You hear it, an opportunity of a lifetime, and one that might just make your entire career. Now you happen to work for a major company and they tell you that you are going to get a significant raise, get to be around top notch leadership for the company, enjoy nicer weather, and they are even paying for you to move to HQ (Headquarters). To 25-year old you who might have enjoyed the east coast a bit too much, it just so happens that HQ is in…….wait for it……wait for it…..
Silicon Valley!
Your heart stops and you are left with a tough decision, do you really let your career slide and pass up a leadership position to be in a place where attractive women are a lot less common?
While not exactly San Francisco, Los Angeles or Toronto, I did survive a city with an awful dating culture.
For those of you who do not know my story, I spent a couple years of my twenties in Atlanta which in my opinion is probably the worst major city in the south for dating if you are into anything other than black girls and sorority Barbie girls (no, I don’t mean white girls, I mean that specific demographic of white girls). People stuck with their high school and college crews throughout their twenties and never ventured out. The bars were largely composed of cliquish college kids and tight knit social crews in their twenties. I have talked in great lengths about why Atlanta belongs as one of the worst cities in North America for single men so I will not elaborate on it in this post.
What kind of city is this post applicable to.
I will say that this guide works for just about any big city in North America, particularly the United States. If it is a big enough city and not a small town, or even a small city, where everyone gets married by 25 then this post has a lot of quality content for you. For college towns, small cities without a nightlife, and small towns; this post does not apply. Now that we have that out of the way, here is what you can do to have success in cities that are just awful for most single men.
Start by winning the battle within, keep a positive mindset.
One of my regrets about Atlanta is that I did not develop a positive mindset about the city soon enough. At times, I even gave up on the game because I was sick and tired of guys who only got girls because they happened to wear the right Greek Letters years ago and women cared about that since Atlanta is still a southern city. I was tired of the lack of friendships and the social life struggles that came with being a part of the Atlanta culture and not having been raised there.
When I started to give less of a fuck and developed a better mindset to it all, I started being less bitter. By being less bitter, I started to just come across opportunities with women. Make it a rule that no matter how awful or cringeworthy the city is (Toronto for example), you will not be bitter.
Lose the need to fit into the local higher status crowds, don’t even bother.
Truth be told, the chances of you fitting in are slim. The guys are going to be defensive about women in the crew and cannot afford to have an outsider come in and take their women. Women are going to be status hungry and on the hunt for an LTR, often teasing men and leading them along with promises of quick sex only to reject them in a brutal way. Do not try to break into the local popular crowds, you will usually fail.
In Atlanta, the local higher status crowd was formed through Greek Life bonds in college or through high school friendships amongst rich kids. If you were not a part of the crowd in those years, they were just not going to let you in. Sure, they might smile at you and keep it cordial from a distance but they are not going to let you too close. The truth is, you are a burden as a single guy and unless you have some special tremendous value to offer, it is just not beneficial to let you hang. You could bring hot girls in and change their minds but at that point? Why not just create a crew of your own?
Don’t invest too much into nightlife and nightgame, at best use it as a supplement.
The problem with nighttime in cities that are awful for single men is that for one, it can be tricky to even get into some of the better clubs (case in point: Los Angeles). Ratios will hardly be in your favor on most nights. Most women who are out are usually going to be out with their clique and their crew, not wanting to be bothered by some random cold approacher with the guts to talk to her. As you can see, the odds are not in your favor due to how cities that are awful of single men work, nightlife is just a showcase of social status for the guys who were lucky enough to become popular in the city.
Do go out to keep you sanity here and there, obviously when lockdowns have ended for good due to COVID-19, but don’t put too much stock into it. You will be night gaming a lot less in such cities to save your wallet and also to save your sanity. See nightgame as something to be done for fun, not as your primary source of meeting women as it would be in an NYC, Miami, or Chicago.
As hard as it might be develop an abundance mentality, every fiber of you will think in scarcity.
Even though a city like Atlanta or Toronto or San Francisco are god awful for single men to meet attractive women, the truth is they are still big cities. While even in Atlanta there was an influx of the southern sorority barbie types who would only go for socially connected men, there were also a lot of other women who were not and not fitting into that mold. In fact, there were plenty of good looking women who were sick and tired of the local games and wanting a bold guy to just approach them and take them home.
Fight your natural inclination of thinking in a scarcity mindset, every fiber of you will be that way. Learn to see the glass as more half full, sure Atlanta is a far cry from Miami but at least it’s not some bumfuck town in Georgia. As bad as Atlanta, Toronto, and San Francisco suck for men; there are still tons of people in those cities. You just need a handful of women to take a chance on you and you’ll be set.
Yeah…FIND those women. Often times they are transplants and expats who are there because they have to be, not because they want to be.
Find the women sick and tired of the tryhards who are trying to overcompensate for not being popular enough in high school. Seek out the women who are also recent arrivals to the city and approach them. Hang out where the tourists, expats, and out of town folks usually hang out or stay at. What I ended up discovering about Atlanta is that the best looking women were rarely from Georgia, many were not even from the south. A good number of them found the social politics funny and even laughed at the frat boy wearing Oakleys and salmon shorts having a hot girl by his arm, it all seemed so fake to them.
Tighten up that online dating profile.
High quality pics for the dating apps, invest in those! If there was ever a time to hit the gym to look decent enough and count those calories, well this is it. Try to get into a photography hobby and if you are making decent bank, hire lifestyle photographers to take photos of you. You are going to find quite a few women on the dating apps who are using them to meet men because the local scene kind of sucks.
After all, you are not going to spend more nights getting hammered drunk at bars with the odds stacked against you now are you? Stop giving money to bars where the odds are stacked against you then, instead of give your money to your own personal well-being. If you need to, buy drinks in your own place and learn to make cocktails yourself, money better spent on that than overpriced drinks at local bars which are bound to be sausagefests.
Consider learning daygame.
Even though I have not had to do it while being in NYC, I did daygame a great deal more in Atlanta. I was never the type of person to vouch for daygame because of how awkward it can be and how in some places, it can create a reputation for you if you do it too much (for example pickup artists in Toronto malls). I’d encourage finding areas in the city that are ripe for tourists, outsiders, and people not from the local scene. A good opener I used was “hey are you from this city?”, I call it kind of a lost puppy approach where I would initially come off as someone lost and needing help. A no would lead to a quality conversation and occasionally a number.
Work on a plan to get the fuck out of there.
The fact is that Toronto, Atlanta, and San Francisco don’t just suck when it comes to meeting women, the local scenes suck as well. I think men spending their twenties in those cities, unless they have tight social connections there, are wasting their lives away. Such cities have such a toxic local culture that you will stunt your own development just being there and lose your faith in humanity. Stick out the two or so years you need to stick it out there and then, once time comes, go to real cities meant for single men.
Great post 😁