BOOM, Jenna!

I don’t know how I feel about giving dating advice to a woman. This site is called Dating Advice for MEN for a reason: I have absolutely no business helping women with their problems. And not just with dating, either — I set a woman on fire last week while trying to change her flat tire.

But I’ll make an exception in your case because the answer to your question is so obvious. In fact, writing this column requires so little of my concentration that I’m actually typing it out on my laptop as I drive to the grocery store. If there’s one thing I’m not, Jenna, it’s a single-focus urban male without the capacity to multi-task. If there’s two things, it’s that and “responsible behind the wheel.”

Your dating dilemma brings me back to the days before I reached player status. As a beta male, I was given my friends’ scraps — the seat with an obstructed view at the baseball game, the cups full of foam at keg parties, and literally their uneaten scraps of food when we went to dinner. I was a chump, and my friends took full advantage of it — especially when it came to women. The second I laid eyes upon an attractive woman, one of my more alpha friends would run his sophisticated game on her and completely dismantle the delicate seduction scaffolding I had worked so hard to erect.

The point is, attraction is not a conscious choice — it’s an animal response to a man’s alpha qualities. In the same way that flowers contort themselves to face the sun, women are naturally and unshakably drawn to the most alpha man within any group. You can’t help it; you may have liked this first guy because he was caring, smart, funny, considerate, or kind — but you’re attracted to the second guy because he’s the dominant male. You just don’t know it yet.

Men are much more adept at determining their own social standing than women. A woman might look at the successful CEO of an energy company and think his power and influence give him leverage in dating. But in reality, the only true measure of a man’s appeal to women is his game — and if Boone T. Oilslick can’t go out to bars every night and impress groups of drunk sorority girls with anecdotes about high school football or witty one-liners, then his millions won’t be buying him much. You know, except for the mansions and luxury cars.

He’s compensating for something

Attraction is an impulse, Jenna. Guy 2 already knows he’s more alpha than Guy 1 — he’s just waiting for you to realize it. Guy 2 is taking his rightful claim (you) because he’s higher on the social hierarchy than Guy 1. The fact that Guy 1 hasn’t tried to make plans with you recently affirms this: He realizes that he’s not entitled to date the target (you) out of communal protocol. If they were both feral Hyenas, Guy 1 would be watching jealously as Guy 2 chowed down on a steaming boar carcass (you). It’s just the way of the wild.

Accept the natural superiority of Guy 2 over Guy 1 — and play it for all it’s worth. Treat Guy 1 like paid help, and demand that he chauffeur your dates with Guy 2. If you eat a restaurant with no live music, give Guy 1 a violin and the sheet music to Les Misérables. Have Guy 1 wash your clothes and clean your house when you’re out with Guy 2, and make sure that he makes himself scarce when you get back. If you’re having a bad day at work, call Guy 1 up and chew him out for being insensitive and aloof; when you’re in a good mood, call Guy 2 to glow. If you experience relationship problems with Guy 2, force Guy 1 to listen attentively to your complaints and console you. Make it very clear to Guy 1 that you’ve made up with Guy 2 when things improve.

Your involuntary attraction to Guy 2 will develop in time, Jenna — but the longer you wait to consciously embrace your conditioned behavior, the longer you’ll be stringing Guy 1 along. Until he develops his game and starts down the road to player status, he’ll never have a shot with any woman that acknowledges the rigid hierarchy of social animals. Which is a shame, because the new chimpanzee handler at the zoo is a complete knockout.

BOOM!