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Why Being Single Might Be Harder in a Big City

8/28/2012

7 Comments

 
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A few years ago, psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote The Paradox of Choice--a pop psych book with a deceptively simple bottom line: though we think of choice as a good thing, having too many options makes us miserable.

Schwartz says there are two kinds of decision-makers: "maximizers" and "satisficers."  A maximizer wants to make the best decision possible.  If you spend forever on Amazon reviewing tea kettles before buying one, you're probably a maximizer.  In contrast, satisficers want to make decisions that are "good enough."  A satisficer might think, "I want a kettle with a copper bottom for under $50."  She buys the first one that meets that criteria.

We might think maximizers make better choices--after all, they read reviews and know the specs.  Sure, their decisions are a little better, but not by much.  More importantly, they are less likely to be happy with their decisions.

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How does all this apply to your dating life?  This article talks about being single in LA.  It points out that while big cities offer lots of choices, having too many choices of whom to date creates an illusion that it's possible to find a "perfect" match.  In Schwartz's parlance, it makes us into maximizers; we're less satisfied with the person we're dating.  On the other hand, if you're stuck in a small town, there's not a lot of choice, so you naturally become a satisficer.  You find someone who matches you reasonably well and you're pretty darn happy.

Of course, dating for queers is different.  There aren't as many of us, so maybe we're always satisficers, even in most big cities.  Or maybe because so many of us date online, it creates a "maximizer" mentality regardless of where we live.

What do you think about all this?  What kind of cities have you had the most luck dating in?  Did you find your significant other in a giant pool or a small one?

7 Comments
Renee
8/28/2012 08:26:08 am

I met my wife online after dating, without success, for many months. I lived in the SF Bay Area, gay Mecca, and found it very difficult. Everyone seemed to be damaged from lots of failed relationships or extremely picky. It was too easy to "change partners and dance".

My wife was in an area that had a very small, invisible gay community. It was amazing to meet someone who was so open and honest about what she wanted. When it came time to settle down, I chose to move to where she lived.

After over seven years we are still together

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Lane
8/28/2012 08:50:14 am

I 'did my time' in tiny towns as a younger person- some as small as 325 residents... This being said, at age 26 I moved to a larger city to find more people like me, meaning queers and people who weren't bigots and/or conservatives (no offense to anyone- we just don't mesh ideologically). What I found was that though I was a super-minority in the small town, I was anonymous in a large city; this is both good and bad.

The key is propinquity and even though I tend to be a bit of a maximizer, a larger city affords more opportunities than simple geography in which to circulate and meet like minded folks. Having something in common to talk about is more important to me than just proximal location. I used online dating and was found by a woman who meshed fabulously with me academically using the maximizing technique, as well as one who I bonded physically with like no other and we met through geography- both in the same place at the same time.

In spite of this past bounty, I haven't had a lot of dates recently- or any, really aside from some nice conversations/chats- but I remain convinced that as a queer person who bucks conventional societal constraints, population numbers matter!

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Ed link
8/29/2012 09:01:06 pm

But wouldn't what you were looking for be as important as where you live? That is, dating as socializing as opposed to dating to find your Hearts Desire?

For myself, where I lived made an enormous difference because of what I was looking for in a relationship. I was born and raised in blue collar steel mill town, dating luck was abysmal. Partly because I never liked the idea of dating for social status and partly because that among the people I vainly attempted to socialize with, going out with me would have been seen as a Big Step Down for the female

Where I moved to (Mid-sized university city,) dating luck and being found acceptable improved greatly.

Since my default setting is Long Term Relationship, I don't have oodles of experience with "dating as just another form of socializing" bit. I know people who do, or did, and the general agreement with them is that it starts to get stale as you begin rolling into your thirties. I've never understood "dating" for social status in the first place. I realize they were simply internalizing the dominant culture by doing so, and they must of felt they were being offered sufficient rewards from that culture to make it worth their time and effort.

Or, maybe, they were simply being shallow narcissists. That, in and of itself is richly rewarded.

