What's dating actually like in New York City?

My own version of the Sex & the City column. Finally.

While sipping our americanos and smoking cigarettes outside a coffee shop in the West Village, I asked one of my friends, “Am I too complicated? Maybe that’s why I can’t find a partner.” I knew almost everything about that assumption was wrong – why would I be the problem, what does being complicated even mean, and why I ought to find a partner anyway – but I needed some reassurance on my self-esteem.

He immediately laughed, “You’re the least complicated person ever. I just think you’re in the wrong city.” I partially agreed: after having my fair share of dates in the seven months I’ve spent living in New York, I’ve noticed dating here is fucking hard. I could blame it on the guys (I sometimes do) but I’ve realized the main problem is the dating culture, and I will discuss more about this on this issue.

After my dates, I usually send a long voice note to a friend or two. Right after the last date, I even called my sister, half drunk, and stated this could not get worse. “I quit,” I stated, knowing that it probably wasn’t true. My friends’ (and mom's) replies are pretty consistent: they tell me things that happen to me are so fucking weird; that I should continue dating just for the experience; that I make them laugh; and a recurrent one is that I should write my own Sex and the City-like column.

For a few months, I was a bit skeptical about this last point. I thought the genre of dating, particularly in New York, was a worn-out one; but I’ve started reading The End of Love: Sex and Desire in the Twenty-First Century, and as the Argentine author Tamara Tenenbaum says, I’m too interested in human bonds, and “for those of us who don’t know how to ‘let go,’ I believe that thinking and writing about these issues is a way of coming together.”

So, as I don’t have a publication that will publish this, I decided to post it myself; write one issue about a topic that’s a bit cliche but adorable, sad, exhausting, and fun at the same time: How dating in the twenty-first century looks like in New York City?

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about dating culture in New York is that it makes it easy for you to feel disposable. Relationships here – at least the ones I’ve experienced – seem to be pretty much transactional.¹ I will give you my time but in exchange for what? It could be sex, a nice dinner in an expensive restaurant, or for me to be your therapist for the night over two martinis. It could be all of these and everything in between, but the possibility of a serendipitous, deep connection seems missing from every equation.

However, this feeling of not being enough and that you could always find someone better is not something exclusive to the dating culture in New York. Eva Illouz, author of Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, analyzes – through the lens of dating apps – how this idea of ‘finding something better’ is a factor of the contemporary world, and secretly conspires against happiness in relationships.

Building an intimate relationship with someone takes time; but according to the current dating culture, this means you’ll be wasting valuable time you could be using on other more important stuff: work, your passion, making more money. Basically, the main reasons why (almost) every one of us came to this particular city in the first place. That’s why several people ask you what you’re looking for on the first date and others write a personality trait resume for dating. One of my friends even told me a guy asked him for a virtual ‘vibe check’ before an actual date. “Checking the vibe based on your texts and photos on a dating app is already exhausting as it is,” he told me. And I couldn’t agree more.

Anyway, jobs and passions are two things guys I’ve dated seem to be very (I would say too) invested in. And these men tend to have some other things in common: they state not having any friends; they’re entrepreneurs (the kind where you don’t fully understand what their business is about); they smoke too much weed; they say to be spontaneous.

For this last item, I have also realized they got the whole concept of spontaneity wrong. It’s not being spontaneous; they want others to adapt to their time and place. On one of my last dates, I even found myself having a drink with a guy who said being like this and then added, “So I finally got to see you! I’m not used to planning things” just because I said I couldn’t see him the night he proposed and offered to meet the following one.

My mom says all this happens because I’m on dating apps (true) and dating random people (what else could I do in a new city). But I would like to believe there’s a deeper explanation for this; connection is so hard these days. And not only in New York because I could argue this is happening in almost every big city in the world, at least where my friends who are single and/or dating live.

In a recent article published in The Atlantic, writer Hannah Giorgis asks herself through the analysis of two books named the same, The End of Love, a hard and real question for all of us navigating the dating universe: Why does dating today feel like work? It actually does, and “the contemporary language of love provides infinite tools to justify this: betting on love, working on the relationship, putting that extra bit of effort.”

