Single in a Small Town

I live in a small Texas town where the population is 18,837 apx.  According to city-data.com 47.5% of that population is male while 52.5% of the population is…yes you guessed it female. (what exactly does .5% male & .5% female mean????)

Hmmm no matter the .5% question it looks like we outnumber the men a little.  

52% of the population is married (at least that one is a whole #).

26.5% of the female population is single while 23.75% of the male population is single.

73% of the population has a high school degree, 4% of the population has a 2 year degree, 11% of the population has a 4 year degree and 5% of the population has graduate degrees. We seem to be intelligent people by the statistics. 

After being in a long relationship I felt liberated and confident! I was excited to be on my own again. The world was once again a blank canvas and I had my paints in hand! I was looking forward to weekend getaways, late nights out on the town, girls night out and was sure that dating would consist of being wined and dined by single attractive men. However, life in a small town has been anything but. It’s hard to have girls nights out or late nights on the town when most of your girlfriends are at home tending to their husbands and children. City girls have an endless line of coffee shops, museums, restaurants, bars, etc. to find dating prospects and are usually more interested in “what’s his annual mean salary” and “does he have a house in the Hamptons” while us small town girls are more interested in "does he have a steady job" and "is he single" while being limited to one or two local establishments that are usually full of the town drunks or desperate people trying to snag their next relationship rather than just find one to share time with.  According to our local small town statistics too it appears the dating pool is really just a puddle and the female swimmers outnumber the male swimmers leaving a few of us out of the water because the really good catches have either been caught or just may be your cousin!

It’s also safe to assume that in a small town when a date is finally found the actual location of such an event is limited. It’s hard to be creative, let alone romantic, when dinner options consist primarily of restaurant chains and evening activities include bowling, the local bookstore or limited movie selections because those wonderful independent films I enjoy rarely make it to the small corners of the world. Coffee shops would be a good choice too if those wonderful people at Starbucks hadn’t closed the one coffee shop in town so we are back to being creative or engaging in the same date night activities over and over again usually causing singles to lose interest in dating even if the small town puddle might have a few good prospects still swimming around.

So while the dating scene where I live may not be what I had expect (or hoped) there are other aspects that more than make up for it: like the fact I can walk to many places if I feel the need, I can drive from one end of town to the other in less than fifteen minutes and no matter where I go I almost always run into someone I know (but at least it’s not my ex) and no matter what, I can usually make it home in time for a nightly date with Chelsey Handler.