I Tried Dating in 6 Different U.S Cities. Here’s What I Found Out.

Matchmaker, Travel professional, and writer Olivia Balsinger has clients across the country — so she obviously has to have her thumb on the pulses of multiple “dating scenes.” She sent along this article to the team, and in the spirit of passing along good things we’re sending it to you. 

Jada Yuan took her love life on the road in what she called, “one woman’s quest for a good date.” Her expedition took her to New Bern, Miami, Austin, Sioux Falls, Detroit and Los Angeles… 

Dread.

That’s the feeling that rises up in my throat whenever anyone asks me the totally non-condescending question of why I’m still single, which I’ve answered so many times in so many tones (“Just haven’t met the right guy, I guess!” “I don’t know. Why are you still married?”), I could teach a master class. Now imagine that feeling multiplied times a tsunami and you’ll know what washed over me when Cosmopolitan.com called up to see if I would travel around the country going on dates to find out if location really matters when you’re looking for love.

It’s been a grand, messy time. And there’ve been wonderful guys in the mix too, most of whom fizzled out because in this city, it’s just really hard to fit two people, and their ambitions, into one relationship. Things move so fast in New York that I only recently stopped to ask myself how I’d wound up here, over 35 and still single, but not always wanting to be. I’ve done enough self-reflection (read: therapy) to realize that I’m often the problem, the one who’s foregone intimacy for shinier and shinier objects. To be in constant chase is exhausting, and to repeat it, at Cosmo’s behest, every 48 to 72 hours in six very different U.S. cities, just seemed insane.

But now that I feel like I’m ready for something real, it seems like the only guys left in this town are perma-noncommittal, seriously disturbed, or so young they treat a visit to my apartment like an anthropological field trip into the lair of an older woman. (“You have your own apartment? And toilet paper? Whoa!”) Maybe a change of location — to New Bern, North Carolina; Miami, Florida; Austin, Texas; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Detroit, Michigan; and Los Angeles, California — was the answer. I’d already crossed the fuck-it-something’s-got-to-give threshold of my New York dating life. So I accepted the assignment and decided I would try Tinder, Bumble, real-life pickups — anything in search of a good date…

Get the scoop on each of Jada’s layovers, here, and then let us know what you think. 

We’re looking for male and female perspectives. 

Related, check out: 51 Millennial Women Reveal What Dating Is Really Like In Every U.S. State. Do you agree with your state’s submission?

XOXO, 

Team Tawkify