You should never make getting a girlfriend your goal.
Your goal should be to work on yourself - because you value yourself, not because you want a girlfriend - and the girls will come to you.
I agree one should work on themselves, but I'm answering OPs question as it was stated (and either or). Not that the question in itself was a real dichotomy.
However, I'd like to take one from Stephen Covey if I may. Working on yourself is first (becoming 'independent') but working on a relationship will enable the feedback loop of making yourself better through 'interdependence'. Also, companionship is worth something that can reach heights higher than individuality.
Definitely though, nobody should ever measure themselves on how others think about them or whether they have a girlfiend (which is a state of 'dependence').
Interdependence raises an interesting point. My main issue is that I fail to appreciate any woman as one where any dependence on her, even if it is mutual "interdependence", is a benefit. It's possible that I'm just sexist, but even in this thread, the consensus is that either men are entirely - or equally at best - responsible for promiscuity when it is clear that women hold the keys to sex, as men hold the keys to commitment.
The possible fallacy in my thinking is the assumption that men are better at maintaining the relationship than women, and thus the more power given to the man, the better the relationship will be, and the happier the woman. Of course this is not true, and there are plenty of relationships that I know of that have failed because of the man.
That said, the failure was always because the man was chasing not intimacy, but "love". Once you understand that the love you are searching for is an ideal, an illusion, and ultimately doesn't exist, nor will it ever, once you understand that, the relationship will not fail in that way.
A cat will love you more than any modern woman.
(post is archived)