One of the hardest things about game for men to wrap their head around is the fact that women do not always judge you on your objective merits, but rather, the feelings you project. Plenty of objectively successful guys fail with women because they do not create the right emotions, and plenty of losers succeed because they do. To a man, this seems insane and unfair that a guy can expend so much blood, sweat, and tears becoming objectively attractive, and then lose to an objectively inferior guy just because the inferior guy played the game right, acted like an asshole, and sparked the right emotions.

Womens’ desire for a man who pursues attractive purposes is primarily a subconscious emotion that came about after millions of years of evolution, so like all emotions, it can be stupid, irrational, and easily tricked. Women do not want a man who REALLY pursues attractive purposes– they want a man who FEELS like he pursues attractive purposes. And those are often not the same thing. 

I began to appreciate the importance of emotions when I became friends with a party promoter in New York City. This guy’s job was to bring hot girls to high-end nightclubs, and he had a roster of about 30-35 beautiful women that would tag along with him to various parties. The typical night would start at around 9 PM at a fancy restaurant, where the group would have dinner, and around midnight he would take everybody to a nightclub where they would party until around 3 or 4 in the morning.

Watching these women was like doing a study on cognitive dissonance. At the beginning of the night, when they were sober and pretending to be respectable, the nightclub w$$$$s usually said the same thing: They wanted a rich, successful man, like an investment banker or a hedge fund manager, and they expected him to care of them. Most of these women also said that they would not have sex with a man unless and until he took them to a fancy dinner, treated them like a princess, and “put in the effort,” whatever that means.

By the end of the night, however, it was a different story. The same women who had sworn at the beginning of the night that they wanted a rich, successful guy would get drunk and go home with drug dealers, party promoters, guys who looked like characters from rap videos, the guy with the weirdest outfit and/or hairstyle in the nightclub, and other ne’er do wells. Sometimes they would even go home with me! (I had a good job, but I was no millionaire hedge fund manager).

Even worse, these beautiful women would sometimes go home with ugly and/or creepy guys just because those guys hung around all night and weathered their rejections after the self-respecting men gave up and left. Even worse, the same girls that insisted that they would only have sex with men who took them to fancy dinners would bang guys in the bathroom for a bump of cocaine. Unsurprisingly, these women often ended up regretting their actions and confused as to why their love lives were a mess.

Obviously, women that go to nightclubs every night are often more damaged and fucked up than normal women, so you may not think they are good examples to study. But the problem these women had was just a more extreme version of the problem all women have, which is that what their conscious brain wants is different from what their subconscious brain wants. The conscious brains of these women wanted a guy who was competent, successful, rich, and who would take care of them. But their subconscious brain wanted a guy who FELT competent, successful, rich, and who would take care of them. And those are often NOT the same guys.

For example, in New York City nightclubs, guys who were rich, successful and had their life together often came off as awkward, shy, insecure, timid, needy, submissive, beta, anxious nerds, and women were turned off. Even though women may have known in their rational minds that those guys were successful, their subconscious minds felt like they were not leaders, they were not pursuing attractive purposes, and could not crush the challenges of life. On the flipside, guys who were losers and could not lead themselves out of their mothers’ basements would often project the feeling that they were dominant, confident, badass, and rich, and like they were pursuing fun purposes and lived fun, awesome lives. And because emotion trumps reality, the women often picked the losers over the objectively successful men. The losers would eventually do something beta too – it is hard for most men to project the illusion for a long period of time – but for a short period of time they looked badass.

In a weird way, it is sometimes harder to project the “alpha male” emotions to women when you are objectively successful because modern capitalist society has a tendency to reward men who act like a beta male. For example, a typical corporate drone is often rewarded for being submissive, overly humble, conformist, deferential to authority, overly cautious, risk verse, overly accommodating, nonconfrontational, self-deprecating, self-deprioritizing, pretending to believe in feminist and progressive ideology, and prone to overthinking. These traits then frequently creep into mens’ real personality and affect their behavior outside of the office as well. Furthermore, most guys with good jobs sit in a chair all day, eat like shit, and rarely exercise, if ever, which makes them even less attractive.

It should be no wonder, therefore, that when you put the typical corporate drone in a nightclub he gets his lunch eaten by aspiring rappers, gangsters, and weirdos. In fact, the closest thing to a true “alpha male” in modern society are street guys from the hood who cannot hold down a normal job and are constantly in and out of jail. Objectively speaking, these guys are broke, stupid, and living terrible lives, but they sometimes project the feeling that they are alpha because they do whatever the fuck they want, they do not care what anybody thinks, they do not let anybody tell them what to do, and they take whatever they want with intimidation and violence. For example, a woman might think that a guy with a neck tattoo is fearless and brave because getting a neck tattoo is so socially unacceptable. “If he can get a neck tattoo, that must mean he can do whatever he wants,” her subconscious brain may stupidly think.

Of course, this is stupid: Getting a neck tattoo is incredibly stupid and guys who get neck tattoos are often weak, fearful, insecure, and conformist losers, and there is often nothing badass or impressive about them at all. But if we were living in the jungle with no laws or rules, the violent street guy or the guy with the neck tattoo would be a better bet than the nerdy corporate drone, and that is what womens’ subconscious brains react to.

It is impossible to be a pure, unadulterated, full time alpha male in the modern world. If your boss yells at you at work for making a mistake, the “alpha” thing to do would be to bash his brains in with a baseball bat, and you obviously should not do that. “Alpha male” and “beta male” are characters that you bring out when appropriate, and should be not your entire, full-time personality, and you need to know when to play each character and when to switch between the two. For example, if you get yelled at by your boss, you must play a beta character. If you are negotiating a contract with a difficult client, you must bring out more of an alpha male character, but tempered with certain beta attributes. And of course, if you are meeting a hot girl in a bar? You have to pretend to be a full alpha.

Objectively successful guys and even corporate drones can succeed with women, but only if they ALSO project FEELINGS of being badass, confident, dominant, etc. Guys with good game, therefore, almost have multiple personalities – the personality for the office, the personality for the nightclub, the personality for the bedroom, etc. But between reality and emotions, emotions are more important for women, so for game you should focus on projecting the right emotions. As the old manosphere saying goes, “Feels over reals.”

Feels over reals explains why women are attracted to street guys and other men who feel like they do not live by the normal rules of society, like criminals, “bad boys,” artists, guys who look homeless, guys who dress like gay Peruvian shamans, and so forth. It also explains why women are attracted to men who are assholes, ignore them, do not care about them, and who generally “don’t give a fuck.” It also helps explain why women are turned off by men who are too nice, pay them too much attention, and put them first in their life. When a man is too nice, women feel like he has prioritized them over his purposes, and once a woman feels like a man’s purposes are compromised, she feels like HE is compromised. Make no mistake – women are not happy that they are attracted to these kinds of guys – but they literally cannot help it.

Women know that the guy who is nice, civilized, and objectively successful is usually a better rational choice than the confident, “alpha” loser, but just like a man cannot force himself to be sexually attracted to a girl with a terrible body and an ugly face, women simply cannot bring themselves to feel sexually attracted to nerdy corporate drones that cannot provide the same dopamine rush bad boys can. The only difference between the aforementioned nightclub w$$$$s and regular girls is that nightclub w$$$$s are worse at controlling their emotions, so they do the thing that most women want to do but do not do because they know it is stupid. But make no mistake – EVERY woman has these temptations.

My website: http://www.woujo.com