In this article, we analyze the major dating books, coaches, and schools of thought for women to uncover the core strategies they promote, what actually works in the real world, and what it means for men seeking quality women and win-win relationships.

Strategy A is supportive and interdependent, often encouraged by men. Strategy B is more libertine and individualistic, somewhat closer to a male approach, but may struggle to reconcile personal power with relationship success.

Main Strategies

Looking broadly at the literature for women, we can isolate 4 main strategies, all potentially valid depending on her goals, but not all equally effective for finding quality men and relationships.

Before proceedings, note that some strategies may overlap, and be executed with different ‘modes’.
For example, the feminine woman may use a more ‘active mode’, going out and socializing, and she may even approach. But she’d approach within her main strategy of choice—for example, asking for help. Or she may have a good career, but still prefer the feminine approach—for example, think of Dolly Parton.

Strategy A: Feminine & Supportive (Win-Win)

The Concept: Traditional woman who seeks a man to lead, provide, and protect. She embraces traditional feminine roles and prioritizes being a good partner or mother over career.

Resources: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man; The Rules; The Surrendered Wife;

Examples: Kate Middleton

Common Tactics: Delaying sex; ask to be picked up; let him take the bill; etc.

✅ PROS

• Attracts relationship-minded men, including quality men who can be effective providers
• Potentially easier and simpler life IF he is a good man and leader
• Undersupplied niche in today’s Western society, boosting mate value

❌ CONS

• Dependence = high risk. Some men can turn overly controlling or even abusive
• Must protect reputation as a ‘wife material’. That may mean skipping formative dating experiences or fully enjoying one’s sexuality
• Can create Madonna-whore dichotomies in some men

Best Match: Providers; dominant men

⚠️ Careful renouncing this approach: most women (and men) still prefer a loving relationship
Modern dating culture reviles this approach, but it remains highly effective to get relationships (keep reading)

Strategy B: Power & Independence (Feminist/Egalitarian)

The Concept: An independent, assertive, and empowered woman who prioritizes her well-being and will walk away from men or relationships that serve her best interests. Pursuing her own goals and career, she doesn’t prioritize her partner.

Resources: The Power of The Pussy; Why Men Love Bitches, Fu*k Him

Examples: Taylor Swift; Sex and the City (Samantha and Miranda)

Common Tactics: Focus on your goals and don’t develop feelings; under-invest to maintain power; think of relationships transactionally; lead the interaction; control the frame; etc.

✅ PROS

• High agency life, pursuing her own goals. In a way, more similar to a successful man
• Relationship control since she often pairs up with meeker men who are OK with egalitarian or women-led relationships
• Possible ‘power couple’, though that’s rarer since high-power men often prefer a supportive woman

❌ CONS

• Less effective with other high-agency men who often prefer warmer and more traditional women (see ‘submissive vs. strong‘)
  • Loses to warmer women for relationship, who enjoy broader appeal at parity of attractiveness (including conservative men)
• Sometimes includes (power) games that escalate conflict for control, undermine intimacy and turn off high-power men
• Lower raw attraction because it can lose the masculine/feminine polarity (especially when pairing up with meeker men)

Best Match: Meeker men; younger men; lower SMV men; open-minded men

⚠️ Beware the hurt woman on the revenge path
Some women started out overly naive and got hurt, potentially by narcissists or dark triad men. They then swing the opposite side with the ‘don’t need a man’ approach (sometimes with a child from the previous guy). While her pain is understandable, these dating coaches can pass hidden resentment onto other women (same dynamics apply with men, of course).

Strategy C: Attractiveness & ‘Sexual Pull’

The Concept: Sexuality and seduction are the tools of power, using both psychology and physicality. Depending on the style, she can be demure/exploitable (Marlyn Monroe) or more assertive (Madonna).

Resources: Seduction University, The Art of Seduction, Kamasutra, Seductresses

Examples: Mae West; Marilyn Monroe; La Païva; Cleopatra;

Common Tactics: Sexual innuendos; baby talk; provocative clothes; sexual confidence; flirting; etc.

✅ PROS

• Strong pull, especially when paired with physical attractiveness
• Can niche down and appeal to men with specific sexual kinks, potentially transcending looks

❌ CONS

• Social and reputational risk, with added risk of evoking pity when trying to be overly sexual later in life
• Retention risks as sexual appeal fades and men wise up to psychological influence

Strategy D: Gold-Digging (Most Manipulative)

The Concept: Use men to extract resources. A strange of mix of ‘financial dependence on men’, while maintaining psychological independence

Resources: A Goal Digger’s Guide; Ho Tactics

Examples: Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends

Common Tactics: Feign attraction; withhold sex as a bargaining chip; lingering touches; pick an expensive restaurant; drop hints of ‘enjoying shopping’, etc. See: Tactics women use to drive men crazy ↗

✅ PROS

• Attracts high-investing men and filters out low-investment men
• Sets her up as the prize to be wined, dined, and maintained

❌ CONS

• Repels quality men (unless for the ease of sex without strings attached,
• Stigma lasts forever and she may have to hide her past for future relationships

⚠️ Modern Cultural Dissonance: Will to Power vs. Wish for Intimacy

Contemporary Western women have grown up in cultures that encourage independence and may discourage traditional roles.

This culture has shrunk support and market for the ‘strategy A’-but women’s will for a relationship has not shrunk nearly as much (genes only partially ‘bend’ to culture).
This has led to a self-harming phenomenon in both dating advice and women’s psychological health.

