Do Women Really Like Bad Boys?
What I Would Want My Son to Know
Tip Tuesday!
Men view a good girlfriend, as one who is good. Women view a good boyfriend as one who is bad.
This bold claim comes from a YouTuber with over 600,000 subscribers, whose video quickly racked up tens of thousands of views.
In the video, he taught men how to use affection and attention as tools to manipulate women. To his credit, he made it clear that he didn’t invent these rules and that women just respond to this type of behavior.
The comments section was a flood of men nodding in agreement.
Some men called him “women’s public enemy #1”. Others cheered him on, claiming, “A woman’s nature responds positively to sinful men”. One man said, “These lessons changed [his] life”. And there was of course, the classic, “Women love and adore bad men”.
My favorite? - “You’re saving so many people”.
At first, I was confused. If this creator is teaching men how to be what women supposedly want, wouldn’t that make him women’s best friend, and not their enemy? After all, he’s helping men become the “bad boys” that women crave.
The more I thought about it, the more it felt like men knew something was off with this advice. As if, deep down, they knew women don’t actually want to be treated badly, but they were excited by the idea regardless.
Maybe it gave them an easy explanation for why they don’t have a partner. Maybe it gave them permission to act without guilt. After all, if “good women love bad men”, then bad behavior isn’t just excusable, but also desirable. Or maybe it was something else. But one thing was clear - men knew at some level that it wasn’t right.
I kept digging for clarity and came across another well-known YouTuber and writer. He shared his personal experiences as a young boy, explaining that during family gatherings, boys were often taught to act “narcissistic” around women. Meanwhile, girls were conditioned to be “good” - to be polite and agreeable.
I already knew the second part to be true, and I explore it in greater detail in my article The Making of a Good Girl, where I explain how women are trained to measure their self-worth by how others see them. You can read it here:
I, however, was blissfully unaware of the first part of that statement. The one that relates to the conditioning of young men. And it helped me understand the “women’s public enemy #1” comment.
I realized that most men are not being taught how to love a woman. They are being taught how to get women. How to trap and control them. All while still claiming to be the protectors and the providers.
It revealed the core of my confusion. When women seek relationship advice, their goal is straightforward: to become good partners and build lasting love. I had assumed the same for men. However, I learned that men are conditioned to look for something else entirely. In the words of a man:
Men are simple - All a man wants is for you to serve chicken wings naked and to not block the TV.
It seems that most men are raised to feel so entitled to a woman’s love that they have convinced themselves that all they are asking for is a “female body” (in a man’s words) and chicken wings.
But is it true? Does a man not want respect? Does he not crave devotion? Does he not long for love and loyalty? Does he not want a partner he can count on? Is a man really satisfied if she is indifferent to him, serves him dinner naked, and then leaves him to watch other men play sports?
Of course not. The truth is men want it all. They want respect, loyalty, love, companionship, devotion, and everything else a woman has to offer. Not only do they want it, but they also expect to receive it without having to ask. And since women are conditioned to perform these roles automatically, men perceive themselves as low-maintenance.
The entitlement does not end there either. Men are also taught to downplay women’s contributions. To reduce partnership to duty rather than love. Perhaps this is because they have been taught to measure their own worth in limited ways. Through their body or their financial contributions.
Meanwhile, women are trained to worship the crumbs. To mistake the smallest scraps of attention for devotion, and to call neglect “love”. And when they try to communicate their needs, men reduce them to labels such as “too emotional”, “demanding”, “dramatic” etc.
Media’s Role
Media has also spent decades conditioning women to accept and even romanticize the bare minimum effort from men.
I grew up watching movies where nice people always ended up together, or so it seemed. So, when I first heard the phrase “women love bad boys”, I was completely confused.
But as I got older, I realized those “nice” characters were not nice at all. They were manipulative, controlling and even cruel at times. But the stories simply painted them as tortured heroes. This deception is universally true, whether we are discussing Eastern media or Western.
Consider the Bollywood classic Devdas. The male character’s obsessive and self-destructive behavior is entirely blamed on external factors. His abusive tendencies are similarly portrayed as passion and devotion. The two women who love him both sacrifice everything for him, yet he refuses to face his past mistakes and correct his course. Choosing to indulge in self-pity instead.
And the same is true for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The rage, possessiveness and cruelty of the Beast are portrayed as pain and curse. When Belle accepts this cruelty in the name of heroism and love, her role is elevated from victim to savior.