I met the love of my life through a mutual friend when I was twenty seven and she was finishing up her last year at the university. If I had stayed in my hometown, I'd be dead. But that was something I never seriously considered after I left.

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Beth Burnett link
8/30/2012 09:25:15 am

I would think that if nothing else, a big city offers a bigger community, which is something that I am sadly lacking where I live. It doesn't help that I am kind of crunchy granola bar looking, so I don't think people (even lesbians) readily identify me as gay. And I'm not even looking to date, just to have a lesbian community. In a big city, you could utilize meetup and the LGBT community center, etc to at least get a circle of lesbian friends. In a small town where you are one of the only ones, it is a lot harder. And without that circle of friends, the dating options are really limited.

That said, having just gone to the Michigan Womyn's Music fest, and been surrounded by lesbians was almost too amazing to bear. So, maybe I am a little biased now as to what I want out of the world. :)

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Kat
8/31/2012 01:46:12 am

I've been single in three very different big cities, and never in a small town.

In Boston, I was a grad student, and being single was surprisingly easy. I don't know if that was the city, or the time in my life (early 20s), or the fact that I didn't want anything serious yet. Probably a bit of all three. But all my friends were single and we were running around the city when we weren't locked in libraries. Everyone in town seemed to be in the same situation so everyone understood the demands on your time and all the girls made amazing conversation and were fun to hang out with.

LA was, in most ways, the hardest place to be single. At first I had a LOT of fun in LA. The scene was full of girls who were also out for fun. But, quickly, I found that in every girl I dated, either I wasn't interested in anything serious with her, or she wasn't with me. I think it was probably a case of exactly what you described. This was LA in the L Word's heyday and everyone was a dating maximizer, looking for something better around the next corner in West Hollywood.

Now, in Dallas, I am very ready for something serious, but I can't seem to find any women who haven't already settled down. When I was in LA early thirties were when you might think about settling down, but here in Dallas, I missed the boat, so maybe Dallas is full of more lesbians who are satisficers.

To sum up, I think that you are dead on about the community dictating the date-ability of the populace. The entire vibe of not only the gay community in a city, but of the city itself, will color your dating experience.

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roses link
11/11/2012 07:08:05 am

I came out in LA, but was too shy to try dating. I ended up with a wonderful cohort of lesbians that I hung out with and was half in crush with many of them. The conversation was fantastic (my brain is the organ that lights my crotch on fire). I moved to KY, where I started dating and dating. I was looking for emotional and sexual experience more than long-term commitment. I needed to know who I clicked with when I had the gender right (I was 29 when I came out). I didn't really find anyone who clicked, but I learned a lot about myself--1. I am more femme-ish and prefer butch-ish women. 2. I need good conversation to satisfy me, not just good rolling-in-the-sack times. I learned other things, but those are the most important. I also learned that meeting and flirting in public is way more than flirting and meeting online, even though the people you meet online might actually be more "your type."

I married the first man who showed interested in me--I'm bound and determined to be pickier this time around. But now I'm 32 and in a super small town in IA and there are few other gays and pretty much no single gays. I miss my gay community, even when all we had in common was preferring women. I'm only here temporarily, so I've postponed my dating life for now. If it becomes longterm, I may just have to settle with being single.

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Ed link
11/11/2012 04:57:37 pm

I often wonder how common the intellectual connection is for most people. For me, if there wasn't that connection fairly quickly, nothing would happen. If we couldn't talk for hours on end, and start doing that within days of meeting it wasn't going to go anywhere.

Even in "casual" relationships where neither one of us was looking for Happily Ever After. At least, that's what we told each other at the time. Those things had a way (for me, at least) of morphing into something else if we were still more or less exclusively seeing each other after six weeks or so.....

(Hey, let's play a word game. I'll say a Totally Random word,and you respond with the first word that pops into your head. Ready?

Relationship...

Commitment...

U-Haul.....

I'm falling in love with you....

Ect, ect.)

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