Frustrated by Unrealistic Preferences

Over the weekend I had the “why are you single?” conversation with a female friend quickly turning into a conversation of dating preferences. I believe women’s preferences are more like requirements, and are to narrowly defined and unrealistic, a major frustration of mine in the dating battlefield. I’ve found most of my friends who end up in happy long term relationships are with people who did match all of their preferences. Maybe the person was shorter, a different ethnicity, or had a different job. My friend countered by saying she doesn’t want to compromise or settle. I told her it’s not settling if you find someone who’s a good match for you.

Men have dating preferences but they tend to be very flexible. An example would be my height requirement, I prefer tall women, since I’m tall myself (6’2”), but it’s not a requirement. If I met someone attractive but was 5’2”, I would consider dating her. Many of the women I know aren’t as flexible in their dating preferences, they are too many requirements. It feels as if your battling against a list of “and’s” and deemed dateable only if you match a narrow set of height, weight, eye color, type of job, skin color, and hair type requirements.

Settling is when you have nothing in common with the person your dating and your with them because you feel you cannot do better. Not meeting the requirements on a checklist is more like buying software for my computer, not dating. Most of my frustration stems from this issue when dating. Am I the only one who’s been frustrated by these unrealistic requirements?