Its more the second than the first but it's really neither. Women being attracted to you is essentially an aggregate score of your worth as a person in all categories (looks, status, success, personality), weighted in favor of certain categories of course. If no woman likes you it just shows how worthless of a person you are, regardless of evidence otherwise and prevents you from being confident and happy. It gets to a point where you feel so inferior and worthless you begin internally attributing your successes to fortune and help of others, regardless of the truth and your faked confidence and pride.
And those people who do jackshit with their lives but having loving relationships, or at least women attracted to them for sex? They feel fine enough to either pull themselves up by their bootstraps or be pleased with their situation because the stamp of "yep, you deserve to exist" of a woman's love is enough to prove you have potential and worth as a person to succeed.