I have some bad news for singles in Warwick.
It’s probably one of the worst places to date in America.
Of the 182 U.S. cities surveyed by WalletHub, Warwick ranked in the bottom eight.
It lies beneath Grand Prairie, Texas – wherever that is – as well as Yonkers, New York and Jackson, Mississippi.
Providence isn’t that great either. It is at number 109e.
WalletHub based this on the percentage of singles, the cost of a meal for two, the “opportunities” for online dating, and a few other statistics.
It got me thinking about dating in Rhode Island in general.
Not long ago I did a story about Mary Hardy, 66, an X-ray and ER resident from Smithfield, who told me she had been in the dating war here for years.
I asked how it went.
“Oh God,” she said, “frustrating and time-consuming. In short, a full-time job if you really want to find someone. But most of the time it’s a big waste of time.”
Warwick has been rated as one of the worst places for singles in the US. Mary Hardy has firsthand knowledge of the difficulties of dating in Rhode Island.
She had used countless apps: Bumble, Zoosk, Silver Seniors.
“I almost break my wrist swiping left,” she said.
At her age, the “supply” in Rhode Island is not perfect.
“Now I’m not much of a bag of chips,” Mary said, “but I know which lane I’m in. I don’t drive in the high-speed lane. But some of these guys are in the hard shoulder.
I have experience in this field, having dated in Rhode Island for years before I got married in 1988, and for years after I divorced in 2010.
There was more pressure on the first go-around, as I was approaching my mid-30s while still never being married. My Jewish mother started calling with the same question.
“Is there anything new to report?”
Since that was before dating apps, there were probably more office romances – always a risky bet in a fishbowl.
Then again, all of Rhode Island sometimes feels the same way. I was once with a woman on Thayer Street and walked right past someone else I had knocked out. This later led to a call from someone else asking how I could be such an idiot. I pointed out that we never talked about being exclusive, but it turns out that it’s often assumed that if you’ve dated 3.2 times or even 2.3 times, you’re an item.
My brother “The Douglas” was much better at dating than me because he was quite a schemer. For example, he always sent flowers to a woman at work. That way, he said, the other women in the office will run up to you and ask, “Who’s that great guy?”
A few times he even sent flowers to a woman’s mother because she had such a wonderful daughter. That’s playing dirty, but it worked.
One time he almost got in trouble when he brought a date home and suddenly someone called his answering machine. He had no doubt that it was one of the other women he was dating; her voice was about to come over the machine’s speaker.
I asked what he did.
“I hugged the girl I was with and said loudly that I was so happy to be with her.” Crisis averted. “She thought I was very clingy.”
Douglas regularly visited Rhode Island from Chicago on business and contacted a concubine here. One evening I received a call from his hometown girlfriend, who had found a letter from his lover in Providence. The girlfriend from Chicago wanted me to explain what was going on.
I had to come out on behalf of Douglas and explain that the Providence woman was, um, let me think – projecting a relationship that didn’t exist? Amazingly, she bought it. Forty years later, Douglas still owes me that.
We need to give poor Warwick a break because dating fails can happen anywhere in the state.
After my divorce, I had a date at what you would think would be the ultimate location in Rhode Island to make everything go smoothly: the restaurant at the Ocean House in Watch Hill. It was about halfway through for both myself and a woman who was an advertising hotshot at ESPN outside of Hartford.
I think I screwed up when I saw CNN’s remarkable John King – a man from Rhode Island – at another table. I excused myself to chat with him, probably for too long, and the temperature at my own table had dropped when I returned.
Afterwards, as she got into her car outside, I was about to ask through the window if she wanted to get back together, but before I could get the question straight, she broke away and squirted a bit of gravel at my shins. I took that as a maybe.
Finally, I’d like to hear from Warwick people about the dating scene there. Is it better than what WalletHub says?
Or do you break your wrists when you swipe left?
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
This article originally appeared in The Providence Journal: Warwick was rated one of the worst cities for singles in the US by WalletHub
