How Neediness Sabotages Your Sex Life (and the Antidote)

There's a book called Models: Attract Women Through Honesty, written by Mark Manson.

Mark went on to write other books, including one you might be familiar with, called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

That book sold millions of copies, as did Models.

Now, Models was first published in two thousand eleven, and at the time that it came out, it really broke away from most of what was being published in the space at the time, which was largely pickup artist culture.

It was tricks and tactics.

And what Mark taught in Models was something very different.

As the title suggests, it was attracting women through honesty.

The core idea of that book was that non-neediness is the root of all attraction.

Now, how do we define that? Well, Mark defined neediness as prioritizing others' perception of you over your own perception of yourself.

So the needy man's behavior is driven by approval, whereas the non-needy man's behavior is driven by his own values.

Confidence and charisma and status are really all downstream of how non-needy a man is.

And as Mark talks about, this is something that cannot be faked with tactics and tricks because women read it in a hundred small ways.

The only fix is to actually become less needy, to build a life you value more than any one woman's opinion.

Both the stereotypical nice guy and the jerk are needy.

They're just needy in different directions.

And the antidote that Mark gives to neediness is vulnerability.

Show who you really are.

State your desire.

Risk rejection.

Hiding your intent is needy.

Stating it is not.

He gives three core practices: honest living, honest action, and honest communication.

It's a great book.

I highly recommend it.

There's a little bit of a gap, though, or a way that we can expand on that.