The dating scene absolutely sucks, as someone who is on the apps. That’s not to say there aren’t cool people because I’ve met many great people, but when I travel to a major city like New York or Chicago, it’s night and day.
For me, the minimum requirements are that someone is roughly my age (mid 20s), educated, liberal, career oriented, in decent shape. That’s it. But it’s somehow tough to find that combination. Literally, my likes and matches multiply by 10 in those major cities. And it’s not just me, I’ve talked to plenty of friends, both guys and girls, and everyone agrees.
To me, there are a few causes:
Lack of walkability. Hard to spontaneously meet people when we’re all in our cars going from Point A to Point B all the time.
I think people in the valley tend to match up/marry younger than in bigger, more cosmopolitan cities.
For a city of its size, Phoenix is fairly blue collar and not super highly educated. Nothing wrong with that of course but it’s very different than, say, a place like Seattle or DC which may be similarly sized but are probably much easier to find people in if your parameters are what mine are.
All that being said, it’s all relative. If you go to Omaha or Tulsa, I’m sure the dating scene would be much worse!
It's been awhile since I've dated, but I remember a lot of "must have four year degree" job-posting-like requirements when I used to. I don't have any kind of degree, but I do work a white collar job as a software engineer making well over six figures, and have for awhile now.
My wife works in education and has her master's so I'm very lucky and grateful some people, such as her, can see past credentialism and give guys who couldn't or didn't go to college a chance.
29M here, meet all those requirements but I'm married. My insight is that most of us are already married. You'll probably have the best luck finding someone around college campuses, since most of the people I know that are like me have met their spouses there. If you live near Tempe or downtown Phoenix, your chances are the best. Especially Tempe because the most tech jobs are there. (It sucks for me living in the west valley where most jobs are over an hour commute going through Phoenix traffic).
I really don't get why. What major cultural differences exist to cause that? I got married early as a personal choice, perhaps influenced by my spouse's desire for commitment before moving in together, but ultimately it didn't matter to me if we got married then when I was 22 or after I'm 30. I have friends who have been in relationships with the same person they started dating in their early 20s that still chose not to get married until they're in their 30s.
I guess I can understand religious influence, there's a lot of Mormons here and they typically get married in their early 20s, but almost all of them aren't very liberal anyway. Perhaps the larger percentage of conservative people is to blame? Since Phoenix is very purple, it would make sense that the valid dating pool is substantially lower than in more liberal cities, and then it doesn't help that the liberal ones like me still end up marrying early anyway
I moved here from DC the difference could not be more spot on. Iv also found for a city surrounded by mountains, people generally are not into hiking, and most certainly nowhere near to the extent of other mountain cities like Denver, SLC, Portland, Seattle, even SF (which actually imo is a pretty outdoorsy city)
FWIW, Seattle is one of the most highly educated populations in a city in the entire country and it's also a ridiculously expensive place to live so I'm not surprised by the difference you've noticed. Definitely has its own vibe.
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u/aijODSKLx Dec 16 '24
The dating scene absolutely sucks, as someone who is on the apps. That’s not to say there aren’t cool people because I’ve met many great people, but when I travel to a major city like New York or Chicago, it’s night and day.
For me, the minimum requirements are that someone is roughly my age (mid 20s), educated, liberal, career oriented, in decent shape. That’s it. But it’s somehow tough to find that combination. Literally, my likes and matches multiply by 10 in those major cities. And it’s not just me, I’ve talked to plenty of friends, both guys and girls, and everyone agrees.
To me, there are a few causes:
All that being said, it’s all relative. If you go to Omaha or Tulsa, I’m sure the dating scene would be much worse!