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It seems like in American culture, making new friends and having an active social life becomes unbelievably difficult after college. Most people get married and have kids while a lot of other people become too jaded to make new friends. It seems like the only way people make friends and form a social circle is after they get married and have kids, and they meet friends through their spouses and kids friends.
What cities in the USA are good for a bachelor that isn't planning on getting married but wants to make a lot of new friends and create a large social network. Friends that he can enjoy going out to bars with or a social network that throws nice parties which he is invited to.
What cities in the USA are good for guys like that?
Criteria is:
1. Cities where it is not too hard to make new friends.
2. Cities full of 20 and even 30 somethings that aren't rushing to get married and have kids.
Ok, OP, let's assume you are a guy starting from scratch right now. You have no friends, no steady girlfriend, and you have not had sex in a while. You have already graduated college. I'll assume for this exercise that you are about 25 years old. What do you do?
For the questions you asked, pretty much any large city in the United States with a metropolitan population area over 500,000 will meet the criteria.
No matter where you live, even in large cities, you are going to encounter social issues if you are unable to form a meaningful long term relationship with a woman over an extended period of time. At any given time, most people are either married or unmarried and seeing someone exclusively. In major metropolitan areas, even in more liberal areas, once your social circle hits their mid-to-late 20s, pretty much everyone in partnered off to some degree at any given time. This gets amplified once the majority of your social circle hits 30. Sure, some people might have some small gaps here and there between relationships, but given enough time (say 6 months or so), these people have found someone new. Partnered off people generally do not enjoy hanging out with single, unattached people and single, unattached people are not really keen to hang with partnered off people. Even with the best of intentions from all parties, there's friction evident in these arrangements. You'll have hard time forming good relationships with other males if you are single and they have a girlfriend/wife because they'll be more focused on maintaining that relationship. If you meet a guy and you are both single, and he becomes attached before you do, once he becomes attached, you'll see less of him.
Male-female platonic friendships are an entirely different ball of wax. There's not a lot of benefit for the guy. You might get her to send over her female friends as potential dates for you in time. Male-female platonic friendships are often viewed in suspicion by romantic partners or potential romantic partners. Try not to spend a lot of time developing these, but don't necessarily reject them if they happen. Try not to fall into a "friend zone" trap with a woman who you are attracted to.
With that preface, I'll try to answer your questions.
1. Cities where it is not too hard to make new friends.
In most cities, this will be up to you. Examine your interests. If you like to play team sports, join sports leagues of that specific sport. Most sports leagues have sponsored bars for socialization with other members of the sports league after the weekly games. So long as you are adequate in a sport, this is an opportunity to meet someone. You might even want to take up a new sport to meet people. If you are a musician, seek out other musicians. If you are into reading, join a book club. Build around other people you have your interests.
2. Cities full of 20 and even 30 somethings that aren't rushing to get married and have kids.
Most major cities will fit this need. You might want to look at the largest city in a given state to find this. For instance, if you live in Colorado, your best bet is Denver. If you live in Missouri, you are looking at St. Louis or Kansas City.
Cities in the Northeast and West Coast generally have later in life marriages. So on this criteria, you are looking at New York City, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle. Large cities in the middle of the country, such as Dallas, Houston, Denver, and Chicago might have slightly earlier in life marriages, but it's not abnormal to be 30 and unmarried in these places.
The dating markets in larger cities can vary city-to-city, but it's more nuanced differences. Research this extensively. For instance, Cincinnati, a city with a sizable population, is known to be somewhat insular and not welcoming to transplants. If you are not native to a certain large city, moving to a transplant heavy city can help. Right now, Dallas and Houston are attracting transplants in droves because of a solid economy in Texas. New York, DC, and Los Angeles have always been pretty transplant heavy.
Much of where you live will be dependent upon where you can find a job. You need money to date and have a social life.
3. Cities with a large party scene.
As you get later into your 20s, you are going to want to consider a city that is not too university-centric. There are a number of cities with populations over 500,000 that on the surface would seem sizable, but when you dig a little deeper, the city is geared around the university student and less so to the working, post-college professional. A good example of this is Tucson, Arizona, which is centered around University of Arizona and doesn't offer the working professional as much despite a large population. Austin, Texas is another example of this, though I would say it is less centered around University of Texas than Tucson is around University of Arizona. Dallas and Houston could be better options in Texas. Los Angeles is a large city not centered around USC or UCLA. New York is not centered around NYU, Columbia, Fordham, etc. Atlanta is not centered around Georgia Tech.
You might want to up your population threshold to cities over 1 million for this.
Do not take the decision of what city to live in lightly. There's a lot of research that you would need to do, and you also have to take your career into consideration.
Answer to your question is Miami. Las Vegas. Honolulu.
I would not choose any of those cities if I were the OP.
All of them are tourist oriented and are less oriented towards the working professionals in those cities. I'll do a quick breakdown of all of them.
1. Miami: There are more downsides than upsides here.
A) The city does not have as dynamic of an economy as a lot of places. There are not a lot of Fortune 500s headquartered there. It has a transient population, meaning that he could make friends and they'd move, making him have to start over again with friends.
Miami is a Hispanic dominated city. Unless the OP is Hispanic, happens to be fluent in Spanish, is very familiar with Latin culture, or some combination of those 3, I would be less apt to recommend. Even if OP were not Hispanic and spoke Spanish fluently, there would be some challenging cultural gaps that he'd have to bridge, and this would impact how well he would fit in socially.
2. Las Vegas. More downsides than upsides.
Very transient population. Not a diversified strong economy. Probably best if OP works in hospitality management. People are less serious here than in cities than are not tourist driven.
3. Honolulu. Very expensive, would likely require a costly move, and is less friendly to U.S. residents from the contiguous U.S.
I would say for coastal cities, a good population threshold is 1 million in the metro area. In the heartland, you probably want to be in a city with a metro population of 2 million or larger. The reason being is the heartland is more conservative, insular, and people are more apt to rush to marriage. I live in OKC (population 1.3 million) and this is a huge problem for me being late twenties and single. I would definitely consider a city with a lot of transplants as they are less insular. Cities with fewer transplants tend to be standoffish towards people that didn't grow up there.
Partnered off people generally do not enjoy hanging out with single, unattached people and single, unattached people are not really keen to hang with partnered off people.
So what are some amazing cities for those single people to get together?
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