Media constantly tells the same story - a woman’s true value lies in her ability to change a difficult, emotionally unavailable man through her “love”. This teaches women to expect men who offer little to no effort. It teaches them to romanticize grand-gestures instead of consistency. For example, a man who neglects her until she decides to leave, but shows up with flowers at the airport is shown to love her deeply. The media often requires that women are endlessly forgiving, nurturing and low-maintenance to be worthy of a man’s occasional attention. This reinforces the idea that loving a man means being grateful for the crumbs of love he provides.
And this is how women get stuck. They start to believe that if they just love hard enough, they can heal the very man who is breaking them. And that abuse in the name of love is normal. So when a man starts to exhibit these behaviors, she does not register them as red flags.
What Women Actually Want
Respect. Devotion. Loyalty. Love. Partnership. None of which a bad man can provide consistently.
So why do women end up with bad men? Because our society raises men to be bad and then teaches them how to act nice. Bad men do not start bad. They study what women want and use it to create a powerful first impression.
At the beginning, they are attentive. Affectionate. Thoughtful. They plan dates, buy gifts, and say all the right things. But none of this is genuine love. It is performance. It is manipulation. It is love bombing. As WebMD defines it1:
Love bombing is an emotional manipulation technique that involves giving someone excessive compliments, attention, or affection to eventually control them.
And because women are raised to equate attention with worth, they fall for it. Once they do, the game shifts. Some men begin testing boundaries. They pull away affection, offering just enough to keep her hooked. Psychologists call this devaluation.
Over time, love bombing followed by devaluation creates what is known as a trauma bond - a cycle of highs and lows that feels like passion, but is really just an addictive trap. It is often mistaken for love.
This is why men in the comment section of the video mentioned at the beginning of this article, recognized that influencer as an enemy to women. Because he wasn’t teaching them how to love, how to build trust, or how to honor a partner. He was teaching them how to create trauma bonds.
These kinds of bonds have devastated women’s lives, sometimes even with fatal consequences. And all for something as shallow as access to her body, her labor, and her cooking. The fact that many men seemed aware of this, and still applauded such advice instead of questioning it, was deeply unsettling.
The sad reality is that this kind of behavior robs both men and women. It takes away their opportunity to experience a calm, steady, life-changing love. It is tragic for both, but more so for the women because most women actually wanted love and planned to be a good partner. And when children are involved, the consequences can be absolutely devastating.
What adds insult to the injury is the ever-shifting rule book our society has written for women. No matter what she does, she seems to come out a loser. I explore this in more detail here:
The Evolution of Male Worth
Now that we understand how most men are taught to view relationships, the next question is - why do they continue to act this way? What do they gain?
I once heard a man share his deep regret about not having a wife and children. To him, reaching forty without providing for a family felt like he had fallen short, because in his mind, responsibility was what defined a man. He even said that it would have been fine to return to a bachelor’s life at fifty-five, once he had “experienced family life”.
He seemed painfully oblivious to the fact that true responsibility does not end when it becomes inconvenient. That leaving a partner when she needs him most, or breaking a home during children’s fragile teenage years, can cause lasting harm to the very people he is meant to protect. That being a parent is a lifetime responsibility, not a checkmark on a to-do list.
Do you know why that thought never crossed his mind?
Because men too, are people-pleasers. Just like women, men are raised to seek validation from other men. This man didn’t seem to realize that what he longed for wasn’t really the joy of family life, but the appearance of responsibility, and the approval it could earn him in the eyes of other men. And as long as other men saw him as “a man”, questions of morality and integrity seemed to not matter.
Since other men would judge him for not having a partner, he pursues someone they would approve of, and not necessarily someone he truly likes. Since other men would judge him for not having children by a certain age, he chases fatherhood without reflecting on what being a father actually means.
Worth becomes performance. Women become collateral damage.
I wanted to understand why men feel compelled to perform for other men. I learned that in tribal times, a man’s value was measured by courage, his ability to provide food, and his willingness to protect his people. Risk-taking, wildness and adventure were not flaws. They were survival tools. Approval from older men signaled that he was on the right path to keep his tribe safe and thriving.
In today’s world, that same drive exists, but without healthy outlets. Instead of being honored for protecting and sustaining life, recognition is too often reduced to wealth, career status, and sexual conquests. What was meant to feed the tribe, now feeds the ego at the expense of that tribe.
