Yes, we’re the ones who often make the first move, which leaves more room for us to get rejected by women. But when a bunch of guys come whining about how their dating prospects are harder because of this, take it with a grain of salt — they aren’t telling the full truth.

Women reject men overtly, while men reject women covertly. It’s different. A guy can ask a woman out and then show zero interest outside of a sexual encounter. This is called “sex-zoning,” and it happens far more often than you might think. And to the people saying, “Well, you have to be high-caliber to even get to that point as a man,” I’ll get to that — don’t worry.

The truth is that men date up in terms of looks, and looks alone. We often don’t factor in other aspects with women because we feel they don’t do much for us. For example, if she makes a ton of money or is well-educated, that’s great for her, but a lot of men aren’t turned on by book-smart “boss babes.” This is why men will extract sexual access from women, keep them in rotation, but won’t actually take any of them seriously.

There are men who are low-caliber in terms of looks, money, or social status, yet they still won’t take their relationship match seriously because she’s either too overweight, too book-smart, or comes from a cultural background that doesn’t appeal to them. Whether men want to admit it or not, we all have women who are interested in us but whom we consider undesirable. We won’t offer them anything more than sex.

This is true even for low-caliber men or cells. They might tell you no women want to take them seriously or even look their way, but even they have relationship matches. There’s a guy in my sister’s college — I think he’s 21 years old — who’s a “cell” (or has cell tendencies) and is convinced of the 80/20 rule. When we checked out his Hinge profile, sure, he doesn’t have ideal looks or charisma. But when he showed us his likes, he was getting matches. Yes, these women were overweight or not conventionally appealing, but he was still getting matches.

So yes, as men we do reject women more frequently than most men would like to admit. They just hate the idea of “bagging a 3/10.”