@JLeslie: I agreed with what you wrote about men expressing their ideals but being willing to settle for outside their ideals and their women knowing if they are the ideal or the settled upon version. When I mentioned ego, it referred to knowing your partner’s ideals or preferences and not being that but still being the love of your partner’s life or somewhere abouts.
Do men in serious relationships talk about their SO’s as far as nitpicking them apart? Not so much that I’ve seen, they stick to the safer subjects when together like their ideals or what really gets them excited to see. I’ve noticed men will pick apart their SO’s for just about everything else though to other men but not so much the physical stuff.
My hypothesis is if a man picks his SO apart physically then he feels that reflects on him for picking/settling on “unattractive” and takes his status down among other men. I think that’s why men will talk about what they like and would like to have rather than directly what they don’t like about what they have.