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Notes -
I agree that thinking all the time about getting a girl is not a good strategy, at least for a sustainable relationship.
What destroys many young men's souls is rating themselves based on people's attraction to them. Rating yourself on any basis is unwise, but rating yourself based on other people's approval is even more unwise, because it's a way of voluntarily making your happiness contingent on the mental states of another person - something that neither you nor they can do much to control.
I think my friend is luckier than most women, at least as far as happiness goes. The real joy of relationships and sex comes from activity: from actively pursuing something meaningful. That's how happiness works in general. It's not getting what you want that gives you most of the happiness, it's doing things that you think have a good enough chance (relative to the value of what you are pursuing) of achieving your goal. Our neurochemical reward system is designed to push us towards achievements, not to make us happy and satisfied. So my friend, who had to work hard to learn how to talk to girls, be emotionally stable, and be interesting, experienced more happiness than some naturally hot chick.
Similarly, a woman who exercises hard, learns how to cook healthily, learns how to look beautiful using make-up, and how to be someone that guys enjoy staying with, will probably have more happiness than a woman who just naturally looks beautiful. As Jonathan Haidt puts it, "happiness comes from in between" - the joy of life comes when you realise that you are doing things that help you to get what is important to you.
I would only add to Haidt that those goals must be thought of as "wants" rather than "needs". Pursuing women because you think you need one (for happiness, status, or just because) is a great way to be unhappy. Pursuing women because you want one (or more) is a great way to be happy. I'm pretty sure that that's the key difference between my friend and incels: for him, a good relationship was something he wanted and worked hard to achieve; for most incels I know, they think they need a woman for "...reasons...".
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