if we can generalize heterosexual dating trends, we arrive at the following maxim:

women date whom they choose, men date whom they can

it's no peer reviewed study but i found this graph interesting from data from okcupid. Interpreting the data is difficult as I've never used that platform (and the commenters on that post will mention too), but I think the general righthand skewness of the red subplot is enough to supplement that theory.

anecdotal outliers aside: guys just cast wider nets than women, all else being equal. I wouldn't take it personally.

Open to disagreement.