What's the best strategy when looking for suitable dating partners?

October 4, 2018 6:08 AM

Move to where you have the best dating pool or live wherever you feel like because life is unpredictable?

I've heard varying strategies around dating and trying to meet suitable partners. Let's say there's particular criteria you're looking for in a partner (a specific religion, for example). Would you say it makes sense to live in a place where you are most likely to find people who have that criteria, or would you say that you can meet anyone anywhere under any strange circumstances, so just live your life and see what happens?

Personally I regard dating as similar to a job search in that if I wanted a banking job, I probably wouldn't move to a city that had very few banking positions. But people are more movable than jobs and obviously you can meet a partner while you're traveling or they're traveling, etc. Or you might wind up single forever no matter where you live.

So: move to the place where there are lots of potential dates who meet your criteria? Or live your life wherever you feel like living because you may meet someone you don't expect, or you may never meet anyone at all anyway? Or are both "strategies" somehow true?

posted by whitelily to Human Relations (19 answers total)

If there's a one in a million chance of meeting your perfect partner, that means there's at least 7,700 perfect partners out there for you. You only have to meet one of them.

So, while 100 of your potential perfect partners might be in Chicago, there's probably 100 more in LA, and 50 in Michigan, and 1 in Rhode Island.

I think you should live where you want. Most experienced advice is that rather than focus on a future partner, focus on making yourself better. Then, it's more likely when you meet your perfect partner, you will be perfect for them too!

Cheat code:

I can't discount the importance of investing as much time in a dating profile photos as you would a resume. The number of people that have "no luck" in love, but have a pretty bad dating profile photos is staggering. If I were in the market, I would look at the website/app as the other gender, and take notes about profile photos, which ones seem the best, which are the worst. Then, design, commission / create a set of photos for yourself that is comparable to the best out there.
posted by bbqturtle at 6:20 AM on October 4, 2018 [4 favorites]

It depends on exactly how limiting your criteria are. If there is only a minuscule number of people who meet those criteria in most places, but a large number in specific locations, then yeah, moving makes sense. But that's a fairly unusual situation.
posted by metasarah at 6:37 AM on October 4, 2018

I think both are true. I think if you're in a small pool where it's less likely to find your most important criteria, you may end up compromising on other things that are less important. Like if you want a specific religion, you may compromise on their hobbies or educational background if there are less options where you are.

I've heard of relationships that start through travel but it depends on how often you travel, and what you do while traveling. None of my friends met their partners through traveling (and they all travel frequently). They met them in university, or at work, through friends (meeting at a party), or through a shared hobby that fosters friendships, and they all live and play in a big city.

I'm the only one that met my partner through online dating (and I live in a small city). I think that's becoming more common and makes the location issue less critical. I agree with the above advice from the first post, get a great profile picture and have someone you trust review it for you.
posted by lafemma at 6:39 AM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

The second strategy is actually the same as the first strategy when you step back, because the real answer is that you have to live life the way that you want to live it. If you want to move to a city because it seems like there's a lot more people there that are datable, have at it! That's a perfectly valid way to live! If you want to move wherever you want to move, that is also very valid! Personally, I chose the latter strategy because I've got a lot of stuff to do that is unrelated to having a partner and I need to be in certain places to do that stuff. If that were not the case I may have made a different choice.
posted by sockermom at 6:51 AM on October 4, 2018 [5 favorites]

Well, it's very possible that no matter where you live, you'll never meet someone you want to marry. That is just a cold, hard fact. So I would suggest living the life you want to live instead of gambling on your odds being better in one place or another.

