When studying chimpanzee tribes in the jungles of Africa, the primatologist Richard Wrangham discovered a disturbing fact: If a chimpanzee is wandering the jungle alone, minding his own business and not bothering anybody, chimpanzees from a neighboring tribe will often gang up on him and kill him, sometimes even tearing him limb from limb. Chimpanzees, Wrangham observed, do not want a fair fight: they only like to go on expeditions to kill their enemies when they have a significant numerical advantage. Generally speaking, chimps only like to attack when it is at least 8 on 1.

Wrangham then tried to figure out why chimpanzee tribes organized these murder raids on poor, innocent chimps who were not bothering anybody because it did not appear that the raiding tribe derived any immediate benefit in the form of food, sex, or other resources from killing outsiders. But after detailed study and observation, Wrangham eventually discovered that every time a chimpanzee tribe ventured outside their territory and killed an outsider, the raiding tribe expanded the size of its territory, which eventually led to greater access to food and other resources. Members of chimpanzee tribes who successfully killed their enemies and expanded their territory were generally healthier, more well-fed, and less stressed.

At this point, you may be thinking: “what the fuck does any of this have to do with getting women to like you”? The answer is that Wrangham’s research shows that the human desires for acceptance and adventure are deep, primal emotions that are the result of literally millions of years of evolution. The desire to defeat enemies, conquer unknown worlds, and put our mark on the universe is so deep in our DNA that it existed before human beings were even human beings, and is therefore one of our strongest motivating forces. From an evolutionary standpoint, the desire for adventure is literally the difference between life and death. Most importantly, humans, like chimps, have a deep evolutionary imperative to want to be part of the raiding tribe rather than the lone guy (or gal) wandering the jungle alone.

Womens’ desire for adventure is based on this desire to conquer, which in turn is based on the human desire to hunt. The two evolutionary imperatives for human survival were to 1) avoid threats, and 2) procure resources, which is why one of the strongest source of positive emotions for both men and women is hunting. The pleasure of hunting is maximized when we venture into the unknown, conquer challenges, conquer new territory, and procure pleasurable resources.

In fact, the strongest kind of fun is an adventure with novelty, challenge, conquering, creativity, and a pleasurable prize at the end, these elements should form the basis for most emotional experiences you create with women. The most important of these elements is challenge, because as the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky said, if you give a person all the pleasurable things in the world, they would fuck it up just so they could have another challenge to conquer.

Our evolutionary ancestors mostly hunted animals in the jungle, but our desire to hunt can also be directed to higher purposes, like learning something new about reality, building a successful business, winning an athletic championship, or even getting somebody to like us in a romantic context. This desire is why we enjoy watching sports team battle each other to put a ball in a goal, why we enjoy action movies where a hero kills a bunch of bad guys to get the girl, and why so many immigrants and explorers happily leave their homeland to go live in a completely different country.

Some scientists even believe that the desire to hunt explains why human beings enjoy music. Our desire to conquer the unknown and make it into “known” territory often manifests as a desire find patterns so we can “conquer” that particular aspect of reality. When we hear a new song, we subconsciously sense there is a “pattern” to the song, so our brain releases dopamine because it feels like we are close to figuring out the pattern and “conquering” the song. The more the pattern confirms our expectations, the more dopamine our brain releases. But alas, if we listen to a song too many times we get tired of it because our brain has figured out the pattern and now needs to go conquer a different territory.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche recognized the power of our desire to hunt and conquer when he stated that our strongest desire and the “fundamental instinct of life” was what he called the “will to power.” According to Nietzsche, the will to power is based on the desire to “overcome,” as in overcome challenges. The “Ubermensch” or “Superman” to Nietzsche, was a man who continually embarked on adventures, overcame challenges and imposed his will on the world. Nietzsche believed the will to power based on our survival instinct, something I think Wrangham’s discoveries confirm. The same reason that chimps venture out of their territory to kill rival chimps is why men want to conquer nations, defeat their enemies, and create works of art.

The neurotransmitter that drives our desire to hunt is dopamine. Our brain releases dopamine whenever we pursue anything pleasurable: food, sex, cocaine, winning a sports game, etc. In fact, dopamine is our primary pleasure chemical and when scientists excite the dopamine pathways in the brain, patients feel so good that they stop caring about anything else, including sex.

But most people misunderstand how exactly dopamine works: our brain does not release dopamine after we obtain the pleasurable thing – instead, our brain releases most of the dopamine ON THE WAY to the pleasurable thing to motivate us to get that thing. Once we get the pleasurable thing, our brain actually makes us feel a little negative emotion to motivate us to go get the next thing. Evolution wants us to pursue valuable resources, but does not care if we actually enjoy the thing after we get them.