The Myth of the Nice Guy
Hidden beneath the claim that women love bad men is an even sneakier belief that claims that women are not interested in kind or genuine men. In my article on nice guys, I explore how “niceness” is often misunderstood and how, at times, men use it as a subtle form of manipulation.
Even when a man’s kindness, genuine or otherwise, is the foundation of a lasting romantic relationship, it often goes unrecognized by the society. Rarely do we acknowledge the fact that women genuinely love kind and attentive men. It is a striking irony and I fear it is by no accident. But that is a topic for another day.
The Cycle in Which We Are All Caught
Men are taught to measure worth by conquests. They “play nice” until they feel secure, then reveal entitlement. They celebrate taking advantage of women.
Women, on the other hand, grow up absorbing cultural lessons that mistake performance for affection and manipulation for depth. Inconsistency, abuse and outright bad behavior are explained away as “he’s going through something”, and forgiveness becomes a habit, almost reflexive. They learn to play small to avoid offending their men. And yet find themselves increasingly neglected and disrespected.
Overtime, experiences such as these help women learn the difference between love and love-bombing. They learn to protect themselves by raising their expectations.
This can feel challenging to men because they start getting rejected even in their “nice” stage. Frustrated, they turn to influencers who tell them to double down on control. Which further alienates women looking for a real partnership.
Women notice this and adapt in turn, often responding strategically to avoid being hurt. They go looking for advice and are often guided to measure a man’s interest in them by how much he “invests” in them.
Since societal conditioning often teaches men to expect entitlement in relationships, they sometimes get triggered by women protecting access to themselves the only way they are taught to.
This often leads to emotional exhaustion for women, many of whom stop prioritizing romantic relationships altogether. Freed from the constant effort of decoding men who only intended to confuse them, they often experience a surge in energy and clarity.
Men, in many ways, have been babied for centuries. As a result, instead of using this rejection as an opportunity to grow and do better, most start to spiral out of control. They start to view a woman’s autonomy as a personal attack. I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to consider what happens when a long-simmering sense of entitlement is denied. (Hint: Watch the TV series - Adolescence).
Conclusion
Here is the simple truth. Women do not love bad men. What they often fall for is a carefully crafted illusion masquerading as love. This illusion is fueled by a system that teaches both men and women to seek external validation instead of internal worth.
True love is not a game to be played or a trial to be endured. It is marked by its quiet strength and steady warmth. It is built on respect, honesty, and the courage to be real, and has no room for manipulation, control, or pretense. It is free from attachment and demands better from everyone involved.
Therefore, the real question we should be asking ourselves isn't if women are attracted to bad men, but why we as a society are so willing to accept so little from ourselves and others. Why do we so easily abandon our own worth just for a chance at a superficial connection?
The path to freedom starts with self-awareness. It requires both men and women to do the hard work of observing their own patterns and recognizing their inherent value. Until we do, we will continue to repeat the same painful cycle.
🌶️Thank you for reading Sweet Chili Truths!
**Disclaimer: The thoughts shared in this article are based solely on my personal experiences and observations.**
✅ Join me next time as I dive into how to break this unfulfilling cycle in
“The 2025 Masculinity Reset: Breaking the Cycle.” Link below:
Love bombing - Definition
💭 Question: Do women really like bad boys — or have we just never seen enough good men who lead with strength and safety?
🌶️ If this truth hit home, would you please restack it and share it with your circle?
When you spread this message, you help others identify and shed their conditioning and move toward self-mastery.
This cuts deep. I’ve lived long enough to know women don’t actually want “bad men”—they want men who are steady, real, and strong enough to stay open when it’s easier to hide. What those YouTube hustlers teach isn’t love, it’s performance. A trauma bond ain’t devotion, it’s a trap.
The truth is, the “bad boy” act is easy because it’s hollow. What’s harder—and what women really crave—is consistency without control, respect without strings, and love that shows up every damn day, not just when it’s convenient. That’s not weakness. That’s the kind of strength you can build a life on.
https://therewrittenpath.substack.com/p/the-sherpa?r=61kohn
Wow, this was such an interesting and sad read at the same time. A girl I knew in college was dating a boy who actually had a book, I cannot remember the name that taught him how to specifically manipulate your partner. He used it every single day to test her love, buy to her love. He actually created a 'scarcity' of his presence to make her miss him and value him. I was astounded.