So I finally worked it out, with a little help from my friends. The reason people in this city are the way they are. Put simply, this city is one big competition.
I went to the wedding of a good friend of mine last weekend - a great guy who took me under his wing when I was new to the city, through whom I have made other good friends. On the bus I was sitting next to a guy I've met a few times before and we were talking about London and NY, and how long we thought we would end up staying here.
"The trouble with New York is, there are too many alpha people here. I don't want to end up in a club at 40, and wonder if it was worth caning my liver for the last 10 years just to shag some beautiful women"
Wow I thought, this guy is pretty alpha - a banker, works too hard, plays a lot of sport, and generally comes across as one of life's achievers - and here he is explaining how he is sick of the competition and longs to be back somewhere where you're not constantly competing with other people. So what's the deal?
Well then at the reception I was talking with an American guy who's been here for a long time, and he put it like this:
"Everything in this city is a competition. Every bodega owner, every gym, every taxi driver knows that if they can't offer you the best you can get for the least expenditure, then you're gonna go somewhere else. And it's exactly the same with women. When you're sick of playing the field, you'll realise that all the girls you thought were fighting over you weren't actually competing for you at all - they were competing with each other"
Now on the face of it that seems like the same thing, but the difference is, it's not about you it's about them.
He came to the apparently cynical conclusion that people here only settle down when they're ready to settle. When they think they've done as good as they can do. That reminded me of an answer my boss gave me a couple of years ago when I asked him why there were so many single people here.
"You know, if you look around on the subway enough, you'll realise that it's full of people who thought they could do one better"
And a conversation I had with a colleague at lunch the other day, where she talked about her friend's boss, a 40 year old guy with an amazing apartment, no close friends, and a book on how to fall in love.
So when will I get out of the competition? Not for a couple of years yet. As damning as the above all sounds on the prospects of meeting a nice girl here, not so jaded by experiences with alpha guys that she can't trust anyone, or so determined to succeed that her life passes her by, there's plenty of new blood around to keep things interesting for a while. And the wedding showed me that as the song goes:
If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere
I went to the wedding of a good friend of mine last weekend - a great guy who took me under his wing when I was new to the city, through whom I have made other good friends. On the bus I was sitting next to a guy I've met a few times before and we were talking about London and NY, and how long we thought we would end up staying here.
"The trouble with New York is, there are too many alpha people here. I don't want to end up in a club at 40, and wonder if it was worth caning my liver for the last 10 years just to shag some beautiful women"
Wow I thought, this guy is pretty alpha - a banker, works too hard, plays a lot of sport, and generally comes across as one of life's achievers - and here he is explaining how he is sick of the competition and longs to be back somewhere where you're not constantly competing with other people. So what's the deal?
Well then at the reception I was talking with an American guy who's been here for a long time, and he put it like this:
"Everything in this city is a competition. Every bodega owner, every gym, every taxi driver knows that if they can't offer you the best you can get for the least expenditure, then you're gonna go somewhere else. And it's exactly the same with women. When you're sick of playing the field, you'll realise that all the girls you thought were fighting over you weren't actually competing for you at all - they were competing with each other"
Now on the face of it that seems like the same thing, but the difference is, it's not about you it's about them.
He came to the apparently cynical conclusion that people here only settle down when they're ready to settle. When they think they've done as good as they can do. That reminded me of an answer my boss gave me a couple of years ago when I asked him why there were so many single people here.
"You know, if you look around on the subway enough, you'll realise that it's full of people who thought they could do one better"
And a conversation I had with a colleague at lunch the other day, where she talked about her friend's boss, a 40 year old guy with an amazing apartment, no close friends, and a book on how to fall in love.
So when will I get out of the competition? Not for a couple of years yet. As damning as the above all sounds on the prospects of meeting a nice girl here, not so jaded by experiences with alpha guys that she can't trust anyone, or so determined to succeed that her life passes her by, there's plenty of new blood around to keep things interesting for a while. And the wedding showed me that as the song goes:
If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere
