Dating In The Bay Area

Dating in the Bay Area can be difficult. I have been working with single folks for over a decade: offline and online, men and women, young and old, introverts, BIPOC, engineers and professionals – I have seen it all.

If you do a search, you will get dozens and dozens of threads about this on Quora, Reddit, Blind and more. Relying on these forums can be like the blind leading the blind as most people who spend time on these sites tend to be more jaded, bitter than the average person.

There are many things that make dating in the Bay Area fairly unique relative to other areas of the country such as:

• High number of advanced degrees
• Dependency on dating apps
• Lack of time
• Introverted personalities
• Diversity
• Work from home
• Massive shifts during pandemic (friends relocating, break-ups)

You might be thinking that some of these items would be a plus but not always. I’ll dig into some of the realities, nuances of dating in the Bay Area, debunk some classic myths and provide some tips on how to better navigate the dating waters here.

Check out my modern dating blog digging into trends, data, biases, frustrations, reader questions and more. Hosted on Substack, it has over 6,000 subscribers and counting.

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Dating Services Bay Area (Matchmakers, Singles Events)

The number of ways people try to meet in the Bay Area are many ranging from:

• Speed Dating
• Singles Events
• Matchmakers
• Dating Apps/Sites
• Date Me Docs

The number of people who defer to these alternative methods rather than chat up people are bars, cafes, events and more is crazy. It’s like people forgot how to have casual conversations and meet people in person in organic settings, events and situations. Of course this is not everyone, those who do have and easier time dating (unless they don’t know how to read people, set boundaries and cut off time wasters).

I am not against any of these outlets to meet people but the problem I see again and again is that it’s less about the locations, outlets and more about the person that holds them back, makes it hard to date including: unrealistic expectations, inability to read people/cut off time-wasters, lack of social skills, lack of friends, not ready to date or not considering other people’s preferences/deal-breakers.