But the case at hand wasn't talking about a time span that short, either. When you look at it in the long run, I'd say that both men and women have an equal likelihood of selecting a mate who is not the optimum for all qualities they look for. (i.e., to use less Greenspan-eque language, that I think that both men and woman will in the end "settle" for someone if they can't find someone who they'd consider "perfect" rather than remain alone).

However, come to think of it, I guess a prerequisite would be that there are an equal amount of men and women in the pool; which I think is so, I seem to remember from one of the okcupid analysis posts that the majority of profiles are male. Then again, on the whole, there are roughly the same amount of both, so I'm not so sure about your statement that "the stable marriage algorithm is a poor model for reality"; maybe for dating sites, but on the whole?