Seemingly small differences in gender ratios can make a huge difference for success in your romantic life. If you’re doing well in dating or if you’re doing poorly, your location could explain it, because dating is a numbers game. Accordingly, in this article we will include the raw figures for the 18-to-34 bracket.
Here we’re measuring the cities proper, not the metropolitan areas, because living in the suburbs is a bad idea in the first place if you’re a single man looking to date a woman. So let’s take a look at the best and worst cities for single men in the USA.
The Best:
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a truly relaxed city, in terms of both culture and public-safety measures. You get big-city amenities and big-city problems, but with that low-key small-town feel. There’s also an abundance of some of the best natural beauty in the United States in every direction.
Portland makes the cut for the best for one reason: it’s the only West Coast city with a favorable gender ratio for men – 1.03 young women for every young man.
Types of girl:
- Alt girls
- Lower-middle class stoner weeb
Takeaway: A surprisingly “white-trash” city, but in a good way.
New York
The Big Apple! This is truly the city to be in if you need cosmopolitan energy, urban vitality, and a diversity of lifestyles and life-paths. You can rub shoulders with writers, accidentally wander into a warehouse hip-hop show, or have a career in big finance.
There are also tons of women: New York has 1.06 young women for every young man.
Girl type:
- Stylish, cosmopolitan, high-maintenance
- Saw a TV show set in New York and based her life around it
Takeaway: You can find everything here, really, including almost every type of girl. It’s expensive and people are often up their own ass – with some justification for it.
Philadelphia
Philadelphia is what would happen if you averaged out the qualities of eastern cities like Boston, DC, Pittsburgh, and New York. This results in it being a walkable, affordable, generic (in a good way) legacy city, kinda like Chicago. Unlike Chicago, it’s not in the Midwest.
Philadelphia, being a mini-NYC, also has a really good gender ratio: 1.07 young women for every young man.
And yeah I’m writing content marketing, but I’m not gonna mention cheese steaks!!
Types of girls:
- Gritty in the New Jersey way
- Small-town Pennsylvania girl in a Philadelphia world
Takeaway: All-around great choice.
Boston
Boston. The Big Bean. I’m talkin’ Beantown, folks. Boston is the capital of New England, an outsized college town, and a good place to find love as a young man. The city itself is pretty cool too, with old, winding streets from an era before the grid.
Partly due to its prevalence of large, prestigious, and female-dominated universities, it has 1.07 young women for every young man.
Types of girls:
- The grad student
- The ascended townie
New Orleans
Erm, jazz much?
New Orleans – known as “The Big Easy '' to us locals – is a vibrant city with many distinctions: it’s a cultural melting pot with lots of good music and food, and it looks very European thanks to its French and Spanish colonial architecture.
For whatever reason, there is also a huge surplus of women in NOLA. Specifically, it’s 1.08 young women for every young man.
Types of girl:
- Bon vivant
- Will probably be sexually adventurous
Takeaway: Seems like a pretty cool place, quite frankly.
Washington, DC
Washington DC is the undisputed champion of male-to-female ratio among young people. Seriously, it’s insane.
DC isn't just a city full of politics. It’s also a city full of functional alcoholics. And it’s also the undisputed GOAT when it comes to being the best city for single men.
The nation’s capital has an incredible gender ratio of 1.17 young women for every young man. This is probably due to women dominating “soft” college majors that lead them into government, nonprofit, and journalism jobs.
The women are pretty basic, though. So do your research.
Girl types:
- The humanities enjoyer
- The NGO bore
- The basic brunch girl
Takeaway: In DC, the odds are good but the goods are odd.
The Worst Cities For Men:
You may have noticed something about the cities in the “Best” category: they’re mostly on the East Coast. There’s a pleasing symmetry here: the worst cities for single men tend to be on the West Coast.
Denver
Denver is affectionately known as “Menver” because it… has lots of men. The ratio of young women to young men in the Mile-High City is 0.98 to 1.
Like most mid-sized regional cities that suck, Denver apparently has “craft beer.” That’s still a thing, right?
There isn’t that much to say about Denver besides that it’s in the mountains. Its vibe is kind of “the Cheesecake Factory of Cities.” This is a bad thing. Its exact meaning is left as an exercise to the reader.
Types of girls:
- Stoner who wears beanies
- “I love hiking”
Takeway: Not worth thinking about.
Houston
Houston, we have a problem: no bitches.
Texas “cities” are known for being sprawling, unwalkable giga-suburbs. Less known is the fact that they are, statistically speaking, not great for single men, either.
Houston is the worst on both of these metrics, with the worst walkability and the worst male-to-female ratio at .97 young women for each young man. It has very good barbecue, though.
Types of girls:
- Aggressive driver
- Loves talking about her Southern heritage but has no accent
Takeaway: Texans are great people, but their cities are hellish in layout and there is a woman shortage in every city.
Phoenix
Phoenix is known for being really dry and hot while also having a lot of golf courses for some reason. It’s also the king of the Sun Belt sprawl cities.
It’s not the king of dating opportunities for young men, though. Phoenix has 0.96 young women for each young man.
Types of girl:
- Sorority girl
- Boorish suburbanite
Takeaway: One giant suburb that shouldn’t exist.
San Francisco
San Francisco… the city that was once the countercultural capital of the world, full of culture and life. Now it’s the tech capital of the world and it’s full of walking XKCD comics. You wouldn’t expect to find an abundance of young women in such a place.
And you’d be right! San Francisco sucks for dating with .93 young women for every young man. The saving grace is that many of the men you’re competing with have never talked to a girl before, but still: numbers are numbers, and they are truly not in your favor in this city.
If you have a tech job, cool! But it’s probably still the homeless having all the fun and all the sex. If you don’t have a tech job, what are you doing here?
Types of girl:
- Smart girls
- Tech diversity-hires who think they’re smart girls
Takeaway: Very smart dudes who do not have sex.
San Diego
It’s sunny, the tacos are really good, and the people are non-annoying by California standards. Yep, I’m thinking it’s San Diego!
San Diego is clean and the people are down to earth – again, both by California standards – people party a lot, and… yeah it’s a great place.
However, San Diego was a surprising contender for the top spot in the “Worst Cities for men” list. It somehow beats San Francisco in terms of an unfavorable gender ratio, with only .91 young women for every young man, putting it in second place.
Types of girl:
- Beach bum with seasonal depressive disorder
- Asian babygirl
- “I could never live anywhere but California”
Takeaway: Fun place, but no women.
San Jose
San Jose is known for being an economic powerhouse that forms the nucleus of Silicon Valley. It also sucks across the board, especially for dating. Every man who lives here is either married and rich, single and has golden handcuffs, or just doesn’t know any better.
Seriously, dating in San Jose is even worse than in San Francisco – SF at least has the “city life” urban amenities that attract young women. Man Jose (as I like to call it) has an outrageous 0.89 women for every man. San Jose is possibly the worst place in the world for dating as a man outside of a trench in the Ukraine.
Types of girl:
- Accidentally moved here?
- Mail-order bride?
Takeaway: Seriously, MOVE.
Dating is mostly numbers games, but bad odds aren’t a death sentence for finding someone. You just need a good strategy, and you can be a rizzmaster in any city you find yourself in. That’s where Wingman comes in: it’s the first and strongest AI dating coach available.