Obviously I'm not saying that all or most women are like this. I haven't found any quantitative or qualitative studies on this, so it's just an anecdotal comment.

That being said, I and many men I've talked to agree that when we ask women about this, there is a huge discrepancy between the type of man most women say they want and the type of man those same women actually engages with (be it short-term or long-term relationship).

It's not about looks only. It's about everything.

The most emblematic example that I remember is of a friend who only dated men who were the extreme and exact opposite of what she described as being the type of man she would like to be in a relationship with. Not only did we men see this discrepancy, but her female friends also commented on it because it was a situation that was so extreme that it was weird even in the eyes of other women who also said they wanted the "X type" of man and in practice ended up with the "Y type" or the "N type" of man (but this friend in particular used to say she wanted the "X type" and in practice engaged herself only with the "Negative-X type" of men).

My three theories are:

Plain confusion only; these women simply don't know what they want, and they are doing everything blindly and randomly saying and doing stuffs.

Social desirability bias: they know they actually wants the opposite of what they say they want, but because of peer pressure they can't simply admit that they like such men so they lie saying they like the type of men that is more socially acceptable to like.

They're somehow "blind" or hardcore naive: they do like the type of men they say they like, but they ended up with very different or even the opposite type of men simply because they can't figure out basic signals, red flags, etc and in this way they end up falling into the hands of these not-the-type-I-really-like men.

These are my main three theories to explain such phenomenon. Do you agree with them? If you don't then what are yours?