New Yorkers have access to more potential partners than almost anywhere on earth, yet the city has a reputation for chronic situationships and ghosting. Is the abundance of options the actual enemy of real relationships here?
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Add your commentTo anyone defending NYC dating culture: I challenge you to find me one — ONE — person in Manhattan under 40 who didn't spend at least six months in a 'thing that wasn't a thing.' I will wait. I have been waiting. Much like I waited for Jake from Williamsburg to text back. He did not.
The real issue nobody wants to say out loud: New York specifically attracts ambitious, career-obsessed people who have deliberately chosen their job over everything else and then ACT surprised when relationships don't stick. The city didn't make you emotionally unavailable. You were emotionally unavailable before you got here. The city just gave you permission to stay that way.
Met my husband on the 6 train in 2011. He dropped his MetroCard and I picked it up. We've been together 13 years. New York gave me my person. Don't blame the city.
Lived here 34 years. Born in Queens, raised in Queens, still in Queens. The whole 'too many options' thing is real but people act like it's some mystery. It's not. When you can swipe right on 400 people in a Tuesday afternoon commute, nobody feels rare anymore. Scarcity creates value. That's just basic human psychology and New York eliminated scarcity from dating completely. The apps made it worse but the city mindset was already there. My parents met at a church social in Flushing in 1979. That was it. That was their pool. They made it work because they had to invest. Nobody invests anymore.
I think the more honest framing is that New York is the only city where you can plausibly tell yourself the next person will be better. In a small town you date who's available. Here you can always convince yourself there's someone smarter, hotter, more successful, more interesting just two subway stops away. That's not abundance making commitment hard — that's abundance enabling avoidance of self-reflection. The city is doing you a favor by exposing your own patterns if you're willing to look.
Former New Yorker here, moved to Portland Oregon four years ago. I will say this carefully: the dating culture in NYC is its own ecosystem and leaving genuinely changed how I approach relationships. Not because New Yorkers are bad people — they are not — but because the unspoken rules there (keep it casual, don't seem too eager, always have an exit) are SO deeply normalized that you don't even realize you've absorbed them until you're somewhere that operates differently. I didn't know I was performing unavailability until I stopped.
^^^^^ That is factually incorrect, New York consistently ranks near the BOTTOM for marriage rates among major metros. Please stop spreading that around like it's true.
i think its more complicated than options. its the transience. half the people you meet here are only here for two years for grad school or a job rotation or whatever. you fall for someone and then they move back to wherever. after that happens three times you stop letting yourself get attached. its not a character flaw its a defense mechanism the city literally trained into you
ok but can we talk about how expensive it is to actually DATE here?? splitting a $22 cocktail on a first date while simultaneously worrying if your roommate is gonna raise the rent is not exactly the conditions under which romance flourishes. I genuinely think the cost of living is doing more damage to the dating scene than 'too many options' ever could. nobody has TIME or MONEY to nurture something new
I actually read somewhere that New York has the highest marriage rate of any major US city so maybe the whole 'no one commits' thing is just a stereotype pushed by people who had a few bad dates and wrote a Substack about it.
hard disagree. moved here from Columbus two years ago and honestly i've gone on more meaningful dates in brooklyn than i did in five years back home. maybe the commitment problem is about who YOU are not where you live lol
Nope. Hard disagree with the whole premise. Commitment problems exist in rural Iowa too. People just have fewer excuses there.
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