In Connie Francis’ song “Where The Boys Are,” she pines for her yet unmet love:
“Where the boys are, someone waits for me
A smilin’ face, a warm embrace, two arms to hold me tenderly
Where the boys are, my true love will be
He’s walkin’ down some street in town and I know he’s lookin’ there for me
In the crowd of a million people I’ll find my valentine
And then I’ll climb to the highest steeple and tell the world he’s mine”
Don’t you wish you could just be walking down the street and your soul mate will find you in the crowd? That’s so Hollywood, so “meet cute,” so …. unrealistic.
Common wisdom would then tell us to go where the odds are stacked in our favor — where we’d be surrounded by hordes of intelligent, fun-seeking, educated, fit, straight, eligible bachelors. Kind of like “The Bachelorlette” on steroids.
On yesterday’s “Oprah Winfrey Show,” she told you exactly where the best single men were. Well, at least what cities they were in. Based on an article from Men’s Health magazine, “Women, Here’s the Best Place to Find a Man” she listed the top cities to find men over 35.
Men’s Health sorted data by 7 criteria: fitness, ratio of single men/women, low divorce rate, philanthropy, education, thrill factor (participation in high-adrenaline activities/sports). One of their premises is education equals smart, and smart is sexy. I’d say smart can be sexy, but it can also be just geeky.
Do you know the way to San Jose?
Their findings: The 5 cities with the best eligible bachelors were San José, Salt Lake City, Arlington, TX, Raleigh, NC and San Francisco. (The whole list is posted here. )
What they didn’t factor in are things like social skills, number of hours of average work week, ratio of salary to housing costs, and interest in settling down. Based on my experience dating men in four of the top cities, these definitely have to be factored in. And for women considering moving to the Bay Area to increase their changes of finding their Mr. Right, they should know that the median home price for the area in April ’07 is $700,000.
So while I applaud Men’s Health’s efforts to help us find where the men are, I don’t think this is all that helpful. I don’t think you should pack your belongings and move to one of the top cities unless you have other reasons for doing so. Of course, it might not hurt to vacation in these cities and spend a lot of time walking down the streets.
(Side note: When I was on Oprah years ago to discuss one of my bestselling books, I found here as genuine off camera as she was on.)
The San José Mercury News quoted me again in an article on this. And KCBS radio’s Janice Wright interviewed me on this as well.
A few days ago I shared that the posting “Do men like feisty women?” his posting was #72 of the global blog host WordPress’s top 100 posts of the day. Today’s is #57. We’re moving up in the ranks! This means of all the millions of postings to the blogs WordPress hosts, this posting was the 57th most popular.
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As one of those nerds working in Silicon Valley, I can add a couple more caveats. Very few people walking the streets, everything is spread out and we all drive to destinations. Best odds would be to go to work for a big company and introduce yourself to everybody. Also, the single men here are mostly 20s and 30s – not unusual for midlife men to burn out and move away.