New York City is notorious for attracting the most competitive, ambitious, even cutthroat people in the world.
If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, they say.
And that’s as true of New Yorkers’ dating lives as their professional lives. Let me tell you as someone actively dating here, this city — and its singles — are ruthless.
That’s why I was entirely unsurprised to learn that, according to a new ranking, New York is one of the worst American cities to be single.
The report, conducted by the personal finance website WalletHub, placed the Big Apple at 144th out of 182 major cities based on dating opportunities, affordability as a single person and outlets for recreation.
Although the city ranked No. 3 in recreation, its affordability was dead last. And, as far as dating opportunities, it took 167th place.
I’ve dated in New York for five years, and I can confirm that it’s rough out there.
As I see it, there are two factors that make dating in 2023 difficult everywhere — but especially so in NYC: the rise of dating apps, and the evolving social norms of approaching someone in person.
First, meeting someone in real life is hard.
While I think the #MeToo movement did a lot of good in curbing workplace misbehavior and outing odious predators like Harvey Weinstein, it also had the unintended consequence of stigmatizing polite and well-meaning attempts to get a phone number.
When dating coach Blaine Anderson conducted a survey of thousands of singles, she found that 53% of men say fear of being perceived as creepy “reduces their likelihood of interacting with women.”
Worse, 45% of men aged 18 to 25 and polled by behavioral neuroscientist Alexander DatePsych had never approached a woman in person.
I don’t blame men for feeling trepidatious about shooting their shot in the post-#MeToo and post-due process era, especially in New York — where the odds of the girl you approach being an ultra-progressive feminist ready to excoriate you for male privilege is higher than most places.
Not to mention, even if you do want to hang around a bar and muster up the courage to strike up a conversation, you have to pay an arm and a leg here for a cocktail.
So many New Yorkers understandably turn to dating apps instead. But they come with a whole host of problems.
While apps make it easier than ever to meet someone from the comfort of your own home, they feed right into New York’s ultra-competitive zeitgeist.
In a city of 1.5 million singles aged 20 to 34, why settle for your Bumble date who’s perfect on paper but has an annoying laugh?
There’s invariably someone prettier, smarter, taller, fitter and richer in an endless stream of online dating profiles.
New York maximizers refuse to settle with anything less than perfect — so much so that many of my friends force themselves to go on three, four, even five first dates a week to maximize their odds of meeting their soulmate.
I personally know several singles who literally keep spreadsheets of their dates where they rank them on various metrics — looks, banter, career — to statistically determine who their best match is.
Plus, in a city where so few people actually know one another, dating apps degrade social norms and enable serial daters to continue breaking hearts without reputation consequences — so much so that there’s a Facebook group called “Are We Dating The Same Guy? NYC” that 130,000 women have joined since it was created last year.
The fact that dating in New York is tough is news to nobody. That was pretty much the entire message of “Sex and the City.”
But, 25 years later, daters here today have to contend with a whole host of tripwires, from #MeToo to Tinder, that Carrie Bradshaw and her pals could never have dreamed of.
For a city that never sleeps — or settles down — I’m surprised we even pulled off 144th place.
