I understand that it's healthy but I don't feel the motivation to keep dating until I find someone I'm long-term compatible with. Short-term things are too high risk and low reward to appeal much to me.
I may be completely off-base, but my suggestion would be that your problem is that your behavior is signaling that you would be good boyfriend or husband material rather than signaling that you are somebody with whom it would be fun, or otherwise rewarding, to have a temporary/intermittent fling or ongoing low risk/stress part-time or side-gig. The reason you are choosing to signal in this manner is either due to a very understandable reluctance to self-identify as a member of the sub-set of men sometimes described as "douche-bag players" OR because this is the skill-set you currently or more "naturally" possess and feel more comfortable engaging.
One example of what I am suggesting is that instead of exhibiting your skill in empathetic listening, you might attempt developing and exhibiting more skill in playful banter. Broaden your self-identity by broadening your skill-set. Human beings are very impressionable, and ultimately the only way we can know/experience each other is through our behavior. Another common behavior often exhibited to signal "don't rely on me too much" is randomization of contact. If you ask a girl out three Fridays in a row, unless she is a serious mistress of the art of "ONLY take men literally", she may already be considering floral arrangements and honeymoon destinations.
From "Savvy Chic: The Art of More for Less":
In affluent eras, a black dress is an option rather than a uniform of survival. But come tougher times, and the idea of a monochrome wardrobe is immediately dusted off and revived. If you need a serious job, you don't buy polka dots. If you want a husband and not a lover, you'll choose black over scarlet. Security dwells in doing what you know will work.
someone who has a smaller salary or push less weight can be seen as more masculine by his woman based on the trust she has that what he says is real, ability to inspire her safety and security-to ground her in a relaxing space, quality of attention-to hear her with your whole being more deeply than she can, in general-the ability to free up her bubbly feminine by providing and protecting.
Absolutely true, and exactly slightly more than half of what you should choose to signal if/when you are ready to make significant investment in a relationship. However, if you wish to get laid in the interim, you might want to attempt considering marketing yourself to the girls or women (I am distinguishing between spirit rather than age here) who are currently choosing to dress themselves in polka-dots or scarlet. CAVEAT: Unfortunately, contrary, mixed or otherwise confusing signals are frequently exhibited by all participants in this market, so the best you can do is attempt to be a free self-aware adult interacting with other free self-aware adults.
What exactly is respect? What is masculine?....I get that certain shoulder to waist ratios have a more masculine look but at this point, I see behavior (generally) as a bigger factor than appearance in male attractiveness to females.
Behavior is generally much more important, but it depends on what sort of behavior you want from a female. For instance, men often complain that women don't initiate sex often enough, and my 36 years of experience chatting with other girls/women informs me that if you want females to initiate sexual behavior with you then you have to render yourself sensually appealing to them. OTOH, if you are only or mainly concerned with obtaining positive, receptive sexual response from a woman, then exhibiting strong attractive behavior set is all you need. Human females are not as hard-wired for visual arousal as males, so consider your semi-passive appeal to ears, nose and finger-tips as well as your look in the mirror. As in most things, a mixed strategy will render you most resilient. Maybe 70/30 masculine behavior/sensual appeal would "work" well with most women. There's a lot of room for shaking together your own unique mix since some women will go more for John Wayne and some women will go more for Johnny Depp, or whoever human females under the age of 40 go for these days-lol.
Circling around. The reason I qualified your very good insight into behavior that females find attractive with "exactly slightly more than half" is that you are suggesting a set of behaviors that would mostly tend towards engaging "trust." Unless you want to find yourself in relationship with a woman who is idiotic or suffering from severe low self-esteem, when you are "shopping for serious" you absolutely want to signal "I am the guy who will hold up your hair when you are vomiting, and still see you as beautiful." and "I am not the guy who will tell you I will meet you at the clock tower at 4:30, and then not show up until 5:00." You definitely want to be the Volvo, but it will be in your own long-run self-interest to bring more than that to the table, because even middle-aged married matrons sometimes want to dress themselves in polka-dots or scarlet.
People often use "respect" to mean something like "admiration" or even "simple good manners." In the realm of sexual dichotomy "offer respect" is more synonymous with "submit to dominance." In order for a human female to experience strong orgasm, she must first be fully/highly aroused and then release the anxiety center of her brain. In creating the strong psychological dominant/submissive bond, the partner who is rendered vulnerable or put at risk has to see value or self-interest in releasing control, even if it is only sensual pleasure in the moment. The first order mistake men often make is to offer relatively too much assistance in helping a female release her anxiety and not enough assistance in helping her to achieve strong arousal. The second order mistake men often make when they finally come around to recognition of what generally works best to turn women on is to hold them in disdain for having this innate mechanism. This is roughly analogous to a female holding men in disdain because they get turned on looking at young women with curvy figures. It is impossible to transcend these rough hard-wired tendencies until you first truly accept them. I would estimate that at least 60% of the population of even the most affluent, intelligent, thoughtful humans remain chronically locked in either clueless or resentful, maybe 20% of the population gets lucky and finds early success though some combination of natural ability and happenstance without need to reflect upon problem, and 10% purposefully achieves success after experiencing more than a few rounds of failure followed by consideration, and then there is the remaining 10% who are currently engaged in powdering their nose in the restroom or catching their breath on the sidelines. You are WAAAAY ahead of the curve in level of self-awareness for somebody your age, so I'm sure you will do well over the long-run.