Originally published in July 2021
We need to talk about goals. Not life goals, not girlboss-on-a-private-jet #bestlife bullshit, but the practical goals we want individual tasks and projects to accomplish. In the singlehood space, one of my biggest and most recurring concerns within this community is the disappointment and frustration that come with doing one thing, but secretly assigning “finding someone” as a secondary goal to that activity. We’re essentially taking everyday scenarios and twisting them—sometimes all of them—into opportunities to not be single anymore. We’re losing sight of the original goal and instead only focusing on the extra goal, which most of the time isn’t going to be accomplished. The easiest way to explain this? Going to the grocery store, getting everything on your list, but being disappointed that you didn’t come home with a husband.
Everything doesn’t have to be orchestrated in your mind as an opportunity. Things are allowed to be what they are. If you’ve ever gone out to meet friends at a bar or a concert, and kept your head on a permanent swivel looking for “options,” you know what I mean by this. It’s a heavily pressurized, exhausting way to live, when we can’t just do the thing—we have to view the thing as a chance to “find someone,” too. Here’s what’ll real slice your pizza: Everything actually is an opportunity to meet someone, but living your life anticipating this, and setting up every moment of your life for this kind of “success” while constantly being disappointed is a punishing way to live—and if you’re living this way, you’re choosing to.
The first thing that’s happening is that we as singles are centering “finding someone” over literally anything else. When finding a partner is the center of your single life, the most important thing on your agenda—apart from maybe keeping a roof over your head—the rest of life can have the volume turned down so that you don’t even notice it. If all we care about is find someone find someone find someone find someone find someone, I worry that we’re centering something we don’t have, and de-centering everything we do. We can choose instead to center ourselves, our curiosities, our passions, and our relationships—all kinds of relationships—and allow opportunities for finding partnership to show up on their own. I suggest this is what we do, because I don’t know about you, but for me, forcing opportunities for partnership to happen has literally never worked.
One of the most drastic ways this centering of “finding someone” or becoming partnered can manifest itself in real life is when we move cities thinking that “the dating scene is better there.” “There are better men there.” “There are more women there.” And so on fueled by whatever dumbass “study” has just been published about the “best cities for singles.” I get these “studies” pitched to me all the time. You know who pays for them to get made? Apartment search websites and leasing companies. They look at where there’s an overabundance of rental properties and try to shove singles in that general direction because we’re new in town, we’re not sure if we want to buy property yet, and we tend to be pretty good tenants. Don’t let someone else’s greed try to convince you that any city anywhere is “good for singles.” They don’t care whether or not you find love, they care whether or not you sign a lease.
The best cities for singles are wherever we want to live. That’s it. There is nothing inherently better about one city or another from a singlehood perspective. And spare me the talk of the “numbers game.” Just because a city has a single population (what they really mean by the way is a young population, remember this), that doesn’t mean it has a dating scene that’s any better at actually pairing people up than anyplace else. A dick pic is a dick pic in any city, and every city has people in it who know that they can get away with any sort of foul behavior they want on dating apps. Oh, did you think these studies actually explored the IRL dating scenes in different cities firsthand? Honey. They polled people to find out how old they are, whether or not they’ve been married, and maybe whether or not they went to college. That’s it. And remember this is just a sample of people likely to answer polls. Nobody’s scoping out the scene on the ground and reporting back. That’s way too expensive, has way too many variables to manage, and is about as predictable as a rabid tornado.
Since my 18th year on planet Earth I have lived and dated in Austin, Texas—Los Angeles, California—Chicago, Illinois— Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—and Brooklyn, New York. With the exception of a two-year relationship in LA, I’ve been single that entire time—despite a full decade of actively dating and trying to “find someone” in several of the most populated cities in our country. I recently moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, and I can genuinely say this is the first time that the “dating scene” hasn’t factored into my decision to relocate in any way. I can’t tell you how good it felt to make a major move that was 100% for me. My focus is on myself, my work, my excitement for my new city and how I can contribute to it positively. If I meet someone here, great—but I’ll never be disappointed with my decision to move if I don’t.
You can’t move for the “dating scene,” you just can’t. Because if (when, but sure…if) it’s not everything you’d hoped for, you just went through the expense and schlep of moving only to be disappointed. You spent your first weeks and months in a new city focusing on finding a partner, rather than finding out what you love about your new town. Something as uncertain as dating and “finding love” can never be a legitimate motivator to relocate because it’s never sure, and it’s often punishing—in pretty much every zipcode there is. So back to my original point: Secondary goals. You can’t move somewhere thinking that’s the magic button that’s going to make your partner materialize. Even if you live in a small town, being around more people in a big city is never a guarantee that one of those people is the person for you.
I don’t say this to discourage, I say it to remind us that love and partnership happen by chance, timing, luck, the universe—whatever. We are not in charge, we cannot force things to happen. So deciding to move because you think that’s the thing that’s going to place you directly in your partner’s path is flawed logic—because you have no idea what could possibly do that. Talk to ten couples and ask them how they met. “I moved to San Francisco because I heard there were lots of men there,” is unlikely to be the thing that did the trick. Because talk to women who have lived and dated in San Francisco for years without “finding someone.” This shit isn’t up to us, and dating sucks everywhere. Your singlehood doesn’t have to suck, and it can happen in any city you want.
Dating and finding partnership are not about where you live. They’re about who you are, who someone else is, and how you are together. How you meet isn’t up to you. How you connect after that is. Don’t waste time (and money) on things that aren’t within your control. There’s nothing that Denver, Cleveland, or Tallahassee could ever have to do with whether or not you’re single. If you want to move, move. If you want to relocate for work and that’s a possibility for you, go for it! But please, please do not assign “finding someone” as a secondary goal to your move, thinking that the dating scene is better somewhere else. Dating is dating, and our society has unfortunately allowed it to devolve into what it is because of patriarchal tropes about the value of single men and the desperation of single women combined with a digital dating dependency that’s taking our money and keeping us single longer so it can keep taking our money. I’m telling you, live where you want.