The most important thing to a woman is a transcendent emotional experience

[Woujo]

The primary and strongest driver of womens’ attraction is their desire for transcendent emotional experiences. At a very high level, I define transcendence as “an adventure into the unknown to conquer a challenge and retrieve a valuable resource.” The thing women want most is to join a man pursuing an emotionally engaging adventure and experience the positive emotions of that adventure vicariously through him. Put another way, women are attracted to fun. People can have fun in many different ways, but fun is strongest when you are pursuing a purpose that involves novelty, a challenge, and a valuable prize at the end. The bigger the challenge, the more interesting the novelty, and the more valuable the prize, the more fun the adventure. And the moment the adventure gets boring, women start looking elsewhere.

The details will vary, but this formula for a transcendent emotional experience should be the basis of any emotional experience you create for women, including conversations, dates, vacations, or even long-term relationships. Human beings evolved to hunt, so the most emotionally exciting and meaningful thing we can do is pursue some attractive purpose. Although we originally evolved to hunt animals in the wild, with the evolution of abstract brains the “resources” we “hunt” can be money, sex, knowledge, self-transformation, or even additional emotional experiences. Similarly, the “challenge” in a transcendent emotional experience can be a battle against nature, against other people, or even against one’s own self. Whenever you are in doubt as to what to do with a woman, the answer is to embark on a fun adventure that includes these elements and that you enjoy yourself.

I know most people roll their eyes at explanations that include abstract, unscientific, “woo woo” words like transcendence. People’s tendency to reject spiritual-sounding words makes sense - there is a lot bull**** fake-spiritual nonsense in the modern world. But I absolutely cannot explain womens’ attraction in any other way. Most people prefer to say women are attracted to concrete things like money, status, looks, height, material things, etc., but those elements are attractive because they subconsciously indicate that the man is an alpha male and is able to generate transcendent emotional experiences. At the same time, if you only focus on these secondary characteristics and do not create a novel and challenging adventure you will fail with women. It is absolutely true that things like money and status create sexual attraction in women, but if a man has these characteristics and does not use them to generate transcendent emotional experiences, the woman will eventually leave him from boredom. If you do not believe me, ask yourself why women have left/divorced the richest men in the world (Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos), the best looking guys in the world (Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Marcus Schenkenberg), and even the most famous rock stars (Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, and Kanye West). If a woman feels trapped in a relationship or like she has no better options, a woman stay with a boring guy, but boring men are fundamentally unattractive to women.

One of the most common platitudes in the dating world is that women only (or primarily) care about money. Men who believe this idiotic platitude often end up becoming ATMs for women who take their money and then run off to have sex with other men who actually stimulate their emotions. Having resources is one of many characteristics of the alpha male, but just having money is a relatively minor characteristic and not enough to sustain attraction on its own. A lot of women chase rich guys for strategic and rational reasons, but money is only emotionally attractive to women because it subconsciously indicates the man is an alpha male and is competent enough to defeat the relevant challenges and obtain resources. Numerous scientific studies have shown that women are more attracted to men who are broke but competent over men who are rich but incompetent. This makes perfect evolutionary sense: a man with 100 bananas and no ability to get new bananas is less attractive than a man with 0 bananas who feels like he can go into the jungle and get infinite bananas whenever he wants.

Transcendent emotional experiences are attractive because they generate positive emotions. The neurotransmitter associated with pleasure is dopamine, and our brain generates dopamine when we feel like we are actively making progress towards a valuable goal. It is important, however, to note that humans release most dopamine ON THE WAY to a valuable goal, rather than after we get it, because our brain wants to motivate us to pursue pleasurable things (it cares less how whether we actually enjoy the prize after we get it). I call the positive emotions one feels when making progress towards a goal “journey pleasure,” a pleasure much stronger than destination pleasure. As the famous comedian and cocaine addict Artie Lange said, “the most fun part of doing cocaine is the drive to your dealer’s house.” In fact, after we get pleasurable things our brain jolts us with a tiny bit of negative emotion to get us to move on to get the next thing and not just sit around enjoying what we already have. For this reason, men that try to impress women with money and material things bore the **** out of them. Women ditch rich, powerful, good looking guys all the time to have sex with broke losers when the broke loser feels like he is on a fun adventure and the rich, good looking man does not.

