I think it's important to distinguish between the ways men select a girlfriend/partner and the ways women select a boyfriend/partner. Men are romantic by nature and are drawn to the things that romantics generally are, namely a connection, something serendipitous and beautiful, some special characteristic in their significant other than merely dredging through one person after another to find an adequate match. This is why we as men are prone to oneitis more than women, because we 'connect', we romanticise not just women but the world, we see the beauty and the poetry in everything. This is why we can all be guilty of wanting to save low-quality women from their choices, because we are blind to their faults. Hence, male attraction is warm and has the potential to be beautiful and accommodating of a vast array of different qualities, talents, personalities.

Women's dating is like doing an advanced search for a car, they filter out everything but red, everything over 10,000 miles, anything that isn't five-doors, it's not romantic, it's realistic. The only easy connection they make is sexual, it's a Stockholm-Syndrome like connection, they build a rapport with the bad guys because they exhibit leadership qualities. Either side of that, when it comes to actual dating, they're ruthlessly filtering people out for relationships based on the qualities they have, based on their possessions and their characteristics. If a woman dates a certain type of guy, she'll consistently date variants of that type of guy until she deteriorates to the point where that type is unattainable. Hence, in most women's minds, only a (relatively) small percentage of the opposite sex are dateable.

Men aren't merely less selective because of desperation, men are in general more empathic, more caring, more loving, more nurturing, and more interested in other people. Biological differences notwithstanding, men have a wider range of interests in the opposite sex.