Should I Move if My City Has a Limited Pool of Available Men?

Hi Evan, I’ve been following your advice for a while now and have to say, it makes so much sense – every time. My question is what if you live in a city/country where available men are limited? I am an attractive, intelligent, funny and sporty 36 year old woman who cannot for the life of me find a man. I live in Sydney Australia. It’s a well-known fact here that women outnumber men in this city. I have at least 10 girlfriends in a similar position. Once you take away the marrieds and the huge gay population here you are left with so few that we have had crossover on dating sites. Some of us will date a guy only to find out our friend dated him 3 months before! And this is no country town – this is Sydney. As a result I have found myself choosing unavailable men over loneliness.

Do I need to move cities? I feel like if something doesn’t change I’ll end up 46 saying the same thing.

I’m heading to the US on vacation next month. Maybe I’ll have some luck there. I heard the Aussie accent is a charmer!

Thank you,
Kate

Dear Kate,

All I can say to you is, “Yes, but–“

Yes, there are more men in Sydney than women.

100 women for 98.6 men in New South Wales, specifically.

But, so what?

It’s not like life is a game of musical chairs, where 10,000 women are left standing, while everyone else lives on in wedded bliss.

I’m not making light of your situation. I would simply point out a few things:

You have confirmation bias. In other words, you’re struggling with dating and want to find evidence that supports and explains your struggles. What could be stronger than to talk about the powerful man drought that has left all of your 10 girlfriends in similar dire straits.

Did you know that, by your own math, there’s a group of 9.8 single male friends who are also wondering why it’s so hard to find love? Factor out the gay population, and maybe it’s a group of 9 male friends. But you get my point.

Even if there are 10,000 more women in Sydney, it’s not like life is a game of musical chairs, where 10,000 women are left standing, while everyone else lives on in wedded bliss.

At any given point in time…

• Married couples break up and single men emerge on local dating sites.
• Couples who are dating for a year break up and single men emerge on local dating sites.
• New men move to Sydney from elsewhere.
• Women opt out of the dating market entirely and go on semi-permanent guyatus, so that there is less “competition” for the same men.

And so on. It’s not like there’s a finite and static supply of single men.

Really, you don’t have to fly around the world to go on a husband hunt.

So, sure, you can move to the United States — where your accent is undeniably sexy — but you can’t move to New York, Washington D.C. or Philadelphia (which all have more single women). You can consider moving to the West Coast, where there are more single men in Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego. But really, you don’t have to fly around the world to go on a husband hunt.

While the odds are slightly stacked against you demographically, 118,962 people got married in Australia in 2013.

I see no reason as to why you and your friends can’t be among them in the future.