I did not think this needed to be said but in the past few days I heard this often.

These guys who are struggling here have too high standards. But they refuse to admit it.

So I wanted to present my view here and want to know if anyone here thinks they are high value and still are struggling in dating.

Men typically use hypergamy to say women have high standards. But having unrealistic standards is not something women have a patent on. Even men who are struggling tend to have unrealistic standards.

What are standards? they are expectations we hold regarding the kind of partner we want. It will be thresholds in various areas, looks, personality, career, income, status, common interests, values, etc.

When do we say standards are too high? Some people seem to want to look at it objectively. They are like "women have high standards because only a few men in the population clear the thresholds they set." or "Women look at too many different aspects of a man when they judge him, we need to clear thresholds in looks, status, height, confidence, ambition, ... so many stuff!"

While men have low standards because they only look at "looks and personality" they have lower standards and are willing to date most girls in the population.

But this idea of "high" and "low" standards is defined in a way that is too objective. I think a better way to think of "high standards" and the way I used it in the title of this post is.

You have high standards if your thresholds eliminates all the people who find you attractive and want to date you.

So even if men have fewer aspects they look for in a women, even if the thresholds are low enough to allow a large percentage of women in society to clear it.

They can still be said to have "high standards" if they are shooting too high. Aiming for the stacies. If they have an overinflated sense of their SMV or RMV. The same way men say women need to be honest about the value they bring to the table, men should also ask themselves what their true value is.

So my view is that you should not fall for the just world fallacy. The market is the way it is. If you have standards that is not proportional to your value you will be priced out of the market just like women. You don't get to decide what your SMV or RMV is, the other gender gets to decide that. You don't get to decide what you "deserve". The market decides that, all of us get what we deserve.

Deserve is talking about entitlement. What standards you think is fair. How you wish society worked. Those are are long term goals for our culture to work towards as a collective. So women want men to do better, but expect less. Men want women to do better and expect less.

None of that changes the fact that you are either high value and getting what you want in terms of LTRs, casual dating or hookups OR you have high standards and are struggling.