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Well, I didn't "suck" at dating in college and I don't think I do now either. My dates, when I can get them, are at worst decent and at best a lot of fun.
The problem is getting them. There are just so far fewer available prospects. Everyone I know now is married, usually with kids or coupled. The only friends they have are married or coupled. The absolute worst are the married friends with kids - their lives revolve around those kids almost exclusively - all of their networks center on kid activities.
Where I live is a problem. Some locations are FAR better than others for dating.
"Sucking" is relative, and is no blight against one's character or wherewithal. If you live in the Arabian desert and are digging a water-well, and literally come up dry - you effectively "suck", even if your drilling-technique is suburb. But enough double entendres. Location does matter, and a matter with which to contend is that one's career after college might take one to an area with paucity of dating options.
I'm an aerospace engineer. Conceivably I'd do well dating in New York City. But there aren't too many aerospace jobs in NYC. Most of them, or at least the research-oriented jobs, are in the hinterlands, in places far removed from population-centers, where research-installations can be secured, where energy and real-estate are cheap, where airplanes can fly without worry of offending local residents.
So this is an example of how maximizing one's career potential is orthogonal to - if not outright opposed to - maximizing one's dating potential. The meretricious assertion is that if one attends to one's studies in college, and subsequently career-advancement, then other "fringe benefits" of life, such as success in one's social-life, will follow. This quite simply is not the case. Tradeoffs must be made. Early in life, academics and employment dominate. Later in life, other things take precedence... but by then, it might be too late.
"Sucking" is relative, and is no blight against one's character or wherewithal. If you live in the Arabian desert and are digging a water-well, and literally come up dry - you effectively "suck", even if your drilling-technique is suburb. But enough double entendres. Location does matter, and a matter with which to contend is that one's career after college might take one to an area with paucity of dating options.
I'm an aerospace engineer. Conceivably I'd do well dating in New York City. But there aren't too many aerospace jobs in NYC. Most of them, or at least the research-oriented jobs, are in the hinterlands, in places far removed from population-centers, where research-installations can be secured, where energy and real-estate are cheap, where airplanes can fly without worry of offending local residents.
So this is an example of how maximizing one's career potential is orthogonal to - if not outright opposed to - maximizing one's dating potential. The meretricious assertion is that if one attends to one's studies in college, and subsequently career-advancement, then other "fringe benefits" of life, such as success in one's social-life, will follow. This quite simply is not the case. Tradeoffs must be made. Early in life, academics and employment dominate. Later in life, other things take precedence... but by then, it might be too late.
May we all make judicious choices.
You're in aerospace? You could move to Seattle (Boeing), or to CA (Lockheed), just to name some good dating option locales off the top of my head.
Definitely not true in Seattle. The male:female ratio in my age range is 13:10.
Which still means there are 10's of thousands of women in your age range, whatever that may be. Possibly more. The gender ratio thing is a facile argument...unless so many are taken that you physically RUN OUT of people, it's close enough to 50/50 to get by. Using excuses like this is a cop out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OvernightDelivery
To my understanding Seattle is not urban, it is suburban with a downtown. Urban living creates a community much like college where as suburban living promotes seclusion.
Seattle is almost even better; it's a city that thrives heavily on community events and the like. Also, +1 to the "urban living" comment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by timberline742
Chicago is a great city to be single in. I lived in Wicker Park for a bit in the late 90s. It was heaven for meeting babes.
Definitely true. I'd say the same of any major urban area, chicago is even larger than most.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lakers4kb
Location, location, location is (almost always) the issue.
I maintain this is only 50% true. I think people will have more success in dense, populated environments than they will in the boondocks. To that end, it's true.
But if you're in a major metro already, you're not going to have magnitudes of success by relocating to another one. Some will argue that there are different mindsets, different cultures, but I've lived just about everywhere and, at their core, people are not all that different.
Moreover, if you're in a city with hundreds of thousands of people and can't find like-minded individuals, the problem isn't the city, it's you. Someone isn't going to leave Atlanta and have more success in Chicago by nature of it being a different city. Being in a new environment can shake up your personality to some degree, and that will have its own tangible benefits.
I live in a town that has 80,000, and the nearest major metro is 3 hours away.
Using city-data's stats, I can actually get a ballpark number of the available women. There are 156,000 people in my county. About 6.3% of them, or ~9900, are in my dating age range (25-35). Here's city-data's charts on my county's marital status as of 2009.
The county is about 51% female, so let's say 5000. About 23% of my age range female population is unmarried, so around 600 women.
Let's take a liberal guess that 50% of them are in a relationship (that's probably much lower than reality). At best I've got a pool of somewhere around 300 women total. I'll take another liberal guess that I'd find 100 of them attractive and 60 of them are actually compatible with me. There is even less chance of meeting any of them at any given time or place. Also, the percentage of unmarried males in that age range is about a third higher - around 33% compared to 23%, so for those 60 women there are 90 male competitors. Those are just not good odds, and as you can see. Although they do improve for men aged 45-55 because unmarried women start to outnumber unmarried men at that point.
The stats perfectly fit my observations - we do have a somewhat decent sized college-aged population of under 25, but jobs for them are few and far between so they leave for the bigger metros after graduation. The people that do live here in my peer age group mostly bring with them their pre-existing families.
I've just depressed myself for the day. I think any metro area of less than 750K people sucks for dating. The nearest major metro (Portland) has quadruple the percentage of unmarried women aged 25-30. This is a place young people grow up in then leave and do not return to unless it's to raise their family - a common theme I hear "great place to raise a family!"
Last edited by redguard57; 11-18-2014 at 05:48 PM..
You're in aerospace? You could move to Seattle (Boeing), or to CA (Lockheed), just to name some good dating option locales off the top of my head.
Those seem like "good dating option locales" to you because you're a woman who dates men. For a man who works in a male-dominated field, moving to a city where his male-dominated field is the primary industry is not the best strategy for meeting women. That just means he's competing against more men who are "like him" (on paper) for fewer women. I realize anyone can theoretically find love anywhere, but I'm talking from a strictly numbers-based perspective here.
I've never even been to Seattle, so the following isn't my personal opinion, but I once heard another guy say with regards to dating there, "By and large, the women are bi and large."
I live in a town that has 80,000, and the nearest major metro is 3 hours away.
Using city-data's stats, I can actually get a ballpark number of the available women. There are 156,000 people in my county. About 6.3% of them, or ~9900, are in my dating age range (25-35). Here's city-data's charts on my county's marital status as of 2009.
The county is about 51% female, so let's say 5000. About 23% of my age range female population is unmarried, so around 600 women.
Let's take a liberal guess that 50% of them are in a relationship (that's probably much lower than reality). At best I've got a pool of somewhere around 300 women total. I'll take another liberal guess that I'd find 100 of them attractive and 60 of them are actually compatible with me. There is even less chance of meeting any of them at any given time or place. Also, the percentage of unmarried males in that age range is about a third higher - around 33% compared to 23%, so for those 60 women there are 90 male competitors. Those are just not good odds, and as you can see. Although they do improve for men aged 45-55 because unmarried women start to outnumber unmarried men at that point.
The stats perfectly fit my observations - we do have a somewhat decent sized college-aged population of under 25, but jobs for them are few and far between so they leave for the bigger metros after graduation. The people that do live here in my peer age group mostly bring with them their pre-existing families.
I've just depressed myself for the day. I think any metro area of less than 750K people sucks for dating. The nearest major metro (Portland) has quadruple the percentage of unmarried women aged 25-30. This is a place young people grow up in then leave and do not return to unless it's to raise their family - a common theme I hear "great place to raise a family!"
...yeah, but the fact that you actually put so much time into all of that tells a lot about the bigger problem; the problem that you're after excuses. Find 3-5 spots that attract a strong singles crowd at night and go have at it...one conversation with one person is all that it takes. Is it harder for you with what you're working with? Maybe when compared to other locations...but so what? Either way, it comes down to you and what you want to do with your life. Make it into a challenge for yourself and use all of that rhetoric and analysis to come up with a way to be successful.
You still have to do the same basic things to meet someone no matter where you are and what you're working with. Go make it happen.
Last edited by TelecasterBlues; 11-18-2014 at 08:02 PM..
I've never even been to Seattle, so the following isn't my personal opinion, but I once heard another guy say with regards to dating there, "By and large, the women are bi and large."
I can't imagine why he would say that about Seattle women. I never knew any bi women, nor did I ever see hardly any large women. Most women there are very fit, due to the emphasis on outdoor recreation. Even those who aren't into hiking and boating are slim. The West Coast and parts of the Southwest have the highest percentage of normal, healthy-weight women in the US.
"surrounded by women"? What you mean is that you didn't pick your opportunity to be surrounded by women. It came with college.
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For a man who works in a male-dominated field, moving to a city where his male-dominated field is the primary industry is not the best strategy for meeting women. That just means he's competing against more men who are "like him" (on paper) for fewer women. I realize anyone can theoretically find love anywhere, but I'm talking from a strictly numbers-based perspective here.
