Women really, really overestimate how much beauty matters to men and extremely, ridiculously underestimate how much having someone who is very enthusiastic about you (both in general and sexually) is of value to men.

I have a theory about why that is. It doesn’t make anyone look good, but it’s probably true. Women fixate on — because they are the most obvious and legible to them — the men they often encounter. These are the most aggressive, most socially-uncaring¹ men who approach them (and all women) over and over again. This is maybe 1-2% of men, but they are responsible for 95%+ of the cold and most other approaches to women. These men do care about beauty a lot. Perhaps exclusively.

And men, especially when many of us are young, often pick women mostly to impress our friends — otherwise we risk being made fun of for choosing the “wrong” girl². I did not do this, but understand the urge at least. If you can attract an extremely hot woman your social capital goes up a lot, even if she’s not someone you actually even like. (For instance, for a little while I was dating a major-agency³ signed model, and my buddies talked about it for years afterward when she came to visit me on base. She was a a sweetheart and I went out with her because she was a great person, but she was objectively mega-hot. Like, heads turned when she walked in a room.)

If women actually worked on their personality more and did a better job of understanding that every dude is not like Fratus Bro III who approaches them 10,000 times, they’d be happier. And if men cared less about impressing their friends, they’d be better off too.

But most people are not very thoughtful nor very introspective so doubt it’ll happen.

1. As in, not concerned with social conventions.
2. Yes, I realize women experience this too, often in an even more toxic manner among their female friends.
3. Ford, for reference.