Yeah, mindset is a huge component to this. I think the media has exasperated the problem through idealized fantasy which does not match reality. I think people tend to have high expectations of a match, but don't hold themselves to the same standards.

As an example, I've had fat/obese friends say they wouldn't date a fat girl... Or friends that expect the man to pay for everything like it's 1950 and make grand gestures like in the movies.. what do they expect then?

Just like porn ruins actual sex for so many young men, romantic movies of all types ruin relationships for so many young women. Smut novels sell millions of copies a year to women of all ages so even if women intellectually know its 'not real' it becomes their default internal vocabulary.

Re: paying for everything. A lot of women want to step outside of their own traditional gender role but have a man firmly inside his.

There's a somewhat well-known series on HBO in USA, called Game of Thrones. A character there, Tyrion Lannister, who's a kind of a nerd, describes how he lost virginity in staged encounter with a paid woman.

It could be hard to figure out what would be better - this kind of initiation with associated large risk of getting emotionally attached to the paid person, or staying virgin for years and years, having no comparative to peers experience and somewhat falling more behind, so having to dig out from deeper and deeper pit. So I wouldn't with certainty recommend looking for paid services to get initial experience, even though that could - not always - simplify subsequent interactions. Even though such an approach could be sufficiently different for men vs. women.

Agree. Arranged marriages worked for generations. And to me it looks like a perfect mechanism to tame hormone-induced young people, who, en masse, hurt not only themselves but whole society.

> Arranged marriages worked for generations.

Existed, sure. Whether they “work” or not is... well, for most of history no one was gathering data, but arranged marriage still exists now, and there is evidence linking it to higher rates of suicide, for women particularly.

Do you have some links? The stuff I found was just correlated, but also had other major issues listed too, like domestic violence.

There's a big statistical problem here--these days the things shown to relate to a relationship "working" are basically reasons not to dissolve failed relationships. Lots of couples stay together but are basically financially-linked roommates.