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Ronin, forgive me for a long one - but your post warrants a proper response. Besides, you've made it into an interesting topic, so here is a wall of text for you
I don't see why you keep bringing this up, as it's almost completely irrelevant to the point I think PeepPoopPip, and others have tried to communicate.
How many times a person is actually, and objectively, being hit on, is not relevant to the emotional biases in terms of what is considered desirable prior to such an event taking place.
Although it is possible to change your view on an indivdual over time, this is just as easily explainable by imagining that the individual has been discovered to actually fit your bill of "desirable" upon closer inspection, rather than assuming that it is a result of lowered standards.
At the end of the day, humans discriminate the people around them into
desirables and
undesirables regardless of whether those individuals have or have not, will or won't, make a pass on them.
While your remark probably holds true in cases where the situation that takes place is an example of a subject already viewed(consciously or not) as desirable, making a pass on you - it will almost never hold true if the subject who makes a pass on you is already in the category "undesirable" - Lest that label was applied prematurely.
The point in case here is that there are several degrees of these categories, and that men pressumably, if we follow your claims, will settle for partners in a lower end category if the subject makes an effort of becoming your partner.
In general though, it is obvious that effort does not equal effect in terms of acquiring partner on a general basis, because if it did we would expect to see most people end up with their ideal partners(at least as far as women go), since most people arguably put in an effort when making a pass on a desirable potential partner.
We would also expect to see most people(again, especially girls, based on your argument) transitioning very quickly from being single, to being in a relationship. Statistically speaking though, I think that you will find that the results are not so polarized.
In summary, if an individual has a certain level of distaste for certain characteristics, be it in terms of personality, or apperance, he/she will not entertain ideas of partnering up with such individuals - The efforts of the subjects, or lack of such, being irrelevant.
Nobody here is claiming to be "statistical oddities" in the sense that they are rejecting loads of girls for not reaching their standards - They are saying that there are simply groups of females they are disinterested in, in general, regardless of whether those females have tried to hit on them or not.
This, I would imagine, is a statistical norm, rather than an oddity.
You might retort by asking how we would know that we would reject certain females, if they haven't tried to hit on us, but this is nonsensical, because the act of rejection isn't set in the experience of an attempt, but in the biases that affect our social behavior beforehand.
Disposition rather than exposition - It is completely unrealistic to expect that a few moments of interaction will somehow negate deeply rooted emotional biases that we have had long periods of time to intergrate into our behavior.
Even if there is a likelyhood that a male will accept the advances of "most" girls, this is not necessarily an indicator of a guy "settling for less".
It could just as easily be explained when you consider that people tend to hang out, and socially interact with people they already consider desirable, or fun to be around, and therefore there is a larger statistical possibility that if you are hit on, it is by a person already within your standard of acceptance, rather than somebody you find detestable.
That one would somehow consider the "settling for less"-hypothesis as more likely simply shows a complete lack of thorough research on the entirety of the context surrounding social interaction leading up to partnerships.
For the benefit of clear communication I'll give you a concrete example:
Personally, although I grew up in a predominately Caucasian society, have never dated a Caucasian girl, nor particularly desired to do so, and such has been the story of my life, despite the extreme statistical unlikelyhood of such a thing being the case.
My 3-4 long term relationships(including my marriage) have all been with East-Asian women, and the same applies for my short-term relationships, despite that these ethnicities don't even count up to 1% of the total population of my country of birth
I'm not saying I'm a statistical oddity in having a taste for certain women over others though -
I'm saying that it's very statistically unlikely to only end up dating women from a 1% minority, if, as you say, I should be equally receptive to all advances.
And going by statistics, unless we assume I only attract Asian women(...), I should have been approached by 99 Caucasian for every 1 Asian -
I.E if I accept your statistic of being approach on average 2.5 times a year,
then it should take me an average of 40 years before being appreached by an Asian woman(of course this equation is ridiculous, because it is void of context, but your example in terms of the statistic you cite is equally so, in this debate)
This is much less likely than the more obvious explanation, which is that I have completely ignored those 99% for my prefered 1%, and manipulated the odds in my favour due to my personal taste - Something that you seem to find completely unlikely, and ungraspable for some reason.
I find that hard to understand.