By Ron Alexander
Ever notice how all the sweethearts, the kind of women you want to be dating, seem to be in love with bad boys that treat them like garbage? Everywhere you look, it seems as though abusive jerks have cornered the market on attractive women, while the rest of us have to settle for whatever we can get.
Watch any Taylor Swift video and you will see proof that women do indeed love the bad boys.
The question is…Why?
What is it about the bad boy that women can’t seem to get enough of?
At heart, what it all comes down to is evolutionary biology. Bad boys are typically more aggressive, alpha males who unapologetically go after what they want without fear or shame, which is very attractive to women as it means better genes to pass off to her offspring. Those biological traits are what will make her children more likely to survive and reproduce themselves and pass on her genes to future offspring.
So, what is specifically about bad boys so appealing to women?
Here are just a few of the reasons women fall for the bad boys and what you can do to beat them at their own game.
Bad Boys Offer Freedom: Good girls, like nice guys, are sick and tired of the constraints that come with being good all the time. Following rules and doing what you’re told gets really boring after a while. At the same time, they don’t want to suffer the consequences of being bad or shoulder any of the responsibility for their actions. They just want the emotional rewards that come with it.
Enter the bad boy.
Unlike the nice guy, the bad boy offers the woman freedom from the restraints of being good all of the time. By ignoring the rules imposed by society, the bad boy frees himself (and the woman) up to experience life in a way that nice guys never do. Needless to say, freedom is very intoxicating to a woman.
So, how do the bad boys create this feeling of freedom…?
Easy.
Bad Boys Alleviate Guilt: All women, especially good girls, want to experience the emotional rush of being bad, but they don’t want to have to suffer the consequences or the guilt that often comes with it. That is why women like to drink before they have sex.
It gives them a convenient excuse to alleviate themselves of having to take responsibility for their actions.
“I didn’t want to have sex with him, but I got drunk and it just happened.”
Bad boys are like alcohol for women. They give them an excuse to do things that they would never do on their own for fear of being caught and damaging their reputations. Since the bad boy has no shame, he can take the blame for anything she does, while she can play the innocent little victim.
Without that guilt hanging over her head, the woman feels free to express her sexual desires without fear of the social repercussions. Because of this, she is able to relax a lot more during sex, which makes it a lot easier for her to have an orgasm, which allows more sperm to enter her ovaries, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of conception. (Yes, the female orgasm is real and has an actual purpose.)
Being free from guilt, the woman is now free to enjoy the torrent of feelings that she experiences because…
Bad Boys Elicit Very Strong Emotions: Women are emotional creatures. They thrive on emotions, yearning for the intensity of the feelings that accompany them. In fact, studies have shown that women feel every emotion (with the exception of anger) about 20 times greater than men.
What does this have to do with the bad boy?
Everything.
The bad boy’s power comes in his ability to elicit strong emotions in women. Notice I said “emotions”, not “emotion”. There is a very important difference here.
Nice guys, at best, elicit only positive emotions that cause her brain to release oxytocin, often called the “love hormone”, which causes her to feel an emotional high. Bad boys on the other hand stimulate both positive AND negative emotions which causes her brain to release cortisol which causes feelings of anxiety AND oxytocin which relieves it, thus creating a roller coaster effect.
Ask yourself this question, what’s more exciting a roller coaster that just goes up or one that goes up and down?
Get it? Good.
Speaking of going up and down…
Bad Boys Are Great In Bed: Nothing, except for maybe the birth of a child, emotionally connects a woman to a man more than having great sex with him. Unfortunately for women, bad boys are notoriously great lovers because they are able to apply everything we just talked about not only to their social lives, but also to the bedroom gymnastics, as well.
It’s that simple.
All of those traits that I mentioned before (a sense of freedom, alleviation of guilt, and emotional stimulation) are what contribute to a woman being able to enjoy sex more and have more orgasms, as well. And a sexually satisfied women is incredibly loyal, even to an abusive jerk.
Now, to all of the “nice guys” out there bemoaning the fact that they are also good in bed, but women never have sex with them, there is also another reason women flock to the bad boys…
Lack Of A Better Option: Attractive women stay with bad boys as long as they do, primarily due to a lack of a better option. Nice guys are often too scared to approach beautiful women due to approach anxiety caused by feelings of unworthiness and low self-esteem. Ordinary guys may not suffer from the same levels of insecurity that the “nice guy” does, but he still can’t get the girl, because he’s… well… ordinary (i.e. boring).
On the rare occasion that the nice guy does approach a beautiful woman, their lack of confidence causes them to act in a needy and timid manner, which instantly turns a woman off. Using the roller coaster analogy, the cars don’t even leave the station.
Although it rarely happens, on the very rare occasion that the nice guy actually does manage to get into a conversation with an attractive woman, what’s one of the first questions ol’ wuss boy asks? You guessed it:
“So, do you have a boyfriend?”
Once they find out she does in fact have a boyfriend, which attractive women usually do, they usually just bow out gracefully and don’t even bother trying to fight for her. Unbeknownst to them, a lot of times women will say that they have a boyfriend, even if they don’t, in order to either test the resolve of the potential suitor or to make her appear like more of a catch.
Although they will almost never admit it, a lot of women feel that having a boyfriend makes them more desirable to men, because having a girlfriend makes a man more desirable to them. In the pick-up community, it’s called: pre-selection. (By the way, Ms. X, that’s the real reason you go after married men so much.)
On the off chance that he digs a little deeper and finds out the guy she’s dating is total a jerk, the “nice guy” usually does something even dumber. Instead of just showing the woman that he is better man than jerk-boy using her emotions (like the bad boy does), he either simply walks away or he tries to convince her to break up with him using logic.
Yeah, good luck with that.
How To Defeat The Bad Boy: Although his control over women seems impenetrable, the bad boy does in fact have one glaring weakness: he is a fraud.
All of the bad boy’s pomp and bravado is just an act designed to hide a deeper malaise usually caused by childhood trauma or parental neglect or abandonment. Often times, this insecurity (which is what it is) causes him to become defensive and overcompensate for his short-comings.
At times, it even results in physical or emotional abuse towards his spouse or girlfriend.
This is the key to his undoing.
Needless to say, women don’t want to put up with being abused in order to have a strong masculine presence in their life. Even the ones with severe daddy issues that are unaware of their own value really don’t really want to be abused. They just accept it sometimes as the price they have to pay for having what they think is a strong man who will protect them and give them the emotional stimulation they desire.
That is where the real man comes in.
Unlike the bad boy, the real man can give a woman everything the bad boy can without the pain of physical and/or emotional abuse. By doing so, he also gives her the one thing that she desires most of all; something the bad boys never could: real love.
Beneath their macho exterior, the bad boy really doesn’t love himself, and therefore doesn’t have the courage or the strength to love anyone else.
At the end of the day, women don’t really LOVE bad boys. They are merely attracted to them for all of the masculine qualities that they seem to possess on the surface. And while women may lust after these jerks from time to time, deep down what they really crave – what they really desire – is not a bad boy. It’s a good man… a real man.
Sign up for a premium membership or pick up a copy of my e-book coming out later this year and learn how to Become the Man that women crave even more than the bad boy. This article also appears on the relationship/sex blog, Become The Man, an INSCMagazine content partner.