The formula for a transcendent emotional experience also describes what makes men attractive. An attractive man is valuable, novel, and challenging. “Value” means he possesses the things women find attractive in men: status, looks, height, money, a good job, fun emotional experiences, etc… Novelty means the emotional experience he provides is constantly changing, new, and unexpected. Novelty is linked to mysteriousness and unpredictability. The moment she feels like she has “figured him out” she will start to lose interest. Being challenging means that a woman must constantly feel like she must work to “get” his value and she could lose him at anytime if she does not stack up. When a woman feels like she has “captured” you and you will not go anywhere she starts to lose interest. Finally, a fourth element is that the woman must feel accepted by a man to emotionally invest in him. Without these four elements, women get bored and start to look elsewhere.

Women desire transcendent emotional experiences in two ways. First, they seek a man pursuing attractive purposes so they can enjoy his emotional experience vicariously through him, as if they were playing a virtual reality video game. For this reason, the most attractive emotion a man can project is the feeling that “I have a fun life and in fact, I am on a fun adventure to a valuable resource right now.” Second, women create their own transcendent emotional experiences by chasing the validation of a valuable men, which is why men are most attractive when they are novel, challenging, and valuable. If you are not novel and mysterious, then she is not venturing into the unknown, if you are not challenging, there is no adventure, and if you are not valuable, there is no resource at the end of the journey. You are most attractive to a woman she is on two adventures: an adventure to get you and an adventure with you.

Men, like women, enjoy transcendent emotional experiences, but unlike women, men’s sexual desire is not tightly linked to the emotional experience the woman provides. Men generally only care about whether the woman is valuable, and for men the strongest indicator of value for men is the woman’s appearance. Given that mens’ attraction is concrete and visual, men often have difficulty understanding and appreciating that womens’ attraction is based on an emotional experience, which is abstract and complex. Womens’ desire for novelty and challenge is also not clearly visible from the outside, which is why many people, including women, do not understand it.

I am not trying to say that womens’ attraction to a transcendent emotional experience is a “theory of everything” that explains every single thing women do. Women often end up with men for a variety of rational, strategic, and emotional reasons that are completely unrelated to transcendence. In fact, most men cannot generate a constant stream of transcendent emotional experiences, so women usually end up with men just because they have the secondary alpha characteristics (looks, status, money, etc…). But once you understand the “core” of womens’ attraction is transcendence, you can build a solid foundation for your game and have a huge advantage over other men who do not understand this core fact. Whenever you are in a situation and are not sure what to do, just remember that the key is transcendence.

 

[Black Widow Void]

I can't add anything to this, but wanted to take a moment to day that I appreciated this posting.

 

[DonJuanjr]

So how would you convey this on a coffee date?

 

[jamesfromhouston]

This is an incredible post. Thank you.

 

[Jake_Gyllenhaal69]

men like to transcribe this in to logical stuff and shoot them selves in the foot. For example, when women say they want a leader, they want a guy that is extremely aggressive in creating these emotional experiences like planning a stupid 4 course date every week on the whim, but men will just translate this to alpha male or ceo lol. They want a Disney prince not a wolf pack leader.

 

[roaming shark]

Can you give some practical examples of experiences to give women that follow this

 

[SW15]

So how would you convey this on a coffee date?

You wouldn't. Which is why you are wasting your time if you go on coffee dates.

The primary and strongest driver of womens’ attraction is their desire for transcendent emotional experiences.