Dating Advice: The ‘Bitch Who Gets Men’ (Lie)

Much ‘Strategy B’ modern dating advice is framed as high independence, while also promising to deliver genuine relationships.
For example, Why Men Love Bitches leads with the high power ‘bitch’, promises to attract men and relationships, and winks at the popular but low-agency law of attraction.

Unfortunately, this approach sells well, but offers a mismatch of incompatible goals. It would require advanced social IQ and ‘compartmentalization’ to pull off.

🔎 Example: Parading Strength, While Signaling Neediness

Culturally, this phenomenon is observable in songs such as ‘I can buy myself flowers’.

In the lyrics, author Miley Cyrus claims she can treat herself better than any man can, appealing to the ‘will for power’ and ‘not needing a man’.
Yet, looking deeper it betrays a wish for emotional intimacy. Starting from a high-dependence broken heart, her self-love activities relate not to high-agency independence, but to interdependent emotional intimacy (see analysis here).

This is neediness masked as strength. A truly independent woman wouldn’t have written that song at all. And a mentally healthier woman may be better off by simply owning up to her emotions and wishes (‘high power vulnerability’).

🙋‍♂️Lucio’s Experience: The guilt of wanting a man

Lucio:
Dating in northern Europe, I’ve encountered this phenomenon more than once.

An ex-girlfriend felt bad for ‘needing’ a relationship and ‘failing’ the independent woman’s goal.

Meanwhile, her friends egged her own that ‘no, she is fine single’.

Darker Motives Behind Dating Advice

Men tend to advise and support ‘Strategy A’, while it’s almost only women who advise Strategy B.
With a power-aware lens, it’s easy to spot possible evolutionary and sexual strategy reasons.

In brief, women often encourage high power ‘Strategy B’. And men advise for supportive, warm and, although they may not say it, the more submissive ‘Strategy A’.

The different incentives can explain the vastly different takes.

Men’s (Darker) Motives

Most men’s incentive is to have lower status, more submissive women because it boosts their dating choice, decreases the risks of celibacy, and maximizes their relationship satisfaction and ‘safety’.
This also works socially, because the lower status a group is compared to yours, the more comparative benefits you gain (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999).

Women’s (Darker) Motives

Women as a whole gain when women as a whole gain social power.
Individual independence though goes both ways: it protects against controlling men, but it can be a liability compared to more submissive women.

So women’s high-independence advice may be a subconscious manipulation tactic to harm the competition. The more independent women around, the stronger the social benefits for all women, and the less competitive the sexual marketplace becomes. Then, she may instead defect and be submissive to a man she likes.

The advice can be manipulative, even when from genuinely independent women. The ‘independent woman’ approach attracts flak from men who fear that a society of independent women will leave them celibates.
So independent women need more independent women to protect themselves as a group.

These motives cast doubt on much of Strategy B, at least when it comes to dating effectiveness.

TPM’s Take: the Best Strategy (for women)

The best strategy was already shown in the thumbnail and opening infographic: it’s the combination of both, with an optimum balance, and leveraging each in the most appropriate context

The best strategy is almost always situation and goal-dependent.

If a woman has no interest in relationships, she doesn’t even need to bother with dating advice.
But if she’d prefer a relationship, then we can tease out a good general principle:

⚖️ Be independent in life, selective and strategically more submissive in dating, and ready to let a high-quality man provide and lead in relationships.

This approach covers the downsides of high dependence, a crucial aspect in a world where too many men turn out controlling and value-taking.
But it also maximizes her market reach, appealing to the many quality men who value feminine, kind, and supportive women.

Embrace Reality, Reject PC

Across the board, much of dating advice ignores or plays down basic social exchange dynamics and mate value considerations.
Solid advice based on these foundations includes:

• Boost Sexual Market Value (SMV): For women, this is heavily weighted toward youth, beauty, femininity, and social grace
• Time Your Relationship to Peak Value: The 20’s is most women’s peak SMV, a good decade to pair up with a high-value man
• Plan Your Reproduction: and look into reproductive tech options (freezing eggs as contingency, for example)

Takeaways for Men

For men, this literature also offers a useful screening lens. What women read and what strategy they adopt signals their dating strategy, values, and ‘relational value’.

In general, many quality women won’t be consuming much dating advice, especially outside of Strategy A.
First, because they believe in honest win-win, rather than seeking ‘strategies and tactics’. Second, because they need it less. At parity of value and quality, men benefit from dating advice more than women because men are expected to initiate, lead, and signal value. Women, less so.

In simple terms, this is how you assess women based on the literature they consume:

• ✅ Red flags literature (eg, ‘signs you’re dating a sociopath‘) <— It’s a good sign because it often means she wants a good guy
• ❌ Gaining power literature can signal a Machiavellian, selfish, and ‘taker approach’ (strategy B, C, D & E)
  • Feminist literature can signal an antagonistic approach and distrust of men.
    See more dating red flags ↗

In general, most men interested in win-win dating and relationships with a supportive woman are better off with women following the traditional Strategy A.

But to be more precise, as always, what’s best depends on your goals.

🙋‍♂️Lucio’s Experience: High-power women & gold diggers = advanced learning

Lucio:
Some men revile ‘gold diggers’ and profess never to get close.

It’s understandable, yet some dominant women and even sex workers offer the biggest learning opportunities for more advanced men.

High-power women test your frame and leadership harder. And sex workers may unleash their full tactical toolbox to extract resources, even while they’re falling for you.
It’s an advanced game of seduction that taught me a lot.

To leverage all the advanced know-how and find a quality woman, see: