Welcome to “Beyond Success”, the podcast for high-achievers seeking deeper meaning, fulfillment and purpose. Now, here's your host, world-renowned leadership coach and therapist, David Tian, PhD.
David: Most men who struggle in dating don't realize they're playing a rigged game, but not in the way they think. They blame dating apps, social media, hypergamy, Chads, gold-diggers, feminism, whatever makes them feel less responsible for their own results. But what if the real enemy isn't out there? What if the biggest thing holding you back is your own mind?
In this episode of Beyond Success, we're breaking down exactly why the tactics-driven or strategy-driven approach to dating, like swiping, gaming, endless bar talk, manosphere bitterness, ends up keeping men stuck, miserable and alone. We'll be using deep psychology like Jungian Shadow work, Imago therapy, IFS therapy, RLT therapy, and even the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, in order to expose the hidden patterns sabotaging your interactions with women and relationships in connection with women. [01:09.3]
Here's what happens when you don't get this handled or you ignore what I'm covering in this episode. You end up blaming the dating market or running the same predictable loops, binging, self-improvement, experimenting with tactics, watching the next red pill guru tell you why it's hopeless, all while your confidence rots from the inside. You might even win in the short term, more matches, more hookups, more validation, but it never feels like enough, because it isn't. The men who actually thrive in dating, love and life, don't just play the game better. They see through it, and by the end of this episode, so will you.
I'm David Tian, and for almost the past two decades, I've been helping hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find fulfillment, meaning and happiness in their personal and professional lives—and in this episode of the Beyond Success podcast, we're diving into the five biggest reasons why the modern gaming women mindset is a psychological trap, and more importantly, what to do about it. [02:04.5]
Let’s start with the first point, the Jungian Shadow and why so many men externalize their dating struggles. Okay, so most guys have no idea how much of their frustration in dating has nothing to do with women or dating apps, or the system or the game. They don't see how much of their suffering comes from within their own minds, and that's because they don't understand the concept of the Shadow.
Carl Jung, one of the most influential thinkers in psychology, one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, defined the Shadow as everything that you repress, deny or refuse to acknowledge about yourself. This includes your fears, insecurities, envy, anger, hidden desires, the parts of yourself that you'd rather not admit exist, and when it comes to the Shadow, if you don't integrate it, it ends up controlling you from the shadows, from your unconscious. [02:57.3]
Instead of owning their fears, these guys project them onto the women, onto dating apps, onto society at large, and they don't end up taking responsibility, full responsibility, for their own emotions, and they blame the system instead. It looks like this, or it sounds like this: “Women only care about status and money.” What they're actually communicating is, “I only feel worthy if I have status and money.” This is a classic projection. A guy who believes this has likely tied his entire self-worth to external markers of success, like his career, his bank account or his social status. He's terrified that if he doesn't measure up, then he won't be lovable, and instead of facing that fear, he flips it and projects it out onto the women as if they're the ones holding his self-worth hostage.
Here's another one. “Approaching in bars is just a numbers game.” What he's really communicating is, “I'm terrified of real rejection, so I tell myself emotions don't matter.” If you're running around tallying up approaches like it's a game of sales cold calls, what you're really doing is numbing yourself to vulnerability. You're treating dating like a math equation, because actually connecting with someone really, actually feeling something, scares the hell out of you. [04:14.5]
This is similar to the pick-up approach of approaching it as a video game where you can just put another coin in after you failed and click continue, and then pops up a new character for you to play and this keeps you at a distance from feeling the pain of rejection.
Here's another one. “Hot women are all shallow.” What they're really communicating is, “I still feel the sting of rejection, but rather than look at my part in it, I'll just assume she's the problem.” If you've been hurt, it's easy to tell yourself that all women, especially the ones you're attracted to, are the enemy. That way, you never have to deal with your own emotional wounds. It's a lot easier to say they're shallow than to ask yourself, “Am I showing up in a way that makes deep connection possible?” [05:05.2]
Here's another one. “Chads and the pretty boys, or hot guys, get all the girls.” What they're really saying is, I feel invisible, and instead of working on myself, I'm going to turn that pain into resentment. Instead of developing real confidence, social skills or emotional intelligence, these guys who are stuck in this mindset wallow in their own unacknowledged inferiority. They tell themselves that women are shallow and only care about looks, instead of admitting that maybe there's something that they could improve in themselves.