The fact that our brains release most dopamine on the way to the goal is extremely important because it means that the pleasure of adventure comes from the JOURNEY and not the destination. For this reason, I distinguish in this book between journey pleasure, the pleasure we feel when pursuing something we want, and destination pleasure, the pleasure we feel after we obtain that thing. Journey pleasure is much stronger than destination pleasure, which is why just giving a woman money and material things does not make them like you; women want the adventure. As the famous comedian and cocaine addict Artie Lange once said, “any addict can tell you that the best part of doing cocaine is the drive to your dealer’s house.”

Anybody who has achieved an important goal can tell you that reaching the goal is often a letdown because the journey more fun than the destination. In fact, many people become depressed after they achieve the thing they were aiming for because there is no more journey pleasure. I know a guy whose dream since he was eight years old was to play Major League Baseball and win the World Series. Amazingly, the guy actually achieved his dream and won the World Series in the 1990s. But after he retired from baseball, his life collapsed. He had achieved his life’s dream, so what was there left? It is hard to get motivated to sell insurance or real estate after you win the World Series. He became a fat, depressed, alcoholic loser and spent all his time hanging out in nightclubs trying to bang stupid club thots who were too young to remember when he played.

In the same way, women deflate and get bored after they actually get the things they thought they wanted. When I lived in Los Angeles, I was good at sneaking into Hollywood parties, and, as you can imagine, hot chicks were almost always excited to come with me on these adventures. But whenever we actually got into the Hollywood parties, the girls would get bored because actually being inside the party was not as fun as trying to sneak in. Once I snuck into a party at a major movie star’s house with a girl, and she quickly got bored and said “this is disappointing. I thought something cool was gonna happen.” In that moment I realized that Dostoevsky was right; this ungrateful woman had been allowed into one of the most exclusive parties in the world and wanted nothing other than chaos and drama.

For this reason, the focus of your emotional experiences with women should always be the adventure rather than the destination. My best dates have been dates where we just grab a tea or a coffee and then walk around the city with no particular destination in mind. If you do plan on a particular place, your plan should include a bunch of destinations so the adventure never ends. For example, I often say to women “come meet me at X bar at Y time. There are a lot of cool bars in my neighborhood, and I will show you around.”

Sadly, not every member of the tribe can enjoy the pleasure of hunting on their own. Some betas are not competent enough to win the battles they want to win, but more importantly, betas evolved a terrible fear of the unknown and of confronting challenges directly. Again, this fear is a feature, not a bug. Instead of sending every individual into the jungle to hunt on their own, evolution determined that the hunt would be much more successful if the tribe came together and hunted under the leadership of its most competent member, the alpha male. Evolution provides a carrot and a stick to make betas obey and help the alpha male. The carrot is that, by helping the alpha male on the hunt, the betas vicariously enjoy the journey pleasure of the alpha male as he succeeds. The stick is that betas feel a terrible social anxiety whenever they even consider doing something that might upset the alpha, because upsetting the alpha leads to rejection from the tribe. This emotional cocktail ensures that, as long as the alpha male provides a fun adventure and makes them feel accepted, bets feel a powerful attraction and desire to obey the alpha male.

The alpha, therefore, becomes the beacon of the betas’ hopes and dreams. When betas feel accepted and emotionally connected to the tribe, they replace their purposes with the alpha’s purposes, their emotional experience with the alpha’s emotional experience, their emotions with the alpha’s emotions, and the alpha’s world with their world. Because the betas have helped the alpha, betas even start to see the alpha’s successes as their successes. Being the alpha is so fun that betas want to vicariously live the alpha’s life through him, and will even ignore their own life to do so. This is why people pay millions of dollars a year to go to action movies, sports games, and UFC and boxing matches – they just want to vicariously experience a man conquer in a way they cannot do so on their own.

Earlier, I said that the alpha male has a special ability to alleviate womens’ neuroticism – that ability is based on the alpha’s ability to hunt. The psychologist Sigmund Freud believed that neuroticism is caused by a feeling that we lack something, be it sex, affection, food, protection, etc. The archetypal alpha male, therefore, can theoretically alleviate anybody’s neuroticism because he can theoretically defeat any challenge and successfully get any resource a person could ever want. Of course, no real man is actually that powerful, but women did not evolve to want a man who gives them everything they want – they just want a man who FEELS like he COULD give them whatever they want. Women evolved to subconsciously feel like the archetypal alpha male is a real thing, so if you act enough like the archetypal alpha, you can trick her subconscious mind into thinking you are the archetypal alpha and dissolve her neuroticism. The feeling of the archetypal alpha is enough to cure her neuroticism because, to our subconscious brain, the feeling that we COULD go get something whenever we want is just as good as actually having it. And strangely enough, actually giving women things makes you look beta if they have done nothing to deserve it.

