It's a popular notion that a girl winds up with a beta/ provider when she's ready to "settle down"--as if there's some kind of tacitly understood game plan for women during their 20's.
I think, if you examine things closely, you'll find that MOST relationships are a lot more arbitrary: people wind up dating the people that are AROUND them.
It is a bigger handicap to be a STRANGER than an AFC when it comes to hooking up with girls. AFCs get girls in their social circles ALL THE TIME. The problem with being an AFC is NOT that you can't get laid or attract women; it's that you'll let women walk all over you when you DO get them, and that leads to all sorts of problems.
If you're doing cold approaches, you NEED to run tight game, because you will not get another chance. Phone numbers are useless; club makeouts are useless. But, if there's a single girl in your social circle, all you really have to do is MAKE AN EFFORT and you will *probably* sleep with her eventually. I puzzled over the fact that so many of my AFC friends were getting laid by running "AFC game" (basically, do everything WRONG) until I realized that it's a different ballgame with women that you see regularly.
A thought experiment for you all: Imagine an AFC and a hot woman are the sole survivors of a plane crash on a remote desert island, and live there, stranded, for the rest of their lives. Will they sleep together, or will he get friendzoned?
An extreme example for sure, but the core principle holds true: when you get a man and a woman together, sex happens. It's simply biology. Want to hook up with a woman? Just isolate her. No fancy tricks needed.