After dating in New York for three years, Michelle Avidon, 26, had given up on NYC’s pool of bachelors.
“People here are just commitment-phobic and always think that they can do better,” Avidon, a chef who lives in Astoria, Queens, tells The Post. “It creates this culture that being monogamous or having a serious relationship is almost taboo.”
Finding a man ready to settle down is increasingly difficult in the Big Apple. The most recent data from the US Census Bureau found that Manhattan has 38 percent more college-educated women than men, which some experts believe has contributed to a “man drought” in NYC. So it’s no surprise that some women are looking elsewhere to find “The One” — and importing them back to the city.
Avidon reopened her heart to love during a family vacation to Barbados in February 2015, where she met Tobias Scott, then a restaurant manager at the Copacabana, while he was tending bar.
“It was like in the movies, when people meet each other and time kind of stops,” she says of their first encounter. “Everything slowed down, and I only paid attention to him.”
Five days later, Scott, now 26, asked her to be his girlfriend. And after four months of long-distance dating, Scott closed the gap for good with a one-way ticket to her doorstep. They’ve been living together ever since.
According to Avidon, guys outside the city are more ready to settle down than their Big Apple counterparts. When she dated in Manhattan, she says, she mostly met men who were “too busy” to stay in a committed relationship.
‘People here are just commitment-phobic and always think that they can do better.’
- Michelle Avidon
“Toby doesn’t have this mentality of being in a rush all the time, and he takes the time to live in the moment and it’s refreshing,” Avidon says.
She’s not the only bachelorette who’s expanding her dating radius beyond the tri-state area. Mara Kofoed, a 39-year-old blogger in Park Slope, Brooklyn, looked to Boston to meet her now-husband, Danny, a 36-year-old sales manager, in 2009.
At the time, Mara had just ended her seven-year marriage and, as a Mormon, she says, it was hard finding someone in NYC who shared her conservative, family-oriented values.
“I knew a great match for me would be like finding a needle in a haystack,” Mara, who’s documented her romance at ABlogAboutLove.com, tells The Post. “If your options are running thin, and you’re in a place in life where you’d really like to have a relationship or find a mate, there is no shame in expanding the opportunities and connections beyond [where you live].”
So Mara did the most reasonable thing she could think of: She told her friends that she was looking to be set up, but that she was specifically seeking men who lived outside of the five boroughs.
Soon after, a friend connected Mara with Danny, and after a year of courting, Mara made her import official when Danny packed his bags and moved to Brooklyn.
The fact that Danny was willing to move to NYC — where Mara had a home and a business — meant a lot to her.
“It was very romantic when he said he was going to move for me,” she says. “I’ve dated a handful of guys in New York, and some of them didn’t even want to go to Brooklyn, and that was just so weird.”
Mara and Danny tied the knot in 2010, and they currently split their time between Park Slope and Cuenca, Ecuador, where they’re currently on a sabbatical.
Julia Bekker, owner of matchmaking service Hunting Maven, says that importing men is a great strategy for women who are looking for long-term commitment.
“It’s become an epidemic,” says Bekker, who’s based in Gramercy Park, referring to the lack of dateable bachelors. “There is a drought of eligible, commitment-minded men. Men who come here get corrupted because they have so many women at their disposal . . . NYC is the easiest place to meet men, but the hardest place to sustain a long-term relationship. It’s the curse of the city.”
Instead, Bekker says, it’s better to seek men in other cities where the numbers are more in a woman’s favor. According to a 2015 study from the American Community Survey, cities where eligible men outnumber eligible women include Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Ore.
“I always tell women to go to these other cities where the men are looking for someone to settle down with, and then bring them back to the city,” says Bekker.
‘NYC is the easiest place to meet men, but the hardest place to sustain a long-term relationship.’
- Julia Bekker
Of course, if importing a man isn’t an option, you can always leave the city altogether in the name of love.
Danielle Murray, 32, lived in Manhattan for five years as an accountant and consistently went on dates but never had a serious relationship.
“Settling down in New York is really hard,” Danielle says. “Unless you are OK waiting until you’re older to have a kid, or if you have a lot of money, it’s a tough lifestyle [for] a relationship. I can’t imagine having a family in a one-bedroom apartment.”
So when she attended a friend’s wedding in Mexico — with plenty of out-of-town guests — Danielle kept her heart open.
Her ticket out of NYC and into nuclear-family bliss proved to be 42-year-old Alex, a golf professional from Bristol, England. After a year of dating, Danielle quit her job, moved to Bristol and got married to Alex, and they now have a 1-year-old son, Ashton.
When thinking back on her “Sex and the City” days in NYC, she has no regrets about leaving that life behind.
“It’s tiring dating there,” Danielle says. “Everyone is a Type A personality, has a ‘Work hard, play hard’ mentality, and people there aren’t looking to settle down.”
— Additional reporting by Anna Davies