The incel has to remind himself to stay in his own lane and stop comparing himself to others when he sees a cute girl come up to him followed by her choice of a partner. The moment the partner comes into the scene, he gets to work micro-analyzing their chemistry and what the partner brings to the table. The outcome is a mixture of relief and disillusion - relief for noticing the passive, complacent roles a lot of these men are pigeonholed into (or worse, accept wholeheartedly), as well as disillusionment for determining himself the “loser” in this five second battle of the wits and realizing the wholesome values the person in front of him lives by and realizing how in the end, the random dude has done something the incel has never done - be considered worthy of someone’s intimacy. On second thought, he will always end up being the loser with that definition of success.
If the incel instead stays his course and believes in his inherit self-worth, he will gladly accept the fact that everyone has a different idea of what a good partner is, and not only that there’s no divine scorekeeper to deem him a winner or a loser, but that such a criteria would be useless to anyone but him anyway. If he looks at the path he is taking so far, he would see that he indeed strives for small social milestones and that those are enough for him to fortify his next series of encounters when they organically arise. If he wants to put his foot on the gas, the choice is there (whether he feels so or not) and that alone gives him comfort. The fact is, right now, he looks inside himself and comes out empty handed with reasons to pursue anything beyond a casual correspondence, and that’ll do for now.