There is actually an interesting story in the Bible that illustrates this fact. After living in separate tribes in relative freedom with no leader, the Israelites beg the prophet Samuel to appoint a king to rule over them. Samuel tries to convince the Israelites that having a king would be a bad idea: God does not want them to have a king, and even worse, the king would take their freedom, tax them, fuck their daughters, etc. The Israelites reject Samuel’s arguments and insist on giving up their freedom to a king, saying to Samuel: “Let our king rule over us and go out at our head and fight our battles.” 1 Samuel 8:20. In other words, the betas happily submit themselves to the alpha’s leadership because the alpha will fight the bad guys for them.

The fact that humans evolved to see adventures as a tribal project means women get most excited for an adventure when you are in the lead, they feel accepted by you and like they are helping somehow. Women have a deep desire to contribute to the tribe, and if they are not helping they subconsciously feel like they have no value to the tribe, which causes them to feel disconnected from the tribe. Oftentimes, when women reminisce about men they fell in love with, they will brag about how awesome the guy was and, more importantly, they will brag about they somehow helped in his success. I learned from working with my clients that whenever a client is considering closing a big deal, I need to get approval from their wife or girlfriend, not necessarily because the wife or girlfriend is doing anything important, but mostly because they will try to ruin the project if they do not feel like they “helped” somehow.

The fact that womens’ desire for adventure is a deep, ancient relic of their evolutionary past means that it is subconscious and often irrational. Women are not necessarily attracted to the man who is actually most able to provide an awesome adventure, but rather the man who FEELs like he can provide the most awesome adventure. Women often chase “bad boys,” drug dealers, aspiring musicians, and other losers who live on the fringe of society because those guys feel like they are powerful and are on some awesome adventure, even when they are not. In fancy nightclubs you often see the hottest women with the guys who are dressed in the most weird outfits – those weird outfit guys are almost all boring and lame (believe, I know many of them), but their appearance makes women feel like they are courageous and powerful and have some awesome and interesting life, even when they do not.

I have a friend who owns a multi-million dollar tech company that does extremely interesting stuff – virtual reality, computer graphics for movie studios, etc. But until I got him to dress better, you could never tell that this guy’s life was awesome from looking at him because he dressed and acted like a typical Silicon Valley nerd: boring New Balance sneakers, plain t-shirts, raggedy jeans, etc. To make matters worse, my friend was reluctant to talk about his company because he was humble and thought girls would think it was boring and nerdy. As you can imagine, women constantly ignored my friend in favor of losers and weird outfit guys until he changed his outfit and demeanor. Unfortunately, I know lots of guys like my tech millionaire friend – good-looking, smart, successful, nice guys with interesting lives who fail with women because women do not FEEL like their life is a fun adventure.

Because women are more attracted to emotion than reality, they often prefer men who engage in certain emotionally visceral activities, like artists, DJs, celebrities, athletes, etc. An accountant or computer programmer may have an incredibly adventurous life and genuinely enjoy his work, but it is harder for women to vicariously experience that adventure than to vicariously experience the fun of being a DJ. It is also harder for women to “help” men whose adventures are not as visceral, which makes it less emotionally exciting for them.

For the same reasons, women are attracted to men who appear to be tall, good-looking, athletic, confident, and high status, even if those guys are losers, because women subconsciously feel like those guys are more likely to succeed on adventures. I have a friend who works construction and has failed at everything he ever tried doing in his life, but he still fucks lots of hot girls because he is good-looking, athletic, and confident. Remember – the primary “adventure” that our evolutionary ancestors went on was physically fighting bad guys in the jungle, so even though my tech millionaire friend is a much more impressive guy than my construction worker friend, women often go for the construction worker because their subconscious ape genetics tell them that, if humanity still lived in the jungle, he would beat up the tech millionaire and take his lunch money.

Of course, you should ideally look like your life is an adventure AND actually have a life that is a fun adventure. No matter how awesome your life is, you will not catch womens’ attention unless you produce the feeling of adventure. Women like my tech millionaire friend once they get to know him, but the hard part was catching their attention long enough so they could learn who he was. That said, feelings are temporary and eventually go away, so when the feelings go away women will be able to see you for who you are: a fucking loser without an interesting life. The weird outfit guys and my construction worker friend never end up keeping girls because the girls eventually realize the guy has just been selling her an illusion. So you need both.

Furthermore, because womens’ desire for adventure is a product of their lizard brain, it will often require you to act in ways that would be stupid and counterintuitive by rational standards. For example, if you pay a woman too much attention, she will subconsciously assume that your life sucks and you have no other options. But such an assumption irrational – a guy can have an amazinng life and still pay a woman attention – but it is wired deep into womens’ subconscious mind that if a man is paying a woman attention who has not deserved it, he must not have much else going on.

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