Speaking as a woman (I think that's too general/obvious to be a PL, but

), I don't think I'd call it "wasted potential", unless you're referring to the potential of Rhys having been born an entirely different person. I don't know how long his previous relationship with the woman who triggered his obvious inferiority complex was, or how he got into it, but I strongly suspect that a large part of his issue with raging misogyny is a direct result of the fact that he is radioactively repulsive to women and likely always has been.
I don't know what you'd call the male equivalent of resting bitch face, but he has it. Women (actual ones, not the peanut variety) tend to have a strong radar in terms of the "vibe" men give off as an obvious survival mechanism and Rhys' couldn't be clearer. I wouldn't be surprised if grade-school Rhys had tried to leverage "authority figures" like Janet or teachers to force other kids to spend time with him, especially girls, as a sackless cretin like him was probably intimidated by other boys from the get go. However, it's important for us to be able to spot and avoid/freeze out the really dodgy men as far in advance as possible, and I'd imagine he's has been on the receiving end of this his whole life. I don't know if he really has the social skills to have consciously understood what was happening, but he's likely been ghosted, politely avoided, or otherwise passively aggressively shrugged off by women ever since he was old enough to express interest - and I'm sure anyone can appreciate how much rage this is going to generate in an advanced case of NPD like him. I wouldn't be surprised if trooning out was a way he thought he could yet again rules-lawyer his way around women's visceral disgust at him, and his constant seething is a reaction to being frustrated to find women using the exact same tactics to freeze him out as before.