A woman claiming to have "high" standards as an excuse for why she struggles seems to be at odds with the outcomes of who she ends up selecting for men to date and whom she ends up rejecting. Often this is the case not because her standards are too high, but too narrow. Having high standards implies that she is only seeking quality so when she is selecting and rejecting men, only the good men are chosen and all others are rejected. But when you see her using her "high" standards in practice, you see her filtering for men who are simply taller, more physically attractive, and make more money. Not that men with these qualities cannot be good men, but when she is only using those filtering criteria to select the men, she will often not account for traits that may indicate issues for a long term relationship or ignore men who have traits that would indicate that they would be good long term partners because they did not fulfill those aforementioned traits she is actually filtering for. Having her standards as described would not indicate that they are high, but too narrowly defined.

Therefore, "narrowly" better describes the issue with many women, because they could have far more abundant options without actually compromising on having a quality man if they were to accept men who were perhaps shorter or earning a decent living but not one that would conform to their hypergamic standards of him needing to make more even if he could still provide for her and a family with his income alone. To call such standards "high" would be insulting to men who are good quality men but are eliminated from her set of standards that do not reflect his full ability to be a good boyfriend/husband/father, but rather reflect on her unreasonableness. Narrow therefore is a better term, as "high" standards still eliminate men that should theoretically meet a "high standards" threshold if not for some unreasonable or unnecessary requirement.

So remember this whenever a woman uses the reasoning that her failure in the dating world is because she has "high standards." She does not need to lower her standards to succeed, she needs to broaden them. If a woman's selection criteria only leaves her with a limited number of men who do not even have the characteristics that lead them to wanting to commit to you or make for bad commitments, her problem is not going to be solved by "raising" her standards when she her current implementation of those supposed standards leaves her with only choices that do not work. Rather, she needs to properly prioritize what is important in her selection criteria, because she is often leaving out the very men she claims she is filtering for with her faulty selection criteria.