[slothtrop]

> That finding one woman anything less than immediately perfect will cut me off from all the small, lovely moments I have had with women across the world in my life.

You had those moments. You could keep trying to chase that bouncing between different partners going forward, but consider: a) more women exit the dating market with age (especially the good ones), b) there is a richness of experience also to be found with a devoted lifelong partner which can't be had with a mere fling.

As time goes on, your odds of success are harsher either way, risking being alone much of the time. But in particular, good long-term prospects more rapidly diminish.

Opportunity-cost goes both ways. Speaking from my own bias and experience, investing and relishing in a life-long relationship with a flawed-but-loving partner is worth it, having had the non-committal phase when I was younger.

It's difficult to maximize for some characteristics in a partner. Beauty, sure, you know what you like so you can ball-park. Many traits/qualities are difficult to discern and luck-of-the-draw: reliability and trust, compatibility and love, capacity to raise children well, etc.

No one is perfect and there is no unicorn, novelty is attractive in itself. My heuristic is if a partner can be assessed as "good", holding on is the right move.

I think about Voltaire's Candide often, and the lesson applies here.