me to give him the line that's gonna get him the hook up of the college girl. I'm like, I'm sorry, dude, but there's there's not a line.
Like there's just no line. Like you're in the wrong place. And besides, it's like, if there is a girl here who's willing to hook up with a guy twice her age, you probably don't need a line for her, like it's she's just that's her thing. It's her thing, or she's there for you know, whatever. The car the benefits, so it's it's I think this is why you know the subtitle of my book is Attracted Women through Honesty. The honesty is not just about the honesty with the women,
it's the honesty with yourself. Love that, because if you lie to yourself, the repercussions of that are ultimately unattractive.
Oh man, I love that. Radical drop them like they're radical. I'm all about radical self honesty. I think this is what we're friends. We were both pretty radically self honest
about each other. And have the ideas of your book changed at all since you've written it in light of the me too sort of era, because there are some things to say in there that are a little like me too questionable, such as you have a thing you say, keep expressing your interest and keep going for it, being a sort of dominant even say dominance is attractive to women up until the point they say no, keep going
for it. Now you say that in the book. Has you're thinking about that changed in light of the last five six years of this eventual consciousness changed.
No, I haven't the last time. So I did a revision of the book in twenty sixteen. Oh, that's the last time I did a revision of it, and I think the me too stuff was just starting around then. But I remember that revision. I kind of went through with that in mind. You know, there's probably like I originally wrote the book when I was twenty nine, no, twenty seven, and then that revision I was thirty two. So it's like, I'm sure there's probably a more delicate
and nuanced way to put there's some passages there. I'm sure there's more delicate and nuanced ways to put it. But I think ultimately I stand by the principle, which is you should express what you want. You should you know, if she doesn't say no, feel free to continue expressing. I just think there's a certain level as long as there's respect there, as long as you're not being pushy
or you know, intimidating her. I think there's a certain maybe, like if I did go back and revise it, I would probably revise like an awareness around her emotional state, because I think a lot of women they they don't feel free to say no or they are too insecure to say no. And so I think there's like it's important to as a man to try to be aware of that.
Well, the women are complex, and then throughout the millennia have been trying to understand. There's some famous quotes like from like famous Nobel Prize winners like I understand the universe, but women forget about it.
You know.
So you do point out some of the complexities of women in your book. You point out how it might not seem rational, but a lot of women you can say something that gets them so mad at you. Polarization, you say, is a good thing. And so you say, well, look, don't count yourself out. If you've made a woman mad at you, you know, like she could actually come back, and you know it could it could work out. So I'm trying to reconcile that within this sort of me
too era. But but there's something really interesting that you're pointing on there, you know, point.
Depens what she's mad about. I mean, it's true. My response to that would be, you know, the opposite of attraction is not anger, the opposite of attraction is indifference.
Right, So why is polarizing women such a positive thing to do.
You know polarization. It's like, it's kind of like if you are going to if you make the decision to be honest about your thoughts and feelings, you have to understand that sometimes people aren't gonna like your thoughts and feelings. Sometimes they're going to be upset by them. Sometimes they're going to disagree with you. Sometimes they're gonna want to argue with you. And I think it's important to understand
that that's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, the same way you argue with family members, or you get upset with your dad, or you know, it's it's part of a natural part of intimacy is feeling heightened emotion, both positive and negative. So I think as long as the reason she's mad isn't because you're a piece of shit who like lied to her or did something unethical,
it's not necessarily a bad thing. I'll give you a really simple I'll give you a really simple, kind of practical example of this that I think probably illustrates why polarization it's not only natural in a healthy relationship, but it's also like good. So my wife, this started when we were dating. I you know, like many women, she would spend a lot of time getting ready to go out on a date night or whatever, and she try on some new outfit and then she'd come out and
she'd be like, how do I look? And if she didn't look good, I would say I don't think you look good? And she said that to you? What did she say?
No?
No?
No.
She would get ready to go on a date and she put on her whole outfit and everything. Yeah, and uh, and then she come out like most women tend to do, and they say how do I look?
Oh, you have to lie, yeah, exactly, you have to experience.
Men would just like say you look beautiful, Like, don't even think about it. I make a practice of telling her if I don't think she looks good, I tell her I don't. Don't you know, I like, I don't like that dress. I don't think it looks good. The first year or so that we were together, she would get so fucking pissed off.
Yeah, women don't like that.
No, she really doesn't like that. And so but I was like, you asked me how you look, and this is what I'm not going to lie to you, right, So she would get upset. We'd have a little the first year or so we'd have like little arguments and stuff about it. But a funny thing started happening after a while, which is if she asked me a question, she says, how does this look? Or how do I look tonight? How does this outfit look? And I say,
you look fucking spectacular? Now that means something like because now she knows I'm being honest. She knows, and I'm willing to say the other thing. So when I say the good thing, she's like super super happy. And another funny thing happened too after a while, and I would argue this is healthy as well. Is after another couple of years, we reached a point where you know, she'd come out of the closet or or the bathroom or
whatever and she'd be like, how do I look? And I'd say, I'll think I don't like the outfit, don't look great, and she'd be like, well, I don't care, I like it. And then we got exactly that's.