Yes. This is why women flake after first dates and claim that "they didn't feel all the butterflies" or that there was a "lack of a spark". In past eras, when women had fewer options, they might be a little bit more patient in those situations if the guy was decent enough, but "decent enough" doesn't cut it anymore when there are 1,000 men awaiting her swipe on swipe apps and her DMs on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are full. That's not even considering whatever approaches she might field in person.

 

[Woujo]

So how would you convey this on a coffee date?

I am working on a book about this, but here is a passage:

Humans are also attracted to transcendence –the Hero of our ideal journey leaves the “ordinary world” and enters the supernatural world, where familiar laws and order do not apply and he is faced with novelty. Similarly, your emotional experience she should feel to a woman like she is transcending her normal reality. You should take her places and create experiences for you she cannot normally experience because you are more interesting, smarter, and transgressive than her. For example, my best dates are when I take women to interesting, underground bars or art shows or enter communities and realities they do not normally enter.

Transcendence is based on the idea that “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.” Women would rather give up their current guaranteed fun for the possibility of better fun in the transcendent unknown. What actually happens on the other side of the fence does not even really matter or need to be that great - it is the act of jumping over the fence in hopes of something better that stimulates her emotions. Your adventure with women is a perpetual crossing of the fence, and whenever you feel like an emotional experience is getting stale, you need to just move to the next thing, whether it be the next conversational topic, bar, or activity. Sometimes on dates I take women to three different mediocre bars, we have a drink at each place, and then we go back to my house. None of the bars were even that great, but just the act of going new places stimulates her emotions.

As of the writing of this book one of the most popular exclusive nightclubs in New York City is a place called 1Oak. 1Oak is very hard to get into, even for beautiful women. But within 1Oak there is a secret room that is even harder to get into. Every time women find out about the secret room in 1Oak, they immediately lose interest in the regular part of the nightclub and instead became obsessed with getting into the secret room, no matter how much fun they were having in the regular party. Getting into the secret room is like a mini-Hero’s Journey: it is a challenge to get into, it is the unknown, and there is a valuable resource inside (a DJ and dancing). There is nothing special about the secret room – it is just different people dancing to the same corny nightclub music – but the very act of jumping the fence excites them.

Second, humans evolved to want to defeat challenges. On a deep level, we feel like if there is no challenge to get something, the thing is not that valuable in the first place. All fun involves a challenge, whether it be playing against somebody in a competitive game, a conversation that challenges your beliefs and taxes your intellectual abilities, a travel adventure, doing something that scares you (like skydiving), consuming some kind of art like a book or movie that makes you think, etc…. As the psychologist Jordan Peterson says, challenges are most emotionally appealing when they lay right on the border of “order” and “chaos” – too much order and the challenge is boring and too easy; and too much chaos you are too in the unknown and overwhelmed with anxiety and difficulty. When you interact with women, you will FEEL whether the challenge is in this sweet spot; and you must intensify or change the challenge when it is getting boring, and to lessen the challenge when it is getting too hard.

The most important challenge, however, is you. The most important resource a woman can obtain is the alpha male, because an alpha male can create a transcendent emotional experience for her that beats the positive emotions created by money, parties, or any other cool thing. But to get you, she needs to feel like she must conquer some challenge. Women go on their own Hero’s Journey to get the alpha male, but once the challenge is gone and she “gotten” the treasure she loses interest. Keep the adventure exciting for her and remain a challenge. There is good anxiety (the fear that you may **** up in a video game and die) and bad anxiety (the fear you will lose your house to a fire); women are most emotionally engaged when they feel the good anxiety of fearing they might lose you.

Third, the Hero’s Journey is attractive because defeating the challenge provides some valuable resource that one can only obtain from the transcendent world. Women do not get enjoy being challenged for no reason, there should be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Ideally, the pot of gold is not just something material – it is ideally something higher and spiritual; it can even be a change in the hero himself. Many men think that they can win womens’ favor with money, fancy dinners, and nice cars, but those things are a dime a dozen. Any fat, corny real estate agent can buy her that stuff. What is much more valuable to women is a life-changing conversation, an interesting adventure around the city, or just being inspired and motivated by somebody who is better than her and who she aspires to be.

