"My friends tell me I'm too picky, but why shouldn't I be picky? You're picky buying a good car; you should certainly be picky about someone you're going to spend your life with. Sometimes I look around and I think, 'All the good ones are already married.' "

Perhaps ironically, the laundry lists of expectations that men and women carry around with them are becoming more similar. Women say they're no longer looking just for a man who will be a good provider, and men say they want more than a woman who will take care of the kids and have dinner ready on time.

But they also complain that they're getting mixed messages from the women they date. "A lot of women say they're independent. They're the modern woman until something goes wrong, and then they want security. . . . There are a lot of mixed messages," said one man. That leads to anger and confusion; men say they don't know what women want.