nternet.
Woman use to have to settle, now they can go online and try to get the pick of the litter. And there are predators happy to lean to that. So they experience a lot of bad relationships (but hey the guy was hot at least) and it turns them off from the whole thing.
Others are taught to never “settle” and so they don’t, and remain lonely and single mentally converting it to a win instead of simply relaxing their standards.
On the guy side, we simple cannot compete with the list of physical and mental requirements, disqualified for things beyond control like height, age, hair pattern etc.
So yeah the days of the meet cute, the days of “close enough”, the days of “ticks most but not all the boxes” are gone. It’s tick 100% of the boxes, your opening line better charm me, and do not say the wrong thing for at least the first month worth of dates. Players can hold that standard long enough to get what they want before move on, the rest that do want more make some mistake and it’s over.
Keep in mind that very thing I describe is based either before actually meet or just first month of dating. If can get past first month might have a real chance but getting that far is the hardest part of it all because of everything mentioned above.