Now, here's where this really screws guys over. The more you blame external factors for your struggles, the more powerless you become. This is a horrible trap. The guys who spend all night complaining about how dating apps are broken, how modern women are all gold-diggers, how Chads have it easy, they're all stuck in their Shadows, completely controlled by their own projections, and they don't even realize it. [06:04.2]
Over time, this mindset hardens into bitterness. Blame turns into resentment, and resentment turns into deep, gnawing cynicism, and that's how so many guys fall into the red pill or black pill echo chambers. That's how they spend years obsessing over status games instead of building real confidence. That's how they go from being frustrated but hopeful to straight up miserable.
If they never wake up to this, they end up getting older, more bitter, more isolated. They chase validation harder. They lean even more into strategies and tactics, and this makes them even more miserable, and the hole never gets filled, because they’ve never dealt with the real underlying problem, and the research shows that they end up dying many years earlier than they otherwise would.
So, what’s the solution? You stop externalizing the problem, stop projecting, and start doing the deep inner work. You start asking yourself, “Where am I avoiding responsibility for my own emotions? What fears am I projecting onto women and onto the dating system or market? How have I been sabotaging myself without even realizing it?” [07:16.1]
Owning your Shadow isn't comfortable. I know, I've been there. Almost all of these fears and projections I have experienced, I have done myself. I'm going to get into more detail on that, my story on this, towards the end of this episode, so stay tuned. I understand firsthand how difficult and painful it is to do the deep inner work. It means admitting you're insecure, admitting that you've been avoiding, admitting you're not as emotionally developed or mature as you thought. But the truth is, the only way forward is through.
Men who actually win at this, who end up in deeply fulfilling, incredible relationships, they don't have better tactics per se. They have better self-awareness. They stop playing the “Who is to blame?” game and they take full ownership of their own thoughts, feelings and actions. When you stop making excuses and start looking in the mirror, that's where transformation starts. [08:14.1]
All right, so this is the first key point. I've got four more coming up, but before we move on, pause for a second. Sincerely ask yourself, how much of your frustration in dating comes from the external world and how much of it is actually coming from within you?
Okay. The second main point is this: the way you approach dating is shaped by the emotional blueprint that you picked up in childhood, whether you realize it or not. The Imago therapy model of the world-renowned psychotherapist Harville Hendrix explains why people keep ending up in the same frustrating dating patterns, no matter how much they learn, how many apps they swipe on, or how many new tactics they try. [08:54.8]
The primary idea is actually quite simple. We are unconsciously drawn to partners who reflect our earliest emotional wounds. It's why guys who grew up with distant or critical parents tend to attract distant or critical women. It's why guys who felt that they had to earn love as kids keep chasing women who make them feel unworthy, and it's why no amount of status looks or dating hacks will ever fix the underlying problem if you don't deal with the root cause.
A lot of men who struggle in dating without knowing why fall into one of three attachment patterns. First, there's the avoidant type, and, by the way, I've devoted multiple episodes to each one of these attachment styles in earlier podcast episodes—and, by the way, I forgot to mention at the beginning of this episode, most of my current audience is still men, so I am taking advantage of that, and in this episode, I'm coming from the angle of the men's perspective. But almost everything I cover here applies to any gender, if they fall into the same dynamics. [09:58.1]
Avoidant guys act detached, cool and try to be above it all. They tell themselves they don't really care that much about dating relationships. They might play the field endlessly refusing to commit or keeping their emotions locked up behind sarcasm or chill energy, but underneath it all, they're actually terrified of real intimacy, because if they open up, if they let someone in, if they actually connect authentically, then they could get hurt, and that's the thing that they're most afraid of, so they end up sabotaging relationships before they even get going. They keep things surface-level, bouncing from one situation to the next and pretend that that was what they really wanted all along.
Then there's the anxious type. Anxious guys obsess over dating. They binge content about social dynamics. They track every little interaction, analyze every text, and replay conversations in their heads like a football coach reviewing game tape. Deep down, they don't believe they're good enough as they are, so they cling to tactics and status as their only hope. [11:08.2]
They believe if they can just get enough money or status, or build the right physique or learn the right perfect approach, then women will finally want them. But no matter how much they improve themselves, the underlying insecurity never really leaves them, because the issue was never about external factors to begin with.
Then there's the mixed type, the fearful–avoidant type, also referred to as the disorganized attachment. This one can be very confusing to most people. These guys swing wildly between obsession and then avoidance. One moment they're all in, texting nonstop, imagining a perfect future with a girl that they just met, and then the next moment, they feel suffocated and start pushing her away. They crave love, but also don't trust it. They want connection, but then they don't feel safe in it. They might chase a woman one day and resent her the next. It becomes an exhausting loop that leaves them, as well as the women they're involved with, feeling helpless. [12:11.8]
These three overall attachment patterns trap people in dating cycles that feel impossible to break. They keep ending up with emotionally unavailable women or women who drain them, or women who reinforce whatever deep fear they've been carrying since childhood, and the worst part is they don't even realize they're the ones choosing this.
This is why gaming the system never leads to real fulfillment for them. It's why even the guys who win at the tactics, the short-term hookups and all that, they end up still feeling empty, because on an unconscious level, they're still attracted to partners who reinforce their core insecurities. If they don't address these deeper emotional wounds, they'll just keep repeating the same toxic patterns, no matter how much they learn or how much success they appear to have. [13:03.8]
Let's say, a guy with an anxious attachment style starts getting good at dating apps. He optimizes his photos, writes the perfect bio, hones his messaging game, and suddenly, he's getting dates left and right. From the outside, it looks like he has cracked the code, but internally, nothing has actually changed for him. He's still operating from insecurity. He's just covered it up better.
So, what ends up happening? He gets attached too quickly. He becomes overly invested too soon. He self-sabotages with neediness or goes after women who don't actually respect him, and unconsciously, he knows that that's going to happen and that actually draws him in—and before long, he's right back where he started, frustrated, anxious, needy, wondering what went wrong.
Or take a guy with an avoidant attachment style. He builds an incredible physique. He makes six figures. He develops a perfect, high-value persona. Guess what? He starts attracting women who are also avoidant, women who are emotionally cold, distant, hard to read, because deep down, that's what feels familiar to him. He chases the same kind of woman who triggers his old wounds and then complains that women are all the same. [14:15.8]
Also, the avoidant and the anxious are a very natural mix. They naturally draw themselves to each other in a toxic, neurotic way, and at the beginning, they offer to each other the promise of secure attachment, and that hot–cold chemistry will certainly be there at the beginning, but then, over time, because it's already a toxic, neurotic pairing, neither are healthy or secure in themselves and they use each other and are drawn to each other like two poles of a battery. But because they're in an unhealthy attachment style and, together, they are in an unhealthy dynamic, it's a toxic, volatile mix for a huge blow up. That's another common pattern you'll see. [15:00.6]
Then there's the mixed, avoidant–anxious or fearful–avoidant guy. The fearful–avoidant finally might meet a great woman, someone who genuinely seems to like him, and then what does he do as a result? He freaks out, because now that someone actually sees him, actually wants him, the thing he's been trying to get for so long, his old fears of unworthiness come roaring to the surface, and suddenly, all the behaviors he thought he had under control start running the show again.
He panics, shuts down, starts acting like a different person. Maybe he sabotages the relationship. Maybe he ghosts. Maybe he picks a fight for no understandable reason. Afterwards, he doesn't understand why they started this fight. But either way, he loses the very thing he thought he wanted. He is successful in his self-sabotage. [15:50.3]
If dating keeps feeling like a rigged game like this, it’s because you're unconsciously recreating the emotional patterns that you haven't healed. You're reenacting your unfinished business, in Gestalt therapy language. This is why some guys can date for years, hell, even decades, and still keep repeating the same frustrations over and over.
I've seen this so many times with my fellow pickup artists, coaches from decades back, still stuck in the same toxic patterns, now much older. More wrinkles, more white hair, more saggy skin, and still the same old toxic patterns. These toxic patterns are why some guys jump from woman to woman, relationship to relationship, but never actually evolve, because they never stop to look inward or persevere at the hard inner work. They think the problem is external, when, in reality, it's these unconscious patterns, the emotional wiring that they've been carrying around since childhood.
The first step to breaking the cycle is awareness, recognizing the pattern, asking yourself sincerely, “What kind of women have I been drawn to, or am I even drawn to now? What emotional experience do they give me? And what does that emotional experience feel familiar from somewhere earlier in my life?” [17:11.6]
Once you start connecting those dots, dating stops feeling like some random, chaotic mess where you never know what's going to happen next. Instead, you start seeing the patterns, the loops, the deeper forces that have been driving your decisions all along, and when you finally see it, you can begin to actually change it. [17:32.0]
Many high-achievers struggle when it comes to managing their emotions or navigating their relationships, and they hit a wall when it comes to emotional mastery. Maybe you've noticed that stress, frustration or anger is seeping into your personal or professional life, or you feel disconnected from those you care about.
That's where David Tian’s “Emotional Mastery” program comes in. It's based on peer-reviewed, evidence-backed therapeutic methods to help you find happiness, love and real fulfillment. Learn how to break free from the emotional roller-coaster and start thriving in every area of your life. You can find out more at DavidTianPhD.com/EmotionalMastery. That's D-A-V-I-D-T-I-A-N-P-H-D [dot] com [slash] emotional mastery.
The third main point is that the more you try to game the system, the more you lose yourself in the process. Start out looking for love, connection or even just validation, but instead of showing up as you, you end up building a version of yourself that you think women will want a version that to you, seems optimized, witty, charming, strategic, tactical, a version that might play the role perfectly, and then that becomes the exact moment you start disconnecting from who you truly are. [18:56.3]
Internal Family Systems therapy or IFS explains how this happens. Most men who approach dating like a performance are being run by different protective parts of their psyche. These protective parts have taken control, because at some point, being real didn't feel safe. Maybe rejection hit too hard. Maybe your emotions were dismissed or shamed growing up. Whatever the reason, a guy learns that vulnerability equals pain, so he does what he thinks he has to do. He builds a persona or personas to keep himself from getting hurt.
One of the common protective parts is the performer. This is the kind of part that's often strategizing, calculating, gaming the interaction. It's the guy who memorizes lots of openers, spends lots of time optimizing his dating-app profile, continually tweaking it, and he treats every conversation like a test that he has to pass. He might get better results on paper, but every success reinforces the same message to himself that the real, true him isn't enough on its own, so he has to keep performing. [20:10.3]
Then there's the firefighter category of protective parts. These parts jump in when emotions get too overwhelming. They numb the pain. They tell the guy to down four drinks before approaching or they tell him to ghost women before they can reject him. They tell him to hook up with strangers that he doesn't even like, just to feel wanted for a few more minutes. These are the parts that avoid, that run, that would rather feel nothing than face what's really going on.
Underneath all of that buried under layers of tactics, bravado, emotional armor, are the exiled parts. These are the parts of him that actually truly crave real connection, the parts of him that want to love and be loved, and simply don't trust that it's possible anymore. These exiled parts are the ones that carry the concentration of his pain and his vulnerability, and the more he performs, the more he buries these parts of himself, these exiled parts. [21:10.7]
At some point, he wakes up feeling empty, exhausted, and he might have some short-term wins, more matches, more dates, more hookups, but none of it will feel fulfilling for very long, because it was never him experiencing it. It was just versions of him, masks, layers, external armor that he built in order to survive back then that no longer are serving him now. You can't fake your way into real love. The longer you try, the further you get from the thing you actually want.
The fourth main point is that modern dating culture traps men in a toxic cycle of grandiosity and shame, keeping them emotionally stunted and disconnected. Very well-known psychotherapist Terry Real calls this the grandiosity shame dynamic, and it's one of the biggest reasons why so many men struggle in their relationships with women, if they even manage to have any relationships at all. [22:10.8]
It starts with grandiosity. A guy convinces himself he's above emotions, above rejection, above needing anything from anyone, and he tries to play the alpha role, detached, in control, never too invested. He acts like he doesn't care, because caring would mean risking rejection, and that's the one thing he can't let happen. But here's the part that most guys have no idea about—grandiosity is always a mask for insecurity.
