It’s been observed a number of times in a number of places that romantic relationships constitute a market like any other. You have something to offer and you need something in return. You try to get the best that you can with what you have. It can be as sturdy as the diamonds market or as loose as a futures market, but it’s something of a market all the same.

As with any other market, it is rife with inefficiencies. Some people benefit from these inefficiencies, though I suspect more people lose from them. One of the big causes for inefficiencies is the lack of a singular marketplace. If you want a house, you go to the real estate section of the paper. If you want a relationship… well, you can try to get that from the paper, too, but there are too many intangibles to fit into an ad and it is on the whole less successful the same way that housing ads are not as helpful as car ads (people need to see the house, they know ahead of time what they’re getting with the car and if they need to see it they are just verifying).

I have a friend that’s an investment banker in New York City (he commutes from Connecticut… probably driving Peter crazy on the train). He tells me that the real estate market in NYC is brutally efficient. There are so many people looking so intently at it that if there is any added value to a location it will be appraised and the price adjusted. The housing market in the Colosse area is not nearly so efficient. There are some places that you can get great deals on a four bedroom house going to the same schools and having the same degree of security as a guy that paid twice as much for his house in part because there are so many people that aren’t as familiar with it or don’t question their initial assumptions about what they want. On the other hand, the market does often play catch-up. My Midlerth apartment with Karl had rent go up 86% in a year and a half as more people discovered what a prime location that place was.

I’ve been talking a lot to my friends in Deseret and I am reminded of something that I noticed up there: the relationship markets for non-Mormons are much less efficient than they were in Colosse and seem to be here in Santomas.

The more people there are, the stiffer the competition becomes. That may sound like a bad thing, but it isn’t necessarily. You have more people to compete with, but you have more options to choose from. Deseret is not nearly so densely populated where I lived. Further, half of the population was Mormon and most of those were reluctant to seriously consider marriage outside the faith.

So now we’re dealing with a half of what would already be a small dating market. Being a non-Mormon covers a lot of ground, so you take that half and you have to further fracture it because the evangelical Christians that live out there (and yes, some do) would have a problem with the atheists for example. The Mormons have added efficiency in their market because they have singles groups and a strong sense of community. Non-Mormons have no such thing and have reason to worry that they are wasting their time with someone they just met because they might be a Mormon. The longer I was up there, the easier it was to tell, but it’s still guessing (particular with the females).

Even if you take out the Mormon factor, though, the population base makes quite a difference. In this case, it just exacerbates the problem for non-Mormons. It was a good thing that I was married while I was out there, because romantic options would have been practically nill. There were a handful of people I knew from Colosse out there. One of them had a minor crush on me. I wasn’t interested, but in the backdrop of Deseret she became a lot more appealing.

Ordinarily it’s unlikely that I would ever consider dating someone like Carol Goddard or she dating someone like me — in fact, it’s unlikely that she and I would have even gotten along — but we had more in common simply by being on the outside of the local culture and had either of us been single (and I older or she younger) I would have considered it all differently than I might have if we had met in Colosse. In fact, I knew people like her in Colosse. I had no use for them. In Deseret, she was one of the better friends I had in the office.

And on and on.

I remember seeing an engaged couple in a restaurant. while I was up there. Though I hadn’t seen the movie yet, they looked strikingly like Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen from Knocked Up. I still remember that couple because I remember thinking that such a coupling would never happen in Colosse. Often there is a difference in the level of attractiveness of couples, but you can usually see off-hand where the less attractive partner makes up for it. This guy seemed like a stoner and the ring was tiny. He didn’t seem particularly charismatic, though that sort of thing is difficult to tell without talking to him. Then I did talk to him at the video store where he worked and he reminded me a lot of me.

At the same time, I didn’t look at this couple and say “Why is she choosing such a loser?!” the same way that I might have in Colosse (ahem… particularly when I was single). Instead, I looked and saw exemplars of the observation about market inefficiencies in Deseret. It struck me that as a non-Mormon (which she seemed to be) living where she did, this guy may have really been the best that she could do. Or to put it more kindly, she gave him a longer look than she ever would have considered doing in Colosse and found something in him she otherwise would have missed.

There is one big exception to the population=efficiency argument: College. I saw a whole lot of mismatches in colleges and yet in college you are numerically barraged with options). I’d have to guess there that it comes down to insufficient information. When we’re in college, we don’t always have a clear idea of what we’re looking for, so we experiment. Also, when in college it’s extremely difficult to figure out with of the charming rogue sorts is going to use his charm and charisma to become a captain of cutting-edge industry and which one will be using his charm and charisma to convince his landlord not to evict him because he’s six months behind on rent or convince some girl to take him in if he is evicted.

