Hey! Whoa! Hang on! Over here! Single male, 32, West Central Florida!
I can definitely relate to the your plight, Incubus. It’s been my experience that there are very few single women anywhere these days. I’ve been getting out and meeting quite a few people lately but every woman I meet seems to be dating or married. And it’s not like I’m coming on too strong and being fed a line of crap - I’m just talking about people I meet and talk to casually. It’s so bad that I almost never see a woman out in public without a man who’s obviously her partner.
And what’s with all these 19-year-olds who are married or engaged these days? Jeez… If I knew I had to snatch up a wife before I turned 20 I’d have… wait, no, I’m glad I didn’t marry the woman I was dating at 19. Never mind. Heh…
I know a lot more single guys than girls, but then again, I know a lot more guys. As for single girls, it’s me and one of my roommates, but I only know about six or eight girls well enough to know their status. With guys, I know handfuls of single ones, but then again, most of my classes are between 3:1 and 10:1 guys girls.
I can’t say any of these directly apply to your case, but I’ve seen similar complaints analyzed before. Some of the factors creating this impression:
Narrowing the number of perceived as available women to ‘those I was attracted to’ while counting virtually ALL single men. As in, suppose women are evenly distributed in attractiveness classes from 1 to 10, and ditto for me. Joe Average (class 5) looks around at his friends (ranging from, oh, class 3 up) and says ‘nothing wrong with these guys, the only reason they don’t have girlfriends must be that there aren’t enough single women.’ However he is personally attracted only by women who are at least sevens, and most likely to check out the 8-10s.
So even if there were 100 men of evenly distributed attractiveness in a room, and ditto 100 evenly distributed women, a particular guy with the cutoff point of ‘attractive enough’ set at 3 for men and 7 for women perceives the situation as being 70 men in pursuit of only 30 women.
Another skewing comes from age preferences, especially men who are only interested in women if they are younger than themselves by five or more years. Obviously a single woman aged 35 who would consider dating men aged from 50 to 25 considers a much greater percentage of the male population as “potentials” than does a single man aged 35 who will only consider dating women aged 29 to 20.
It seems to me that often complaints of ‘not enough single women’ really translate into ‘not enough really attractive single women in their twenties.’ YMMV
Look at it this way - every guy and his brother goes out looking to score on the weekends, usually in packs. Women, who generally do not form “pack” friendships like men do, generally will not venture out to a bar by themselves and generally go out less frequently. Of the girls that go out, obviously only a small percentage will fall into what you would consider “attractive”. Fortunately, this definition is different for everyone.
When girls do go out in groups, they often form a natural barrier to any man who would try to pick up one of the girls. Basically if you are flying solo, you have to not only impress the girl you are talking to but her friends as well. Often, one or more of the girls will have a SO and are spending a rare “girls night out”. Other times, they are with work people and do not want to get a reputation as someone who goes home with strangers in bars. Guys, on the other hand, don’t have a problem if one of the guys takes off from the group to get with a girl. This is how the concept of “wing men” and “grenade men” was formed.
Often it translates into ‘there aren’t any girls in here who are willing to drop what they are doing, walk over and talk to me as I stand here drinking beers with my five buddies .’
One thing I noticed though is that while most bars are predominantly populated by dudes, most of them just stand around in little clumps drinking and not talking to anyone. THe other thing is that you need to pick the right wingmen. If you go in and talk to a group of girls, quite often your friends will swoop in on the opening. You want guys who will complement your approach - guys who will work together so that everyone gets to bring home a girl. Guys willing to maybe take one for the team and get with the ugly girl instead of cock blocking and swordfighting so that no one goes home with anyone.
Now that makes a single gal want to just get right out there and meet people!
Honestly though, I think the OP was referring more to meeting women for prospective relationships, not for one-night stands possibly involving people “taking one for the team”
I am divorced and I don’t go to bars to pick up men. Men have made it impossible to do that anymore because fo the mindset that women who do go to bars are “easy pickens”.
I also have a male (gay) roommate who has informed me that every single eligible bachelor I meet will invariably be one of his or a friends “flings”.
The consensus that I and all of my single girlfriends have come to about men consists of:
a) If they are still single, 1) they are commitment phobic
2) they are players
3) They have a psychological dysfunction
4) They are bi or gay
b) If they are divorced, 1) they have probably done something awaful to their exes
2) they have resigned themselves to never commiting again
3) Gay
c) A lot of men won’t show you what their lives at home are like so we assume,
1) They are married
2) They have a girlfriend
3) Gay
d) They are waaaay too independent or secretive
1) No time for a relationship or to develop any kind of bond
2) A waste of time
3) Gay
So basically we have ruled out anyone that might come our way unless we get to know them by being friends first.
Don’t rule out long distance relationships and if you find a connection go with it. Move if you must, you can always move back. But you can’t always find someone you hit it off with.
Single woman chiming in here with “sorry OP, it’s single MEN who are in the minority”. If you have too many in your area, I know my counterparts would be happy to take a few thousand (need a good sized pool from which to choose, so as to suit everyone’s taste) or so off of your hands.
In my 20s, I was infatuated with a widow who sang in the same choir as me. She would have been mid 40s. I will never forget the time I got her to laugh at one of my pathetic witticisms in a Committee meeting. Come to think of it, I only joined the committee because of her. I was actually rather disgruntled that no one noticed the chemistry between us, and my attempts at flirting, so I was over the moon when the Chairman got a bit drunk at a Christmas party and wandered over to me and said that I had a thing for the lady concerned. Needless to say, I wasn’t the only one.
