Neither do I, of course, but I know such a man. We became friends in my senior year in college when I started to become aware of game and the successful habits of guys who get laid. Almost daily he would have an anecdote about talking to random girls and how easy it was to get phone numbers. Many of the dates he ended going on resulted in getting some type of action. Sometimes I wondered if he exaggerated his success, but looking back I believe he actually underplayed it to not hurt my feelings. He knew I wasn’t getting any play and probably hid the strong interest girls were showing him while I got none.

Fast forward twelve years. I was back at home for a month after my trip to Europe. I hung out with him and another college friend in Baltimore. All three of us majored in the sciences with intentions to become doctors, but we all dropped that in favor for eventually starting our own businesses. One would open a restaurant, the other would start a consulting firm, and I would write.

We went out to a nearby bar that had about two guys for every girl. I immediately noticed my friend getting extended eye contact from women. I would maybe get a glance while he would get a double take. One girl walked by us, stared at him, and slowed down, possibly to give him a chance to approach.

We walked to another bar where it was more of the same thing. I might as well have been invisible. Then I saw a girl grab his arm and stare at him like a lost puppy dog. It was both pathetic and amazing at the same time. He didn’t say anything and she walked away, continuing to stare from a distance. She seemed to be displaying signs of love while even more girls stared. For him this was normal, another night of receiving more female attention than an average guy receives in an entire year.

All the game you learn and all the effort you put yourself through to make yourself an attractive man still can’t compete with my friend. He just has to show up, smile, make small talk, and seal the deal. The reason is because the United States is a country where aesthetics is an increasing component in attraction. My friend gets more visual attention now in his early 30′s than his 20′s, even though he has passed his physical prime like I have. The shifting culture means my friend’s value is actually going up every year, not down, while average-looking men who don’t work on their game are seeing their value plummet.

All is not lost for the average man because nature always provides opportunities to counter imbalances. Since my friend gets so much attention, he doesn’t do many cold approaches. This has a way of limiting his potential. On the other hand, I approach like a dog, which means it expands my potential. Approaching is the great equalizer. I also visit countries where aesthetics play a minor role, so in the end our quantity and quality are similar. The only difference is I work much harder than he does.

The irony of his attractiveness is that he would do worse if he left America. If his main strength is his appearance, and American girls value appearance more than anything else, he wouldn’t do as well in places like Ukraine or Lithuania, where appearance is valued much less. In Washington DC, a land of stiff men who wear khakis on the weekend and think girls are impressed by job titles, he’s at the top of the pack. While he does have justified complaints of crappy DC girl attitudes and overall low attractiveness, he’s a shark in a land of goldfish. He doesn’t plan on moving away from the city anytime soon.

The better looking you are, the happier you will be in America. When you consider that American women will actively chase good-looking men, I don’t see the urgent need for handsome men to hit the road in Eastern Europe or South America. Most men, however, don’t have these looks. We don’t get daily attention from beautiful women and therefore need to learn game. We need to consciously improve our value. We need to go to countries where we can get much better than our homeland with equal efforts. We have to hustle more for not hitting the genetic lottery. And I completely accept that. I want beautiful and feminine women, and I will do what it takes to get them.