Some people hate comparing the relationship world to a marketplace, but in some ways I like it. For one thing, it helps me understand why things are the way that they are sometimes. For instance, why was it so difficult for me to find dates when I was 23? It was because I was undervalued by the market because 21 year old girls were still in college and were more interested in college guys but 23 year old girls dating beyond college could just as easily date a 28 year old with a better job. When I got 25 or 26, things started to improve.

I could also see myself as somewhat undervalued because of my introversion. Sometimes introversion is something that legitimately decreases someone’s relationship value because they’re harder to talk to and are awkward around people. I’m a pretty good conversationalist and not bad with people, though I don’t seek them out so much. I don’t like crowds, which legitimately decreased my relationship value, but I’m good at dinner party kinds of situations, though since I didn’t often get the opportunity to demonstrate the latter it becomes an inefficiency.

Some folks believe that there are no inefficiencies in any marketplace because something is worth precisely what one will pay or barter for it and never more or less. That makes a lot of assumptions about consumers have all of the information and appropriately weighing it for how positive or negative an effect that it will have on their life. It also means that I can’t say that I was an undervalued commodity in the relationship marketplace and deprives me of a rationalization that was helpful to me in the more distressing periods of my former single life.

Addendum: Bob Vis writes a ridiculously better post on the subject.


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14 Responses to Relationship Market Inefficiencies

  1. Peter says:

    Wouldn’t Santomas have dating market troubles of a different sort? If it’s the city that I think it is (I know that of course you can’t be specific), if I’m not mistaken it has a very large Hispanic population, and what’s more the Hispanic population is well distributed throughout the socioeconomic spectrum rather than being a generally poor group as is the case here in the Northeast. That must limit dating options for non-Hispanics. Especially men, as it doesn’t seem like Hispanic women are particularly interested in non-Hispanic guys.

    By the way, your friend the i-banker wouldn’t be among those who torment me, as he would take a different railroad (Metro North) from Connecticut.

  2. trumwill says:

    That must limit dating options for non-Hispanics. Especially men, as it doesn’t seem like Hispanic women are particularly interested in non-Hispanic guys.

    Hispanics here don’t seem to have a problem dating non-Hispanics. Most of the spouses I’ve met of my Hispanic coworkers are married to whites. I work in a white collar environment with Hispanics that are at least second or third generation Americans, it’s possible or maybe likely that if you go down the economic spectrum there is less integration, but it’s not at all like it is with blacks in Colosse (or here), that seem to interracially date in much lower numbers even in higher economic classes.

  3. Peter says:

    Washington may be one big exception to the otherwise quite sensible population = efficiency theory. It’s a large city of course, with a surplus of single women, yet by all accounts the dating market for men is quite poor. Washington has more than its share of affluent and powerful men, such as BIGLAW partners and government lobbyists, and one consequence is that many women set their standards very high. A woman who is no more than a 6 on Roissy’s scale and has a mediocre civil service job may be uninterested in men who lack movie-star looks and earn under $200K. She sees so many men of that sort around her that she starts to believe, realistically or otherwise, that she can get such a man herself.

    New York has even more high-powered men, but the sheer number of single women means that the dating market for average men is slightly better than in Washington.

    I don’t doubt, however, that your theory holds true in most parts of the country.

  4. trumwill says:

    I continue to believe that Roissy is a fraud, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were pockets of exception to the general rule. It’s a bit surprising if DC is one of them since I know a couple guys that couldn’t get but crap in Colosse that hooked up immediately after going to DC, but even if Roissy is a fraud he probably got that tidbit about DC being infertile ground for a single guy from somewhere so it well could be true. Maybe the sheer numbers of young people in that town compensated for the problem with my friends or they are simply non-representative.

    I’d imagine some college cities fall into that category for women… women outnumber men but the fact that there are so many young people cover up the disparity.

  5. Peter says:

    I suspect Roissy is the real deal, if for no other reason than that he’s had his site for quite some time. If he were using it as a way of mocking the angry-nerd demographic, a la Lonelygirl15, he probably would have lost interest by now.

  6. Spungen says:

    Hispanics here don’t seem to have a problem dating non-Hispanics.

    I second that observation as to both genders.

