Your essay is amusing and well observed, Renata.

I want to add two compatible, though somewhat different, thoughts:

1. A man might feel that commitment to marriage is the highest form of respect he will give to a woman.

(Even if he has melancholic and obsessive fantasies featuring a past crush or an ex.)

2. Women who (voluntarily) attach to men who play mind games and communicate that they idolize some chick in the past who either didn't want them or with whom they were incompatible in the long run are better off introspecting where the impulse to conquer a disinterested, lukewarm guy came from.

Rewarding unobtainable men with companionship, sex or caring is a self-harming tendency. Soap operas, novels, Greek theatre and real life examples that you know personally dwell on it. How does the woman fare in that saga?

When we accept that even socially inept incels can have, or buy, women for company, ego boosts, sex acts and whatever else they want — men have been admitting it for a long time, too; it is not exactly a secret —, emotional sobriety kicks in.

Love is meaningful, fulfilling, and one of the big gifts in life.

While women get stuck on the dude who is not ready, who hasn't matured to a stage where he can be attentive, a good enough husband, a good enough father, they wear blinders around men who are partner material, loving, responsive, warm, able to function in relationships...

The beautiful thing is that we don't need all of those male treasures. The one who is right for us, for me, is enough.

What I am trying to point out is: set the focus on what is beneficial. Steer away from drama.

The majority of long-lived (nonagenerian, centenarian and older) women said in interviews that preoccupation with men causes stress that fouls up and shortens life and that they don’t recommend it.

Decades of lived life can provide viewpoints that we who are less experienced may not have yet. I also observe women and men. I concluded that there is enough evidence that these ladies told us the truth. Not just their personal truth, but something resounding and very practical.

I have several informed guesses why it is not helpful and not healthy for women to think too deeply about men who fascinate primarily by not being fully present — in other words, fascinate by "nothing"/empty space and fascinate through our own projections onto empty space —, or fascinate through unrelatable foolishness.