When Do Women Look for a Partner?

If I’m at a buffet and I want to get my hands on limited-supply foods, I have to rely on speed and opportunity. That opportunity is the concentrated supply window. Think of it like a buffet where, over a two-hour serving period, there are only two or three short bursts when caviar is served. The moment it arrives, it’s gone within three minutes. Out of 120 minutes, only nine minutes actually offer access. So when it comes to finding a man, the concentrated supply point is during college. Top universities act as a filter, picking out people with strong memories. If it’s a STEM program, they also filter for strong computational and reasoning skills. If it’s a hot major, they filter for people who will eventually be in high-income industries. Under all these intersecting filters, what matters most is volume. Where else can you meet thousands of such pre-screened, high-quality men—of the right age—all at once? Right: college. Plus, these guys just came out of the gaokao, so most likely haven’t dated seriously before. From there, if you engage with them closely and through conversation, you can dig deeper into their family background and personality. Isn’t that a fourth round of filtering? The environment does three rounds for you, and you get to do one more. After four rounds of filtering, plenty of candidates remain. Given that large a sample size, isn’t there going to be someone who just happens to fall for you? I don’t know, but I do know this is your highest-probability play. Once you’re working, can you realistically meet another massive pool of pre-screened, high-quality, age-appropriate men? It’s extremely difficult. After starting work, the people you come across may seem numerous, but most aren’t age-appropriate men. Your boss is 50, your manager is 40—are they eligible? And even if you do meet one, it’s often hard to win him over. Just look at your 30-year-old team lead: if he hasn’t been taken, what does that tell you? It tells you that long before he became a team lead—even back in college—girls have been passing on him all along. That’s a solid fortress not easily conquered.

So here’s the thing about playing the dating market: it only gets harder the further you go. Or let me put it this way—the later you wait, the harder it is to come out ahead, the harder it is to marry up. Of course, marrying down is always easy, anytime you want.