Her prioritizing her own exactly exactly.
So it's it's I think that that polarization of response is actually healthy. It's because it also enables the person you're with to stop being needy themselves.
As well, right, and you're encouraging authentic, honest conversations. You know, if I say something that you disagree with and you're like, Scott, I don't agree with that, you know, like you know, I'm not going to fall to pieces, you know, like that's good, a good conversation. I don't want to be around someone who is who says everything I say is brilliant or do I so you say, I strongly believe in the idea of fuck, yes or no. This shows the early days of Mark Manson, by the way, and
his the word fuck. But yeah, I really think that's my philosophy too, right, Like if someone's not interested, like move on, you know, Like I think a lot of nice guys get stuck, right. I think there was a term for that in the pickupart of Stays, where you get stuck with on one person. I think there was a term for they had for it. I'm forgetting what it is right now, the average frustrated chump pick or something.
That is what they they were so mean referring to a nice guy that average frustrated chump, you know, get stuck on one person. But I think there's something really important about that, right is like if is no one went to move on and being graceful about that.
Well, again, think about it if you if a woman is not interested yet you keep waiting around for someone who's not interested, spending valuable time of your own life waiting and hoping, Like, what does that say about your view of yourself? Like, it doesn't. It suggests that you don't think very highly of yourself, that you don't value your own time very highly. You could be using that
time to go out and meet other women. So it's yeah, it's ultimately again kind of with the objectification thing, it comes back to it's a self respect issue.
So the friend zone is is I've I've been so fascinating understanding that I think that a lot of guys, not of nice guys, you know, they this relates to what you're just saying, they think that they stay in there long enough someday the woman's going to just magically be like, oh you know what, I you know what.
I It was you all along that I loved. But I think there's some nuance there because I think that there is this terrible idea that every that no woman can just be a friend that like, you know, the guys and girls can't be friends, you know that every woman that you're friends with, if you're not sleeping with them,
then you're in the friend zone. And I abhor that idea, you know, because I have a lot of female friends that I think it's I have a wonderful, waterful friendship and it's very meaningful, and I generally don't want to sleep with them, you know.
It came. I mean, that's just the objectification again, It's just that's what it is. It's because it's but.
I see that a lot in the in the Pickup Ours Commune. I remember back in the day and in my twenties when the game came out and I tried my hand at all that stuff, it felt all of it felt very uncomfortable to me. And one thing was like I remember I would go out, you know in the scene they called the whatever their term for the real world. They're like, we're now going to the real world, and and and the guys would be like yelling at me to be like dude, why are you talking to her?
And not like you know, escalating it, you know, and I'm like, well, actually this goes just cool. Like I'm not trying to sleep, believe it. Or not I'm not talking to a girl that I'm not trying to sleep. They couldn't understand that concept. Yeah, so I don't know what my point is, but but I guess my point is that is that, like, let's let's define what it means to be in the friend zone, because I don't think you're automatically in the friend zone if you have a really cool friendship.
Friend zone is when you are attracted to a woman and you want to have a mantic relationship with her, but she just sees you as a friend yes, and doesn't want to bring you out of the friend zone.
Well, I think a lot of guys can really resonate with being in the friend zone and being gutted, gut it over, you know, when they they seem in their perception, they seem to see the girl constant dating jerks, you know, for instance. You know, but is there any way out of the friend zone? What are your thoughts on the friend zone?
I don't think about the friend zone a whole lot, Like.
Well, you're married, so I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that.
I just like, I don't. To me, it was always really simple of like, look, you shouldn't wait around for somebody who doesn't want to be with you, like period. Just if she doesn't want to be with you, don't wait around. Get on with your life if you want. If you want to stay friends with her, that's fine, be friends with her, but don't be friends with her because you're waiting that she'll, like one day, hopefully change her mind, you know. So it's like that, I don't know.
There's like a lot of brew haha over friend zone stuff that I never I always have a ton of female friends, and yeah, sure some of them I like totally wanted to hook up with. Some of them I didn't. Some of them I just really liked hanging out with. So it's like, I don't know whatever women are. People like I do find it really discouraging and disconcerting when when men A don't have female friends and B don't think you can have female friends.
That it bothers me. It's a pet people of mine.
Yeah, it's just it's you were like, I find it funny too, because then I'm like, well, no, wonder you're so fucking confused about women because you never spend any time around Yeah, yeah, that's true. You know, it's like, how do you think you're gonna like relate to women if you don't spend time with them.
