I invited a friend over for dinner tonight to help eat all the food that Chris made me this week, and we discussed online dating, weddings, and being single. He is eight years older than me, and everything in his life is going well from work to friends to charity work — except for his romantic prospects. He’s always jokingly asking me if I have any cute and smart single girlfriends, but the truth is that I don’t — at least, not ones that are in New York City, or ones that he’d be into given their personalities. He makes it obvious that this is really dragging him down, and he’s been in a bad mindset in the last few days. I want to help him, but I can’t.

It reminded me of my college-time obsession with the show Sex and the City and how the show discussed being single in your mid- to late-thirties, when most people are seemingly getting engaged, married, and having children. My friend is going through the male version of this, except he’s not getting one night stands as easily as those female characters were. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s not great to be single in New York City. Yes, you think you have a lot of options, but those options end up screwing you over because then you feel like you don’t need to commit to just one person. That doesn’t even just apply to romantic relationships — that applies just to agreeing to meet someone for a meal. I feel that frustration myself from the friend perspective. So if I think it’s hard to make real friends here, I don’t even know what it would be like if I were single today at my age in this city, trying to find “the one.”