The guys who posture the hardest, who act the most unbothered, who claim they don't chase, they're usually the ones most terrified of real intimacy. They don't just want to be seen as high-value. They need it, because without it, they don't feel like they matter at all, and when their tactics stop working, when they get ignored or ghosted or dumped, their grandiosity collapses straight into shame. [23:06.6]
Now the guy who was bragging about his abundance mindset is spiraling. He's doubting himself. He's pissed off at women, at dating, at the whole system. He tells himself it's all rigged, that he never really cared anyway, that modern women are all just broken, anything to avoid confronting the deeper truth that he never actually built real connection or confidence. He only built or tried to build a persona.
So, what does he do? He swings right back to grandiosity. He doubles down on the tactics. He goes even colder, more detached. He numbs himself harder, hoping the next strategy will work, and then it fails and he crashes again into shame, and that's the toxic cycle over and over—grandiosity, shame, then grandiosity, then shame, and grandiosity, then shame—and underneath it all fear, specifically the fear of being seen as beta, the fear of vulnerability, which is the fear of being real, authentic, and getting rejected as a result, the fear of being yourself and getting rejected anyway. [24:18.6]
A lot of men would rather pretend they don't care than risk caring and failing. They think they're protecting themselves, but really they're just cheating. They're cheating themselves out of growth, because real strength, real emotional maturity, comes from owning your own emotions, not hiding from them. The real beta move isn't embracing your vulnerability. It's spending your whole life hiding behind bravado, because you're too scared to be truly seen.
Now, the fifth and final main point is that the more a guy chases external validation in dating or relationships, the more he sets himself up for loneliness, resentment and, eventually, self-destruction. Most guys in the tactic-driven dating space aren't full-blown narcissists, but the culture that they end up cultivating and immersing themselves in encourages narcissistic traits. [25:17.1]
It rewards grandiosity. It teaches them to build a hyper-masculine, high-status persona, a version of themselves designed to dominate, impress and manipulate. If they can just project enough confidence, act the right way, they think, say the right things, then they think they'll finally get the validation they've been craving.
But true confidence isn't built on acting or wearing a mask. It's built on self-acceptance, and that's the part these guys skip over or don't even know about. Then they don't end up developing their self-worth. They develop an addiction to external approval, and the second that approval disappears, they end up collapsing into shame. [26:01.8]
They also start to see relationships as transactional rather than reciprocal, or a mutual building up of each other. They measure their success in numbers, how many matches, how many women, how much attention? They don't see intimacy as something that grows between two people. They see it as something to extract from her from someone else, and once they start thinking this way, they stop seeing women as real human beings.
Now women are the enemy or they're the prize. Either they're obstacles standing in the way of success or of their own self-worth, or they're the treasure or reward at the end of the cave or tunnel guarded by the dragon that they need to vanquish in order to earn the reward or treasure. Either as the obstacle or the treasure, they're inert, static. They're like NPCs, non-playing characters, not actually fully human, and as a result, there's no real connection happening. [26:58.4]
Over time, this mindset destroys a guy's ability to feel empathy. He loses touch with his Higher Self that actually cares, because caring would mean feeling, and feeling would mean risk, and risk means hurt and pain. The longer he operates like this, the more numb he becomes. His self-worth depends entirely on how well he's performing, so every failure or every rejection, every ignored message, every woman who doesn't play along feels like a personal attack on himself.
That's when the resentment starts. When guys hit this stage, they turn bitter. They rage at women for rejecting them. They rage at dating apps for being rigged, but stay on them and continue to rely on them. They rage at the whole system out there for not rewarding them, for the way they think they deserve to be rewarded, and the more they rage, the more they isolate themselves. They spend more time in toxic online spaces. They surround themselves with other bitter men. They sink deeper into cynicism, and by the time they wake up, if they ever do, they're actually alone. [28:06.8]
If you always feel the need to win in dating, then at some level, you're afraid to just be yourself, and the longer you run from that fear, the more you lose, the more you sink in this quicksand.
All right, let's bring this all together. We started with why so many men externalize their dating struggles instead of owning them, how they project their fears and insecurities onto women, onto the dating market, onto society at large. Then we went deeper into how unresolved attachment wounds keep them trapped in the same painful patterns, chasing women who only reinforce their deepest fears.
