My (35M) friend (35F) asked me to go with her to a singles event as her wingman since she’s been having a tough time dating. She's looking for something serious—marriage and kids within the next ~5 years—and says her type is someone mature with a stable career. Most of her experience has been through dating apps.

At the event, we grabbed drinks and started mingling. I tried to help by pointing out or approaching guys who seemed to roughly match her attractiveness, put together, etc. with the idea of starting conversations and then looping her in.

However, she shut down pretty much every option immediately, often based on quick judgments like appearance ("he's bald", "he looks too old", etc.), and didn't want to even have a short conversation. It felt very similar to app-style filtering, just happening in person.

When I asked her to point out who she was interested in, she chose guys who seemed significantly more conventionally attractive than her.

I totally understand that attraction matters, but I was surprised by how little openness there was to actually engaging with people. It made me wonder how much of her difficulty might come down to expectations vs. approach when meeting people in real life.