It rubs you the wrong way that I start with an example that clearly illustrates the point I'm trying to make?
Since it's such a clear strawman, it doesn't clearly illustrate the point you're trying to make for those readers who can see through it. It's common sense to exclude childhood as irrelevant to dating experience. It's common sense, that people will be more active in dating during certain phases in their life.
The whole point of the strawman, is that it appears to support a point by only weakly representing the counterpoint. A fairer analysis has been posted several times in other comments here.
By applying the strategy in an unintelligent way which seems designed to make the model fail.
it will always say a longer possible search is better because it raises your odds to success and the model features no cost for searching
That's kind of the whole point of this tradeoff and of the analogies used with it. That there is a cost for searching and not "finding."