From there, we broke down how performing in dating rather than showing up as your authentic self ends up disconnecting you from real intimacy. We exposed a toxic grandiosity shame cycle that keeps men emotionally stunted and afraid of vulnerability, and finally, we saw how the endless chase for external validation leads to narcissistic traits and loneliness and resentment. [29:09.5]
I know this toxic cycle firsthand because I lived it. For years, I believed the answer to happiness was more—more status, more money, more women, more pleasure—and I got a lot of it. I built an international business, teaching primarily men how to succeed in dating. I became a celebrity dating coach. The international media called me “Asia's Hitch.” I was being flown around the world, working with executives, partying with VIPs, living the models and bottles lifestyle. My dating skills program was and is the only scientifically verified program of its kind. On the outside, to a lot of men, maybe I look like I had it all, but on the inside, I was hollow. The same strategies that I had mastered, strategies that made me effective in dating, were also the same ones keeping me from ever feeling truly loved. They were protecting me from the very thing I wanted. [30:04.1]
Then my world collapsed. My long-term girlfriend at the time, a woman that everyone around me looked up to me for dating, cheated on me in the most humiliating way possible, not just behind my back, but publicly. She made sure everyone we knew about it, and when it happened, every ounce of self-worth that I had built came crashing down, grandiosity to shame, because when you build your professional and personal identity on these sort of external dating successes, on these external achievements, on being seen as high-status, the minute those things are taken away, you have nothing left.
So, I spiraled. I lost all sense of meaning. At my lowest point, I ended up on the 57th floor of a skyscraper ready to end my life, and if a good friend hadn't found me in that moment, maybe I wouldn't be here. Even after that, I wasn't done self-destructing. A couple months later, I was on my motorcycle at the top of a mountain, working up the nerve to drive myself off this cliff into the sunset. [31:04.4]
But there was one thought that kept stopping me. I wanted to see my two-year-old goddaughter grow up, and that really surprised me, that that thought was so dominant and how much love it brought up in me. I kept thinking back to when I helped care for her, from when she was a newborn, that that was the first time I had ever experienced pure, unconditional love, the kind of love that doesn't need to be earned, the kind that just is.
Standing there facing death, I finally understood something that changed everything for me—the only thing that makes life meaningful is love. Not the conditional transactional kind, the kind where you have to prove yourself first or be high-value enough to deserve it. Real love is unconditional love that flows freely from within you, whether or not you get anything in return. There's absolutely zero need of having anything returned. Everything I had built, every achievement, every status symbol, every seduction technique, was me trying to earn that love, trying to prove that I was worthy of it. [32:14.4]
But love isn't something you can achieve. It's something you experience when you stop running from yourself. Most men who struggle in dating aren't actually struggling because they need better tactics. They're struggling because they're still trying to earn the love they never got. That's why they obsess over being high-status or alpha, or whatever, untouchable. That's why they chase approval and then resent the very people they're chasing. That's why they keep repeating the same toxic cycles year after year.
At some point, hopefully, you have to stop running. You have to sit with the parts of yourself that feel unworthy, the parts that have been chasing success, not for the joy of it, but because deep down, you believe that if you don't achieve enough, no one will love you. The way forward isn't found in more—more money, more women, and more validation. It's found in finally facing the parts of yourself that you've been avoiding, the parts that need love and acceptance the most. [33:17.5]
If you're in pain, the answer isn't to escape it. It's to go through it. Pain isn't the end. It's a call, a call to finally reconnect with yourself, a call to stop hiding, a call to love yourself even in your darkest moments, instead of constantly searching for something outside of you to fill that emptiness.
I get that this might not be what you expected from an episode breaking down dating strategies, but this is the truth nobody wants to talk about—and if this is resonating with you, if you're seeing yourself in any of this, then maybe you're ready for the next step. [33:56.7]
In the next couple of episodes, we're going to go deeper into the solution, how to start unwinding these patterns, how to heal instead of just covering up the wounds, how to actually build a true confidence and connection that lasts rather than just faking it long enough to get short term results, because the moment you stop chasing and start healing, you don't just exist. You finally start to live.
Thank you so much for listening. If this has helped you in any way, please share it with anyone else that you think could benefit from it. If you liked it, hit a like or give it a good review or rating on whatever platform you're listening to this on. If you have any feedback whatsoever, I'd love to hear it. Leave a comment, send me a message. I'd love to get your feedback.
Thank you again so much for listening. I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out. [34:44.7]
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