I was you, and I didn't end up marrying anyone. Years later, as my friends are getting divorced, it turns out their spouses weren't perfect. The secret no one shared when they were thirty, that they are sharing now that we are older, is that most of my friends found a respectable guy, and just made it work. No one got their "prince charming", but men that were also interested in having a family.
I know it sucks to hear it, and you look at others who have "great marriages", but the truth is you don't really know what is going on inside of their marriages. There is a book you might find useful, "Marry Him - The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough" .
It is really about finding that guy that has decided he is ready, ultimately it is men that hold the keys to marriage. Sadly, I feel for your generation, as their are so many incentives for many men not to want to settle down.
Agree and this behavior without checks and balances has some negative consequence even for the female: https://www.amazon.com/Marry-Him-Case-Settling-Enough/dp/045123216X
The book is an incredible autobiography of what is going to happen even to succesful, attractive women in the next 4-5 years in the west as they become unbearable and convince themselves all men are trash.
This is a secret that most women won't admit to, until post divorce. (May be the same for men, but only women I know have admitted). Several of my friends admitted that they were early 30s, wanted kids, and picked the best men they were dating at the time, to get married. Even with all the fertility treatments, including freezing your eggs, there is something about not waiting until everything is "perfect" to have kids.
There is also a book, Marry Him Settling for Mr. Good enough. That said, the US social standards have changed/are changing, and getting married isn't the pinnacle it once was. In fact the US is more single than married.
On the other side of the coin for women, sure we can find sex, but most women either want more, or need more (especially financially, as women still lag men's paychecks with similar job).
I will stun you even more, I have very few friends who are not divorced. The exception are the ones who are/were SAHM, they don't have the financial means to leave.
Check this book out, the author has good advice on list making. I gave the book to a friend of mine as a gag gift due to the title but she loved it and recommended to me and now it’s one of my favorites. All I had to do was change the all the him’s to a her, plus we’re all human. Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough https://www.amazon.com/dp/045123216X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_QMYBE1PC88QJ38TMSMYK
Rekindled things with an old flame recently. I thought I had been killing things with her, till I saw this book on her nightstand last night.
This question reminds me of this book which addresses female expectations and the illusion of an abundance of options. Marry Him: the Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough
You seem to be calibrating your self-assessment of your own mate value - too good for one guy of lower value, but not good enough for another guy of higher value, and you are entirely free to. Just be careful that you don't overvalue yourself and find yourself eventually locked out of the market (r/datingoverthirty). Rejecting second date with nice guys that you just don't feel a spark with, and then finding yourself with no options as you grow older is basically the situation the author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Good Enough tries to warn you against.
To keep realistic and understand what you may have in terms of your blessings in marriage, even married women seem to get something out of this book, by a woman: https://www.amazon.com/Marry-Him-Case-Settling-Enough/dp/045123216X
Yes. Tell her not to settle.
That way she'll end up like the woman that wrote this book:
I think many people (esp women) end up just settling for someone who is 'good enough'. They keep'em happy while they are just dating because they might run off, once they get'em locked up they don't have any reason to even try to be a good half of a couple. I'm sure it goes both ways but since women are susceptible to having really high standards when they are young/beautiful and then standards collapse once they hit 'the wall' then they will take what they can get, but it's rarely what they really wanted. Resentment builds and then you have a shitty marriage that will cost the man big time to end.