The view never gets old
New York City is fascinating, social, lively and welcoming to say the least. It’s got so much happening everywhere. There are bars, cafes, restaurants and other public places, and all of them are full of people. Although this isn’t a surprise, almost everyone who knows anything about the city knows this.
So let me talk about my experiences in the city. I used to live in Seattle and enjoyed everything Seattle had to offer. I used to hit the trails every other weekend, had a ski pass that I used 2-3 times a week, and enjoyed the breweries frequently. NYC has none of that. The trails and slopes are meh and I haven’t found a good brewery except for the Other Half. But but, the things that NYC has to offer are magical.
Let’s talk about two things, social life and dating in the city.
Social
I moved here in 2022 and went to a meetup the very next day. Everyone here asks when did you move to the city and I had an awesome answer, yesterday. People are welcoming and I made one friend from that first meetup. After that I went to a couple of meetups with him and had some fun evenings. Also, forgot to mention I moved to NYC knowing no one.
I went to another meetup after that and made a group of friends. That group didn’t last long. We met only once after that meetup but I made good friends with one guy in the group. It was great, we’re still good friends. NYC is a revolving door, people are always coming in and going out. The friends I made from that meet up moved out of the city in the next few months.
Another way to make friends is Reddit, checkout subreddits like NYCFriends. I made one friend this way and that was the only time I actually used the subreddit. I made a group of friends at work and that’s pretty awesome. I think that pretty much completes all my social needs.
The city is full of people but that’s a double edged sword as things are always in flux. You can live here 10 years and still be looking for friends. The city actually forced me to use a calendar for personal things. I was such a snob about it earlier but I can see why you need it here.
Dating
Dating is a mess everywhere but it’s on a different level in the city. I don’t think I have had much time for friends or anything social because I am always on dates. I think I have poured in a lot of my time and have met some amazing people that would never meet at any other place. It’s fascinating to see how different people are and all the different kinds of careers they have. I had some success where I dated people for some months but it’s just hard to make it work here. There’s so many incredible people that everyone is jumping to the next one.
I only used dating apps and seems like both Men and Women are burnt out from the apps. It’s just crazy to imagine that you can match with 800+ people and meet, I don’t know 50+ of them maybe, and still go nowhere. It’s pretty hard out here in the city but then again it’s hard everywhere. My friends also say the same. One friend said to me that he met some amazing women out here and that had it been some other city, he would have been in a long term relationship.
My experience is similar where I would not mess things up in any other place because of scarcity but I guess the abundance in NYC messes up with your brain and we just find reasons to not date someone. I would definitely say it has been a me problem more times that I would like.
But to anyone thinking about moving to the city, it’s still better to live in abundance than scarcity.
The purpose of this post was to help anyone who’s thinking about moving to NY and is scraping the internet for information. Everyone’s lived experience is different and this has been mine. Would also add the caveat that I am slightly extroverted with lot of energy so my frequency of going out is way higher than my friends. You have to find the right balance and the best part is everything is right there when you want to go out. There’re meetups and events this weekend and the next and the next…