Also, as a feminist woman in her late 20s, the desires, wants, and needs present during dating experiences can feel exhausting and contradictory. Many times, these romantic and sexual encounters also wake up painful feelings but I agree there’s no “meaningful way forward” – at least for me – if we don’t question and acknowledge the roots of those emotions.

“It’s not singlehood, dear friend, that hurts; it’s not casual sex, the fluidity of our bonds, nor their ephemeral nature that causes pain. Rather, it’s the way that power operates in relationships.”

Giorgis starts by addressing the issue through a modern product I already mentioned and would say is the evil of our time: dating apps.

“Singledom and swiping are supposed to be fun, a promise that relies on a somewhat paradoxical assumption: You will eventually find someone to settle down with—but only if you’re not asking too much of men or taking yourself too seriously,” she writes.

To this I would add the social pressure of having a partner – and why not maintaining a happy relationship – relies on our shoulders (yes, even if you don’t feel it, Karen) because “a woman can do an infinite number of things, but if she doesn’t have romantic love, socially she will be regarded as empty, as an incomplete individual,” Tenenbaum states.

“Curiously, this prejudice is not based on reality, not even in our own experiences. It doesn’t matter that our happiest moments happened while we were single; or that the pillars we leaned against were our friends or mothers. A woman without a partner […] must be lonely, as happiness can only flourish between two people.”

This idea of romantic love comes from ages ago, popularized and crystalized by tragedies such as Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet (1597) to popular melodramas in Latin America and songs that preach that love will remain despite every social difference. In these stories, the female protagonists – ‘modern heroines’ – are all but practical, but they have one – and the most important – thing they need: love. Tenenbaum states that these women “are not moved by money or other worldly motivations,” but still at the time “their love [represented] a protest against the tedious, prudent, and logical lives that bourgeois morality [offered].”

Women who leave all of their interests behind for a man no longer represent the majority of us in modern societies – at least millennials and Gen Z’s – in big part, thanks to feminist movements.² However, Tenenbaum writes something that deeply resonated with me; a contradictory feeling I’ve had for years but couldn’t explain until now.

“I felt many of us had put up with bad treatment and violent attitudes without necessarily ascribing to the most traditional idea of romantic love and complete surrender, even explicitly rejecting it […] The message ‘you are worth more’ […] seemed obvious and redundant, […] yet I still found myself in many of those situations catalogued as violent.”

In summary, the idea of a woman becoming an ‘eternal housewife’ or love as a sacrifice seems outdated and foreign; and I surround myself with many strong, independent, hard-working women. However, a belief still prevails and renews itself in the back of our minds: being rich, successful, having great friends, and having a loving family will never be enough if we can’t attract and keep a man by our side.

These contradictions also exist in pop culture today, with artists like Taylor Swift and Lana del Rey rising in popularity among millennials and centennial teenage girls and women. After reading The End of Love and listening non-stop to these two of my favorite artists, I’ve realized two things about them.

Firstly, they represent a paradox women face in modern relationships and their power dynamics: you can be strong, independent, and beautiful; you can be moved by lust, desire, and love. But to a certain extent, not too much to be considered disrespectful, needy, crazy. A limit is always set by the one who seems to put all the rules.

My second realization was that the implicit rules of the conception of romantic love – having a man as a vital part of a woman’s happiness – are part of these artists’ discourse. And maybe that’s what makes them so honest, raw, and beautiful because they represent us and the contradictions we as modern, feminist women face today.

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I might not have answers and don’t expect to have them any time soon. But as I noted at the beginning of this essay, I believe there’s a value in sharing experiences that might resonate with others. For some of us, it might be the end of love as we know it, but it’s also an opportunity to build something better; more honest, respectful, vulnerable, and connected to our current desires.

1. Just to clarify, I will write about my experience as a woman dating men, but I hope this text transcends individuality and reaches everyone who feels touched by what’s said here.

2. First-wave feminists focused on explicit restrictions women faced (the right to vote, get an education, their own income, a divorce) while second-wave feminism exposed how patriarchy affects women symbolically through models of identification and happiness.