But I think there are exceptions, especially in regard to some religions. If you want to meet a Mormon, you'll have a much better chance in Utah. There are cities where there are virtually no Hindus or Muslims or Jews. But from your previous asks (including one that is very, very similar to this one), it looks like you're trying to decide between New York and San Francisco. If that's still the case, those are both huge metropolitan areas with lots of different people, and I can't see living in one or the other based on meeting a hypothetical someone. It's fine to be looking for a partner, but you also need to live your life.
posted by FencingGal at 7:06 AM on October 4, 2018 [7 favorites]

Religion is a hard criterion because it's so variable. If you seek Catholic partners, moving makes no sense, because there are Catholics even in tiny towns in the middle of nowhere. The same goes for mainline Protestant denominations or evangelical Christians. Mormons are heavily concentrated in Utah and the other mountain states, but there are Mormons in most cities, even mid-sized ones, and Mormon communities generally seem fairly tight-knit, meaning that by going to Temple and participating in activities, you'd probably still be able to meet a good number of potential partners without moving (although your chances would almost certainly improve if you relocated to SLC). This is pretty much the same for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and UUs, except for the Utah thing. For uncommon and obscure religions like Zoroastrianism, though, yes, you'll probably have to move.

Religion is also a bad criterion because, if your goal is to find an observant adherent, you know exactly where to find them. If you're looking for practicing Catholics, you don't need to rent an apartment near a Jesuit college and hope you run into someone in a coffee shop or dry cleaner. Just go to Mass. Literally every practicing Catholic attends Mass; that, by definition, is what makes them a practicing Catholic. Most other criteria aren't like that. There's no one central place that black people, for example, gather.

Banking is also a strange example, because there are banks in every city. It's not glamorous Wall Street/City of London stuff, but even in the small, economically depressed city I grew up in, there were still enough bank presidents, regional VPs and whatnot to have a critical mass of rich preppy kids in my high school. If you somehow found yourself forced to move out of New York, you would still be able to land a comfortable, well-paying job almost anywhere in America with a banking/finance background. The same is not necessarily true of someone with a background in professional theatre (which has come up in previous Metafilter discussions about mobility).

So it's hard to answer to answer your question. Based on what you've said (religion, banking), it sounds like you probably don't need to move, because you're looking for common things that are widely available and easily identifiable.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:07 AM on October 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

I think more factors need to be considered. A friend of mine did partly move because the area he was offered a job in had a larger dating pool of people who met his criteria. However he found that he did not meet the critics of most of the people he wanted to date, he has a more laid back lifestyle and it doesn’t match the area well. He also hates the area, weather, traffic, hard to make friends, and wants to move. However now, after half a decade, he’s met someone who he’s delighted by and who is delighted by him in return. But she loves the area and has informed him she never wants to leave. So his happy relationship is tinged by the knowledge that he’s layin a strong foundation to live somewhere he finds terrible.
posted by lepus at 7:25 AM on October 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers so far! This isn't about religion specifically (that was just the example I came up with in an apparently poor attempt to simply the question).

The actual real-world example is my friend who's living abroad and wants to ultimately move back to her home country within the next couple of years, and is wondering about the advisability of moving back now vs staying put (she has reasons she'd like to stay another year or two) and hoping to meet someone willing to move with her. But our debate over this is generic and could apply to many scenarios where there are better "odds" so to speak in one location vs the notion that you really can't control who you meet anyway so you may as well just live where you want, when you want.
posted by whitelily at 7:25 AM on October 4, 2018

Dating is totally a numbers game, so on the one hand, it makes sense to be where you have the best odds. On the other hand, living where you want in the way you want makes you happier, and as such, more attractive.

I think it's an unknowable answer. The frogurt is cursed, but it comes with your choice of toppings.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:30 AM on October 4, 2018

If my current relationship doesn't head toward marriage, I'll be moving to a city with a different ratio of men to women. I strongly sense that the lopsidedness of the gender ratio in my city impacts men's willingness to make a choice and stick with it. I have chosen two cities that meet my criteria for places I want to be and likelihood of finding guys who meet my criteria. So I'd say combine your plans. Look for places that have it all, so to speak.
posted by bilabial at 8:25 AM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Hmm, on your update I would say it’s far better to move in that sort of situation. Finding someone willing to make an international move to a country they might not have any experience with would be much more fraught than moving to where you want to be and finding someone who also wants to be there, because they’re already there.
posted by permiechickie at 8:42 AM on October 4, 2018 [8 favorites]

She should move back and then start looking for a partner.

