I see variations of the following ideas thrown around this sub a lot:

  • 80% of women compete to have sex with 20% of the men
  • 20% of men have 80% of the sex

It is true that a small minority of men have significantly more sexual partners than the average man. However, what I want to address is the myth that often comes from misinterpreting this: that to be successful in seduction, you need to be in the top 20% of men, as judged by women. According to this misguided view, a man who marries and stays faithful to his highschool sweetheart is a bottom-tier man, while the guy who takes the time to spend hours each day to message women and go to social events to meet women is somehow much better.

MYTH: Men who have sex with many partners are significantly more attractive, charismatic, rich or interesting than the average man; they are in the "top 20%" of men.

FACT: Men who have lots of sex partners are significantly more promiscuous than the average man; they have sex with many partners because they ask lots of women out and either prefer casual flings to long term relationships, or cheat while in long term relationships.

MYTH: When a man asks a woman out, she responds primarily based on her judgment of the man's value.

FACT: While attractiveness can play a role, a rejection usually means that the woman is not currently sexually available. This is especially true on dating sites, where many of the people there are relationship avoidant and will never meet up with anyone. If she happens to be single and looking, and goes down to the bar to find a man, she will give the guy a chance if she gets approached. But the vast majority of girls in bars are not there to hook up and will reject anyone who approaches them without thinking.

Many of the men who are struggling on /r/seduction are just not open to a relationship. They kid themselves in thinking that they are just not good enough somehow, they just need a more fit body or more money or whatever and then they will find a partner. They don't do online dating because it's not "real" seduction, but yet they aren't involved in any social circles because they would rather stay at home and watch pornography.

The fact is: maintaining a social circle, a relationship or finding a partner online all take enormous amounts of time. Even when you're not actually interacting with other people, it still consumes a ton of mental bandwidth to think about, plan and process social interactions; lots of men use that bandwidth for their careers or other noble pursuits such as posting on reddit. There's a reason engineering students are usually single: studying engineering takes enormous amounts of time, and relationships take enormous amounts of time, and most people can't do both at once. To make room for other people, you need to give up whatever else you would have been doing with that time.

But what you don't need to do is become superman. It's not a competition.