Dating Demographics: Can you find Your Wife?

Thanks for checking into the science lab of dating.

In this experiment, you will find the answers to the questions not even the Great Sphinx could answer!  What will it take for you to find that Special Woman?  And we will study in ways you thought of before, but not in this way.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll disbelieve… but you can’t ignore the data.  You can even try to cheat on your taxes, but you can’t cheat the fact that 4 is bigger than 3.

Let’s start with the basic questions:

• Where are all the women?
• Are there any women around here?
• Why can’t I meet a good woman?
• Are all the good ones taken?
• What can I do to meet that someone special?
• Is it true? Or does it just seem that way?
• Is there something wrong with me/ them/ where I live/ what I do?

Let’s put this author’s PhD in electronics semiconductors and physics to use in the only way related to women!  (I waited eight years in a semiconductor research lab to do this!)

You will be surprised!  Not only that a semiconductor PhD can be understood, but you will learn about your dating and singleness situation.  Although you will not be asked to send this to ten people or else you will have bad luck, you may want to send it to your best buddies saying “we gotta do this!” as you will find the cure for chronic male singleness.

The question we’re going to answer is: Are there any women out there for me?

To answer this, you can take my data from participation in PhD studies in Dating and Sociology (yes, people got them in the 1990s!) or use your own.  Careful: to obtain your own data, you’ll be out there on the dating scene rather heavily!  Check with your doctor to see if you’re up to it.

Part 1:  Your Environment

Count the number of attractive ladies you could meet this week and next.

What defines “could meet”?

• Bus?  Maybe: if you see her again yes.  If not, she’s a ship in the night.
• Elevator, yes.
• Other side of the street, of course!
• Party?  Yes
• Coffee shop?  Of course!
• Waitress?  No!  Waitresses are Unobtainable.  They are hit upon a million times a day.  Unless she’s Bridget Fonda, and you’re Nicolas Cage, and you have a million-dollar lottery ticket, forget it.
• The attractive (but married) lady at work, who has a picture of her husband and their christmas puppy on her desk?—yes.  Yes?  Yes.
• The ladies in the Singles clubs you’re in?  No: that is not a random population.

We are counting the number of women in your environment whom you find attractive.  Attractiveness is not a function of her dating status.  It is your immediate reaction to seeing her.

Part 2: Your Availables

Are the good ones all taken?

Considering the women from part 1, and new ladies this week, look for: are they available?

If she is wearing a wedding or engagement ring, has her arm around a guy, or woman, or has a gorilla’s arm around her, the answer is no.

Not all women wear their rings.  That attractive lady at work might have a picture of a husband and puppy on her desk.  Or, she may be Eastern Orthodox or Russian Orthodox and wear her wedding ring on her right hand.  You could get an undercount of women who are not available.  However, this will be counteracted by the number of women who lie and say they have a boyfriend when they really don’t, and are just trying to blow you off without hurting your feelings.

Now you see the portion of the attractive ladies who are available to you.

Part 3:  Your Interesteds

This can be scary!  This looks at how many of the women you find attractive and are available, are interested in you.  What is interested?

Consider her interested if:

• She gives you her phone number
• Or a smooch after meeting (rare)
• Or a hookup after a meeting (very rare!)
• She gives you a wink, smile… nope! Unless you have a planned re-meeting.

You are looking for obvious signs of interest that can be acted upon to continue towards a date or dating.

Obtain your data this way:

For the next 40 women (at least) you find attractive and available, approach them and chat them up and ask for their phone number.

You never see in the Cary Grant movies the awful truth here.  You will fail over 80% of the time!  In fact, people who run world-renown seminars on picking up women fail 80% of the time, and they are much better at meeting women than you probably are.  Pick Up Artists (PUAs) strike faster than a Stuka!  Are you that confident and skilled? Well, if you have a regular job, hobbies, and don’t spend five nights a week on the prowl, you aren’t.  So, either take 10% as your conversion rate, or experiment on your own.

But you say you don’t meet ladies in “pick up” areas?  You don’t go to such places.  Well, everywhere is a place to meet someone.  The supermarket, launderette, newsstand, subway station, etc.  Women say they don’t like to be hit on at many of such places.  I disagree. No woman would turn down Rhett Butler or Brad Pitt if he sidled up to her in the ice cream aisle.  And a guy who looks like this would never get anywhere, even if the woman got paid a million dollars on a reality tv show.

Some guys have all the luck.  If this guy approached a woman anywhere, anytime, and under any circumstances, she would melt into his arms.  Unless it was illegal for him to flirt with her!

And then there’s the guy who couldn’t get a date if his life or the fate of the species depended on it.  You might be made to feel this way on occasion, but if you’re not this guy… you’re not that guy.

Part 4.  Follow-up: Date 1

Are we there yet?  No.  At this point, all you have is a phone number or a promise to meet again somewhere sometime.  Will you see this lady again?  If you have a collection in a drawer of business cards and cocktail napkin phone numbers from the past year, look over them and ask, “Of all these phone numbers, how many women did I meet?”

Let’s look into this.  How many turned into a first follow-up or date?  Any date will do.  Coffee.  Lunch.  Dinner.  Her dog’s obedience class graduation party, as long as it was the first time you met her by making a date, either from the meeting in Part 3, or using her phone number from Part 3.

Call.  Ask for a date.

If you don’t have data handy, the norm is that half the time you will get an excuse and not meet.  An excuse is anything other than “let’s meet!” or, “I can’t that day, how is…”  A “whenever day” date does not count!

And, when you do have something planned, 1/3 of the time it will fall through without follow-up.

