Mark Gimein discusses why so many women believe that there are no good men left:
You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group “strong bidders” and the second “weak bidders.” Your first thought might be that the “strong bidders”—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.
But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by “weak” bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the “strong” bidders will hold out for a really great deal…
This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable “strong bidders.”
Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them — and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.
In essence, Gimein is saying that the women (and perhaps the men) who choose to be the pickiest are the ones who are most likely to remain single. While this is common sense, it is also more relevant to today’s dating world. As I wrote in an earlier essay, one unintended consequence of feminism has been to make women pickier. Evolutionary psychology has instilled a need in women to date “up” — in other words, they developed the desire for additional security, strength, and resources in a mate to compensate for their physical weakness at a time when they were unable to fend for themselves in the primal state of nature thousands of years ago.
Now, however, women can fend for themselves. They have as much access to employment and education as men. In short, they no longer need men to survive. But women still desire to date “up,” and there are fewer men who suit their desires as they move further “up” themselves. No female CEO is going to marry a plumber. So the successful women who are this picky remain single because they are only trying to find someone who fulfills their evolutionary and biological imperatives. And, as Gimein notes, there are fewer men available with each passing year. The women who are successful are those who choose early.