Unless the country she's moving back to is unusually open about immigrants (or she picks someone who has also retained citizenship in her home country) her relationship will likely end when she moves. There are of course exceptions but, for example, her partner may not be allowed to ever work again. If so, she'd have to be ready to support that person forever, and furthermore would have to be totally A-OK with that.
posted by aramaic at 9:07 AM on October 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

is she straight? if so, location may matter less. if not.. maybe more. but of course the same would apply if she wants to find a fellow buddhist , etc.. just seemed odd to me that no one had asked that yet so i thought i would : )
posted by elgee at 10:17 AM on October 4, 2018

If there is only a minuscule number of people who meet those criteria in most places, but a large number in specific locations, then yeah, moving makes sense.

I don't think that condition is actually that unusual for minority groups. Being an over-30 queer woman in Nebraska is, uh, very limiting to my dating prospects. Not that there are no other queer women, but the pool on any given dating site is very, very small and includes a lot of queer women who nevertheless identify as conservative or, for example, who are only open to dating other white people, which I can pass for but am intensely uncomfortable with. It's easy in these sorts of situations to wind up in a spot where you've already messaged or firmly ruled out literally everybody in your city who uses online dating platforms.

I think in the example given, where you're potentially limiting the pool to "willing and able to move out of the country", it probably doesn't hurt to still look around, but I'd probably sooner move up the moving date and just look for a partner in the country one intends to stay in. If you're just trying to run odds on, say, whether there are more available cishet white people of your gender of choice in a given major US city, the absolute number of potential partners is probably still more than enough for any of the choices to be fine.
posted by Sequence at 12:34 PM on October 4, 2018

Unless the country she's moving back to is unusually open about immigrants (or she picks someone who has also retained citizenship in her home country) her relationship will likely end when she moves. There are of course exceptions but, for example, her partner may not be allowed to ever work again. If so, she'd have to be ready to support that person forever, and furthermore would have to be totally A-OK with that.
This seems unnecessarily fearmongering. Most countries do allow the spouses of citizens to work there so I don't think we need to suggest that she'd have to support her partner forever. But the "spouse" thing is a big caveat. And the even bigger one of course is the chance of finding someone who'll want to move to your friend's home country.
posted by peacheater at 1:25 PM on October 4, 2018

I stayed on the east coast because I wanted to marry a Jew. It worked!
posted by 8603 at 1:43 PM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

I came in ready to defend the 'move for potential love' stance alone but it looks like I'm not alone! It matters a great deal whether someone really wants to find a partner or not. If it's a top priority, then by all means yes, make it as uncomplicated for yourself as possible, since it's extremely complicated to begin with.
posted by namesarehard at 5:40 PM on October 4, 2018

Best answer: One of the big risks of staying and dating local guys in hopes that she will find one that will want to move with her is that she runs the very real risk of finding a really great person, falling in love and then feeling incredibly tormented when she has to choose between love and returning home. If she returns home first, at least she will know that everyone she meets is willing to live there (although some may have ties pulling them elsewhere)

I can't tell you how often I met someone who said they were just dating around now but planned to marry someone with in their faith and then fell in love with someone who wasn't. If you want to marry someone who shares your faith, you should start by only dating people who share it. If she wants to marry someone who wants to live in her country, she only date those folks. The problem is that living in a foreign country, it is much harder to tell in the early days if someone might be willing to uproot their life in such a big way for a relationship that is still very new so even if she is upfront about her hopes, the other person may not be able to judge if they meet her criteria.
posted by metahawk at 5:33 PM on October 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks for all the answers! Everyone made good points. I think it is true that it depends what the exact criteria are and how scarce they are in one's current city.

I marked metahawk's answer as best because I think there's an important point in there: if you only want a Jewish partner, then it's straightforward enough to only go out on dates with Jewish people. But willingness to move to a new country might not be easy or straightforward to answer. I could imagine dates who'd honestly answer early on that they'd potentially be open to moving, then realize later they're not, or vice versa.
posted by whitelily at 9:36 PM on October 6, 2018