Sex & Relationships

I left New York looking for love — and came back

MOST single New York ladies have found themselves indulging in a certain geographic fantasy. It’s the one where they give up their studio-for-one, quit their high-pressured job and U-Haul it to a new city — a smaller city — to find happiness and true love.

There’s a common belief that dating in the Big Apple is so impossible that the second someone relocates, they will be handed a Tiffany engagement ring and their future husband as part of the welcome package to Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis or Philadelphia.

It’s a myth — and it should remain one.

In 2011, my dad’s muscular dystrophy reached a point where it was important for me to move closer to Philadelphia, where I grew up. I was also single and exhausted from 10 years of bad dates and three long-term relationships which, in hindsight, seemed like a waste of time. (My dating life in New York City was so pathetic that I was able to mine some of its tragedy for my new novel, “Love Rehab.”)

So I traded in my single-girl apartment on the Upper West Side for two floors of a gorgeous brownstone in Rittenhouse Square, smack in the middle of one of the toniest neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

The real estate was an upgrade. The men were not.

Dating in the City of Brotherly Love proved leagues worse than in New York. The fact is that people get married later in New York — but in cities like Philadelphia, where the average person gets hitched in their mid-20s, the pickings are incredibly slim. I became a skilled third wheel with my Philly-based couple friends, allowing them to revel in their own domestic bliss over wine and gourmet burgers at least once a week.

I did go on dates with a good helping of men. One informed me he had never traveled beyond the city’s limits — and had no intention of ever doing so. Another was married with a wife in the suburbs that I discovered thanks to my friend Google. Still another had a psychological tick so egregious that he made the “never-nude” on “Arrested Development” seem normal.

The one guy I ended up dating on a regular basis was the quintessential archetype of the man you don’t want to settle down with. Women say men in New York are arrogant and full of themselves. When I asked this political consultant why he liked me, he said I fit two requirements: I was brunette and had a vagina.

Women in New York also say every man wants someone younger and hotter than they are. That’s not true of all men in New York — it is true of all men. When I stopped seeing this political consultant he told me I should realize men just want to date young hot blondes. Indeed, his next girlfriend was six years my junior . . . and her hair was an unmistakable shade of Clairol yellow.

It’s easy to get down on the New York dating scene, but the truth is dating, like a job search, is a numbers game. There are simply more men in New York City — so although there may be more jerks, there are also more diamonds in the rough.

I gave up on Philly last July. When I returned, I was determined to treat New York like a new city, not my decade-old stomping ground. I tried places I had never been and I hung out with new groups of people. Just weeks after my return, in the heart of New York City at an Internet Week party at the IAC building, I met the guy I have been seeing for the last year. He lives in Brooklyn, works in tech and he just may be the greatest guy I have ever dated.

Of course, he’s originally from San Francisco.