    Re Peter’s old saw about women dooming their eggs by pursuing successful guys: Most of the women who want those high-powered guys come from high-powered dads, and probably have trust funds or other resources. They’re playing in their own league.

    Peter, Roissy’s not *mocking* that crowd, he’s just desperate for a following. He’s trying to ride TUcker Max’s coattails, only nerdier. Certain unvalued guys just love to imagine that women who reject them will get their comeuppance at the hands of cads.

    His phrasing reminds me of a gay Republican friend I had once. Very catty and had a shoplifting problem. Lots of fun to watch Dynasty with, though.

  7. Spungen says:

    In college, there are lots of people around, but you don’t really have a shot at them unless they’re linked to your friends. So that greatly limits many people’s prospects. It certainly did mine.

  8. Spungen says:

    Also, when in college it’s extremely difficult to figure out with of the charming rogue sorts is going to use his charm and charisma to become a captain of cutting-edge industry and which one will be using his charm and charisma to convince his landlord not to evict him because he’s six months behind on rent or convince some girl to take him in if he is evicted.

    This is a good one. I wish I weren’t so tired; I could riff off this all night.

  9. Peter says:

    Peter, Roissy’s not *mocking* that crowd, he’s just desperate for a following. He’s trying to ride TUcker Max’s coattails, only nerdier. Certain unvalued guys just love to imagine that women who reject them will get their comeuppance at the hands of cads.

    Yes, that’s a possibility. His blog almost certainly has a much bigger readership than would be the case if it concentrated on more mundane topics.

    Hispanics here don’t seem to have a problem dating non-Hispanics.
    I second that observation as to both genders.

    That may be the case in California and in “Estacado,” but not so much in the Northeast where I am. Here, Hispanic/white relationships largely follow the black/white pattern, namely with the men being the minorities and the women being white. It’s probably due to some sort of attitude differences between the Caribbean Hispanics (mainly Dominican and Puerto Rican) who predominate elsewhere and the Mexican/Central/South Americans in your areas.

  10. trumwill says:

    In college, there are lots of people around, but you don’t really have a shot at them unless they’re linked to your friends. So that greatly limits many people’s prospects.

    It varies from college to college, I’m sure. It’s easier to make friends and form networks in a college environment than it is afterwards. I’ve honestly been less frustrated since college about the inability to find a mate (found one!) as I have at the difficulty in finding friends. Having moved around a lot makes that more difficult, but college does, too. Fortunately, my last couple jobs have been with “young” companies. In any case, my college may have had 25,000 students but of course there weren’t 13,000 available to me. Nonetheless, there were more available during that period than there have been at any point since.

  11. trumwill says:

    If he were using it as a way of mocking the angry-nerd demographic, a la Lonelygirl15, he probably would have lost interest by now.

    Nerds aren’t the target of his ire so much as women are.

    It’s probably due to some sort of attitude differences between the Caribbean Hispanics (mainly Dominican and Puerto Rican) who predominate elsewhere and the Mexican/Central/South Americans in your areas.

    And in the case of Colosse, Cubans.

  12. Abel says:

    Interesting observations on the dating scence.

    When I lived in Wyoming, there weren’t many young, single LDS people (about two dozen or so). I always thought that some of the couples who become “serious” would have never gotting together if they had met at BYU or some other heavily populated LDS enviornment.

    While there, I ended up dating a non-LDS girl for about a year. The relationship wans’t that great all things considered (granted we were 19 & 20 at the time so take it for what it’s worth). Looking back, however, I think part of the reason we ended up together was because dating options in the small town were limited anyway. If we had lived in, say, Denver, I don’t think we would have ever become serious simply because there would have been more (and better) dating options.

  13. trumwill says:

    It’s interesting how that all works. I’m half of the mind that some people I’ve fallen for I would have fallen for in any circumstance. Some required being in the right place at the right time. Whichever the case, it seems to not have much bearing as to whether or not the relationship is a happy one. I suspect that had I been raised in Deseret I would have found a wife that I would have loved very much and probably have been reasonably happy with… but that she probably wouldn’t have been as good a match as I found in Clancy or in some of the other people that I met in the big city (or through people I met in the big city).

  14. ? says:

    why was it so difficult for me to find dates when I was 23? It was because I was undervalued by the market because 21 year old girls were still in college and were more interested in college guys but 23 year old girls dating beyond college could just as easily date a 28 year old with a better job. When I got 25 or 26, things started to improve.

    I wish I had had you around to explain this to me back when I was 23. It would have changed my life.

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