The most important resource of all is the feeling of pursuing the Hero’s Journey itself. Super Mario Brothers was a fun video game because beating the levels was fun, not because you actually get to the **** the Princess. What turns women on the most is the ability to feel the alpha male’s confidence, calm, enthusiasm, positivity, and joy as he conquers the adventure. Although she needs to feel like there is a pot of gold at the end of the journey, it is the journey itself which brings her the pleasure, and once she reaches the end she will completely forget about the pot of gold.

I know an extremely rich guy who, on paper, had everything women supposedly wanted – he was tall, good looking, rich, and had a lot of high status friends, including celebrities and famous DJs. He would throw giant parties with tons of alcohol, snacks, drugs, and whatever else women wanted. But unfortunately this guy was boring as hell – he was timid, awkward, and afraid of being edgy or making conversations interesting. He owned a really cool tech company but did not want talk about his work with women because he thought it made him sound like a nerd.



Even though this man had everything on God’s green earth that men think women want, women would constantly get bored and flake on him. Drinking champagne on a yacht sounds like fun, but after about 20 minutes the women would get restless and start looking for the next adventure. Even though I did not have all the cool stuff this guy had, I regularly stole women away from his parties because I could create a better emotional experience. Most women, even dumb materialistic *****s, would leave a yacht with cocaine and champagne to go have a deep conversation about spirituality or relationships, explore a weird part of town, or just be in the presence of a confident, joyful man and not a ****ing *****.



One time this guy had a huge party at his fancy condo and a street thug showed up and started threatening people, acting creepy towards girls, and generally ruining the party. The rich guy was too afraid to confront the thug so the thug hung around for like 30 minutes until some girl tricked him into leaving. After the thug left, the women at the party lost a lot of respect and attraction for the rich guy because they were disturbed on a deep, psychological level. What good is all the champagne and cocaine in the world if the alpha male cannot protect her from the evil monster from the unknown? Women would rather eat McDonald’s in a dingy apartment with a man who makes her feel safe than drink champagne in a mansion with a ****ing *****.

Of course, women DO like things money, nice cars, and fancy dinners. Everybody likes those things. And given the choice, most women would choose a guy with BOTH material things and an adventure. But the excitement and positive emotions generated by the Hero’s Journey are much stronger than the fun of material things, and women evolved to choose a confident, dominant man with no material things on a fun adventure over a rich guy with a boring adventure. Studies have even shown this. Furthermore, many men fail with women because the woman feels he is ignoring his higher purposes to supplicate to her lower purposes. If a woman feels like a man is trying to impress her with **** like material things, fancy dinners, and name-dropping celebrities before she has done anything to deserve it, she loses respect for him and can no longer see him as the alpha male. When a woman is truly attracted to a man does not care about her lower emotions because the higher emotions are so much stronger. Imagine a woman got to hang out with a famous celebrity who was recording an important album or shooting an amazing movie: would she leave that guy because he took her to a restaurant with bad food or made her **** on an uncomfortable chair? Of course not – the adventure of joining him on his pursuit of his highest purposes would outweigh whatever minor discomforts she had to accept.

 

[Barrister]

These principles are actually preached on this forum very frequently; albeit in a less verbose and simple/direct manner of speaking (and I don't mean this in a negative way, I enjoyed your post). We always say "be about your purpose" and to "have a life outside of women." We say this primarily because it makes us as men more fulfilled; but it is also because women are attracted to men who are socially connected and have ambition. You are right that it isn't all about money. Certainly having enough money that you are enabled to enjoy your life IS important though, both for us and for attracting women. Hot women especially, who have lots of options, are not going to be interested in a guy who is borderline destitute, at least not for very long. But it is the complete package that attracts women. Having a "goal" (and the journey to that goal), and one that the woman can enjoy achieving with you, is certainly a very attractive trait for a man to have.