That's so true. You do argue there's three types of women.
It's like that there's three types. There's uh interest, I think it's interested, uninterested, in neutral, and if she's uninterested. So if she's neutral and like, a neutral woman is just somebody who, like, you don't know if she's attracted to you or not.
She might not even know if she's attracted you or right.
Yeah, you should, uh you know, you should pursue her until you find out, and then once you find out she goes into interested or uninterested categories. If she's an uninterested you should stop pursuing her full stop, let it go. Yeah, and then if she's interested, great.
So it's important. So it's important to understand this framework.
It's important because I think a lot of guys waste a ton of time trying to make sure that every woman they need ends up being interested, and that is just backfires or they try to convert women from uninterested in the interested, and it's just like I think that framework was just to put it as simply as possible. If she's neutral, she like she should remain neutral as little as possible, Like, you should make your interests clear as soon as possible, and as soon as you make
your interest clear, it should polarize her. And if she goes into the uninterested side, let it go. And if you want to be friends, you can be friends. But like, don't don't sit there and try to like game her and try to you know, get her all worked up or whatever.
Okay, well that's fair enough, but you also do really make a case for going for it and for I mean, I'm not saying that's incompatible what you just said, but I think there is another side of it where you're like, no, like, sometimes they'll be more attracted to you if you show that you're attracted to them. You say, quote, the biggest aphrodisiac in the world is someone who likes you, genuinely likes you. A woman's desire is to be desired, but
it has to be genuine desire. It can't be a i'll desire you as long as you boost my ego and impress my coworkers kind of desire.
Ye.
So I guess keeping that framework in mind is good on the one hand, but also if you have limited information on where they're at in terms of their interest in you. You know, let's encourage guys to go for it, you know, respectfully.
And that's if if you don't know, if if you don't know if they're interested or not, if they're in that neutral category, then you yeah, you have to go for it until you find out. And then if you if they're uninterested, then you stop.
Well, I mean it almost it feels like it doesn't need to be said, but it doesn't have to It does have to be said. Yeah, it does.
Unfortunately, this is why we have.
The me too movement. Yes, yes, So in the remaining time we have an interview, let's just, uh, let's offer some hope to uh, to nice guys who are really struggling, really struggling. Uh. And you really believe at the end of the day that anyone can be attractive. You actually make a distinction between good looking and being attractive, and you really have a lot of hope that that everyone can can increase their.
Attractive everybody's attractive to somebody. If if you never meet a who's attracted to you, it's you're meeting the wrong women. So you can improve yourself to become attractive to more women, which is you should also do that. Everyone can do that, right, But if you're never meeting women who are attracted to then you are meeting the wrong women on some level. So it's it's everybody's attracted to somebody somewhere and if and if you if you're not finding them, then it's
an issue of uh filtering. It's not an issue of like, oh women just like tall guys with money or like uh women, you know, like all the bullshit that you.
Can sell, have this whole idea about that. But but but you do make a point. You can become genuinely generally more attractive. Yes, by doing certain things you talk about appearance. You can increase your fashion and fitness. There's something we all can improve no matter how your how many eyes you have or noses you have.
It's pretty simple, Like it doesn't it's not very hard. And honestly, like men have it way easier the women on that front, Like it's it's crazy, like you just I don't know, like take a shower and like fucking comb your hair and put on a decent shirt and like you're halfway there.
Yeah, and a lot of guys don't realize that. Yeah, how much they can up level themselves just by doing that. You say, 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? And so I think a lot of this, you know, it just keeps
coming back to that. You know, these are these are simple things that I think people can listen to TANGI will takeaways in their lives to to get to be with the kind of women they generally want to be with. But as you know, we're we're not teaching. We're not doing one of these things like have sex with any model. You know, that's not what we're here for.
That's the follow up.
But that's that's they work that we're writing together. Yeah no, uh, but uh, you know, when you call, I think we had an interview where we're joking, but I couldn't te if you were serious not When you said models, did you were you referring to statistical models like a model a way of thinking about it, or were you actually thinking about models?
It is a it's a double entendre. So it's it's it's specifically what it is is, and I believe I talk about this in the introduction, is that there's no healthy in a postfeminist world. There's no healthy model of masculinity. That there's no for men who grew up in the
Internet age, there's no clear and obvious role model. You know, if you look at our parents generation, you know, they grew up with like John Wayne and uh, you know, the Jack Nicholson and all these people, like it was kind of obvious of like, Okay, that's that's what a man is, That's how I'm supposed to be. This is you know, what we do. Whereas growing up in say, starting in the nineties, it started to get a lot
more ambiguous and unclear. And so the goal of the book was to just present like, here's a model of what being an attractive man is that is based on science, and it's also uh practical and useful. And then the double entendres.
