Female choice: The puzzle I can't solve

When I was 17, a girl was after me.
Her other suitor was 6'0"
She was 5'4"
I am 5'2".

When I was 28
Her other suitor was 5'8"
She was 5'5"
I am 5'2"

Heres the thing. The human brain normalizes all images it receives.
So the taller guy becomes the standard while the girl becomes smaller than him, and the shorter guy becomes invisible. I think anyone viewing this image would imagine I was a guy friend while the other two were a couple.

Then theres female choice. What if in that scenario, the female chose the smaller guy? How do you reconcile these two factors?
It just looks a little weird when its just a taller girl with a shorter guy, but it looks totally weird if a taller than the girl guy is there as well.

But sometimes I see a shorter guy with a taller girl. How did that come about? Probably there was a taller guy sometimes in the picture. What was the psychology of the short guy that made him stick with it? Didn't he feel an overwhelming malaise to get out of there? Was the mental image in his head different? Or did he just grit his teeth and stick around till (maybe) he was chosen and the girl gave the taller guy subtle fuck off signals?

With the first girl, once I was walking up to the dorm and she was there surrounded by three 6'2"+ tall guys. She bent a little and called out my name excitedly. I was of course paralyzed. You could have them, but you want me?

The key way out of all my paralyzations was simple: Accept female choice. Dont think about it. Dont think about how it looks. Then (maybe) be chosen. The girls seemed enthusiastic enough for me at the time. But my internal tensions were too high.

So it boils down to female choice: If they don't choose you, you're screwed. If they choose you, it depends how they choose you. As a boyfriend, or one night sex.
Even if you can technically be a winner...how do you reconcile and get comfortable with the fact that you are powerless to affect the process one way or the other?

Edit: (I recently found one possibility: Prostitution, but that seems like cheating and the basic question of how other guys do it is left unanswered. Presumably they didn't go to prostitutes, and a vast majority didn't have another girl on the string?)

Height is just one of many factors that affect women's choice.  Successful short guys just have other attributes that attract women.

Women's free choice for casual sex results in gross inequality since the most "attractive" guys will get most of this sex.  There is nothing to reconcile here, women simply shouldn't have free choice in this area.  Society should be structured so that women are severely punished for casual sex.  This doesn't mean that the government should outlaw this.  What it means is that the natural punishments should apply.  The government shouldn't financially support women, so women will naturally want a stable husband to support her.  And men naturally prefer women with less sexual experience as wives.  So the natural punishment for casual sex by women is their decreased ability to attract a husband.  In monogamous societies, this is enough to eliminate most casual sex.

Female choice for marriage is okay for two reasons.  First, because with monogamous marriage, no inequality results as each guy will wind up with one woman.  And second, women actually make much better choices when picking a husband than when picking a guy for casual sex, especially if the woman hasn't been psychologically ruined by casual sex.

fschmidt wrote

Height is just one of many factors that affect women's choice.  Successful short guys just have other attributes that attract women.

Wish I could internalize this in real time.