I’m a cat person in a dog-obsessed city. Only half joking there, I feel like it’s a good metaphor overall.

On the literal side of that, I’d estimate that at least 50% of the profiles I come across have men either with pictures of their dogs or some sort of commentary along the lines of “My dog needs a mom”, “I’ll only go out with you if I can pet your dog”, etc. and as someone who likes dogs fine but doesn’t ever really want to own one, the constant dog obsession is annoying. (I wish I was joking about the 50% of profiles having dog comments, but I’ve pulled out my phone before while on video calls with friends who doubted this statement to prove that there are SO. MANY. DOG. PEOPLE. here.)

On the metaphorical side, there are a lot of other things that make me feel like I just don’t quite fit in with people in my city. I live in a beach area but hate the beach and prefer hiking in a forest, I’m more into a lot of alternative rock where most people seem to be big into EDM festivals, etc.

I’ll usually get 1-2 matches a week because I’m so selective with my swiping and maybe get a date every other week, and from there it usually ends up being a fairly even split of me being interested and them not being interested or vice versa. I’ve honestly considered moving to another city just to try and find more opportunities, but my family and a large network of friends are all here, so uprooting my life just for the possibility of finding more men to date seems a bit absurd at the moment.