It's well, the nerd in me loves the double entendre. I love that you know your what's your own journey, you know, personally, just at a personal level, like being vulnerable for a second, as Mark Manson, like, you strike me as someone who earlier in your life you probably felt things very deeply. I actually get the sense, and I may be completely off base here, but I'm a
been a psychologist for twenty five years. I get the sense that you are this like Big Teddy Bear who who early in your life you couldn't you couldn't stand the feeling of being rejected or whatever. But you've gone through such a journey like personally, like you've transformed, and you've gone through out of growth and maybe you even at some point overcompensated by being too cool, where like oh nothing affects me, you know, like uh, don't give
a fuck about anything. You know, maybe you went through that phase at some point and now you're a much more integrated human. But just being your friend and kind of knowing you, this is this is what my intuition is telling me about the arc of your story. How much does that dove tell the reality what I just said?
I you know, it's funny though, like like being a person who feels things deeply, like I never know, Like all I know is how I feel things, So I don't know if that's like for someone like don't there's no reference point, so I don't know, Like I I you know, I grew up in a very like kind of emotionally stifled family, you know, very my parents were like old school Middle America, you know, everything's fine, don't
talk about it type of family. And so, you know, I in my early life I just buried things, which really really buried things, and was developed a number of like self destructive patterns and behaviors at a pretty young age. And then I was also like I was a classic entitled nice guy, like I was every girl I wanted the day who became friends with and then you know, and then I would feel like I got cheated out of something because she didn't want to sleep with me.
And it's like, well, dude, you never said any it's been six months. You never fucking said anything, Like, so is she's supposed to just magically know that, like, oh, you know, your perfect boyfriend has been here the whole time. No, it's it's on you to like say something. But you know, I was young and immature and I didn't understand that, and I think I did overcompensate. When I got to my twenties, I started I got really in the self help.
I got in the Eastern spirituality. When the therapy did a lot of psychedelics, you know, did the whole thing, started meditating all the time, and it really it I kind of overcompensated. I became very I did get in touch with my emotions, but there was like a lot of anger there and a lot of like resentment, and and then also like a lot of selfishness came around. I came out with that, and I think it took me most of my twenties to kind of like mature
out of that. And honestly, my like Models, my book was very much it was kind of towards the end of that journey. Like I think it took me many many years to learn how to be like I figured out how to attract women, like relatively early, but it took me a lot of failed relationships to figure out how to like actually be a good partner and and
be a good man essentially. And so when I wrote Models, like I said, I was twenty seven, twenty seven to twenty eight, and it like it was really the goal of it was like write the book that I wish I had read when I was twenty, Like what is the healthy version of the pick up our artist stuff? And yeah, it's funny too because I wrote it I was like when I wrote it, I was like this industry, I was I was ready to get out of that industry.
I was like pretty sick of it. And I was like, well, if I'm going to leave the industry, I should like kind of leave what everybody needs to actually hear. But they're not hearing. And I was convinced that everybody was going to hate it when it came out, and they did initially hate it. It got a lot of I got a lot of flack in that industry for the first year or two, and then it kind of took on a life of its own, and so it's it's like it's it's been one of the best selling men's
dating books pretty much ever since, and it stills legs. Yeah, yeah, it still.
Yeah, it's personally changed my life. So I really appreciate you writing this and resonating on a frequency I wanted to resonating on that I wasn't resoning on with the other stuff in that whole crazy world.
Yeah, in hindsight, it's funny because it's like it's so obvious. I mean, as most things are, it's obvious in hindsight that you know, I was a guy like I was a mess in my relationships, but I also wanted to like live and act in integrity. And I like, it's so obvious to me now that there were thousands and thousands of men, like most of the men in the pickup artist space were probably in the same boat, and they were like, well, I wish I didn't have to lie and make up stories, but but this is kind
of all that's like in front of me. So I'm just gonna go with it, you know. So it's in hindsight, I'm not surprise. It's not surprising that there was so much demand for it, but you know, at the time it was it really felt like I was like going out on a living uh, you know, saying some crazy stuff, so crazy talk. Be honest with women, I know, be honest, you're good, you have self respect. I know it's fucking it's it's insane, but no, I'm very I'm very proud
of the book. And it's like it's it's a as a very close place in my heart.
Beautiful. So, in conclusion, you don't have to be an asshole to attract a woman, No, you don't. And you also don't have to be a nice guy to attract women. I think that's a conclusion from both ends. Or not be yourself and lean into the best parts of yourself.
I would say that the the nice asshole access is a different spectrum, is a different access as the attractive unattractive access. And yeah, you can be an attractive asshole, you can be an unattractive asshole. You can be a attractive nice guy, you mean, a unattractive nice guy. Thank you Mark, Thank you n One?
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