Which means, 1/3 of phone numbers turn into first dates.

Sometimes she’s nice about it.  Sometimes not.  Many women give you a phone number just to be nice about saying no.  This will happen more frequently than a fake phone number, or lying and saying she is seeing someone.  Regardless of what she says, and whether it is true, don’t care.  All that will do is wear you out and bring you down.

Don’t care?  I’m trying to find someone for a relationship!  How can I not care?

Simple: don’t care about her excuse.  It’s one of a million forms of “no” which means nothing about you.  People may begin to say that if you are getting lots of “no’s” then you are trying too hard, have high expectations, bla bla bla.  Ignore them, unless they are introducing you to the beautiful new admin.  Otherwise, tell them that unsolicited advice without assistance or even being asked for is plain ol’ nagging and nay-saying, which is not their job.  If they insist that it is their role as your friend, fire them.

And continue with the experiment!

Part 5.  Getting to the good stuff

To get to the second date, you’ve got to convert Date One successfully into Date Two.  This fraction varies widely from person to person.  Think about your dates from the past year.  If you’re new on the dating scene again, or can’t remember, take 1/2.

Then, from Date Two to Date Three.  Dates 3 and 4 are important for American women.  This is when the questions of sex, consistency of your personality, and becoming a regular thing arise.

Also note that you are getting a sense on her. You may decide she isn’t right to continue pursuing.

Think on your Date 2 → 3 conversion factor.  And your Date 3 → 4 factor.  If you don’t have the data, take 1/3 and 1/3, or 1/10 for both to make it easy on on our napkin.

Part 6.  Regularity

Ok, you’ve dated at least 5 times, and maybe have had sex.  Sizzle or fizzle?  Consider yourself at the entry of “relationship”.  Half of relationships last less than 2 months.

Half yet again last 2 more months.

So let’s add it up…

If your environment had 2400 women in it whom you would find attractive and were available,

• 240 would be interested in you
• 80 would meet you for that first date
• 40 would turn into a second date
• 4 would make it past date four and become a regular thing
• 2 would disappear or break up by the second month
• 1 would be with you at month 4

If half of four-month-long relationships turn into a year-long relationship, when one considers marriage, then you have about a one-in-ten thousand chance.  That’s right: your environment needs to provide ten thousand ladies for you to meet, mingle, mix, and match to get towards marriage.

Consider the environment.  How many women must there be to provide a dating pool of 10,000?

Factor in the fraction of women who weren’t available.  And then, how many women in your dating age range around you did you find attractive?  One in five?  Be honest!  Consider race, physique, smoking, tattoos, body art, etc.  Say, one in 5.

This turns the dating “target pool” into a population.  If only one in five women were attractive to you, and of those, only one on three were available, then you need 15 women to ask, “should I use butter or margarine?” as an opening line.

This means to create a dating pool large enough to provide one one-year relationship, you need 150,000 women.  Are there enough in your town?

A back-of-the-napkin guess can go like this, unless you have handy access to the 2010 Census Data.  If the population profile is roughly flat (it isn’t; it probably sags in the middle), and you are interested in women across a 15-year age range (say, 25 to 40, for you the 38 year old) then that’s about 1/5 the age range.  And, if half the population in that age range is female (again, probably not as women far outnumber men above 65, but this is the back of a napkin!) then you are looking at 1/10 of the town’s total population.

Wow.  You need 1.5 million people for you to have a chance at meeting the right one.  That isn’t because you’re a dork.  Remember: all the data above seemed rather normal.

If you live in a city of three million, then you have 2 potential women for your long-term happiness.  Hope one isn’t divorced from a total jerk and having a bad day when you meet her while standing in line at the bank.  Or, she’s taking her sister’s advice and “not dating” for a year “to see what happens.”  Or the other one’s company sends the her to the foreign office for a six year assignment.  (She could be someone else’s one-in-a-million!)

Unless you move to multiple cities or hope or life on another planet, you must do something to shift the ratios!

How do I turn the Demographics for Dating in my favor?

Go to where the fraction of attractive women in the population is higher.  Not only one in five, but where it seems like all the women are beautiful.  Imagine too that they are all available, because the men have moved to another city in search of jobs, or are in the army because it feeds and pays well.  Imagine a place where the women are less fussy, picky, spoiled, and qualities like interest in marriage and raising a family are valued more than the car you drive.  Where the women show up for the dates as if their life depends on it.

I know what you’re thinking.  ”Such a place doesn’t exist.”

This place exists!  In fact, there are many such places.  The only problems you have are:

• You think it is too good to be true
• You will be so amazed and happy in this place that you may forget what your “goal” is (hint: you want someone for marriage)
• You don’t know how to get started

This is where Olga’s Girlfriends helps you.  Russia, Ukraine, Belarus are filled with places where beautiful ladies abound, and they seek good husbands.  Russian women need to look for husbands!  Why?  Good, employed, faithful, family-oriented men are not in abundance in many of Russia’s and Ukraine’s cities.  How to win this game? Olga’s Girlfriends matches you to the right dating pond in Russia, Ukraine, or Belarus to find just the right ladies for you, to be matched by the matchmakers based on your and her interests, traits, and life goals.

The choice is yours. Either search through population pools of hundreds of thousands of people, hoping for good timing and placement, being “professionally single” with all the dating methods, but doesn’t find the One after much time and money and heartache.

Or, contact Olga’s Girlfriends and learn how to go from “to good to be true” to “I Do” in about fifteen months.

-Greg Sarcona

President and Chief Romantic Officer

Olga’s Girlfriends.com