Allan Robles would like to find a partner. His problem is that he lives in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the United States.
Mr. Robles earns a six-figure salary working in sustainable building design, but he cannot keep up with artificial intelligence engineers who can command million-dollar pay packages.
“People are just flush with money,” Mr. Robles, 37, said. Friends in his city’s L.G.B.T.Q. community casually discuss taking trips to places like Mykonos, the Greek island. With only $500 or so left over after expenses each month, Mr. Robles can’t afford such luxuries. To conserve money, he has also put his romantic life on hold. Better to wait, he reasons, than to turn every date into a cost-saving exercise, a procession of hikes in parks, free museums and happy hours.
“It’s kind of a nonstarter until I get my house in order,” Mr. Robles said.
Mr. Robles is hardly alone in his frustrations. People with higher incomes are more likely to feel ready to date, found a pair of linked studies published in The Journal of Marriage and Family last month. One study surveyed several hundred Americans ages 25 to 35 and making, on average, between $30,000 and $39,000 per year; they were interviewed about their dating habits twice, six months apart. It found that, at higher incomes, single people were more prepared, and more likely, to end up in a relationship. The second study focused on a large German database, and confirmed the findings of the first.
“People are worried about their economic futures,” said Geoff MacDonald, a scholar of singlehood and relationships at the University of Toronto and one of the studies’ two authors. And that anxiety, he said, can express itself in an reluctance to start a relationship. “There’s so much gig work and temporary work. You might be moving cities every couple of years. No wonder you’re hesitant to commit to something.”
The studies did not look at the longevity of relationships, and did not follow up with participants to see if their relationships led to marriage. Instead, they focused on what may be the most fundamental unit of romantic partnership: finding someone to go on a date.
“Higher income was correlated with more desire for a relationship, more perceived readiness for a relationship and greater intent to find a partner, and also predicted greater odds of actually partnering within six months,” Dr. MacDonald wrote with his co-author, Johanna Peetz, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa who studies finances in the context of individual relationships.
“Love doesn’t have a price tag,” said James Michael Sama, 40, an executive coach who lives north of Boston.
At the same time, honesty is priceless. When Mr. Sama met his wife, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, both were struggling financially. (She ran an indoor playground.) Instead of trying to impress her, as he might have in his younger years, Mr. Sama was honest about his situation. “It would’ve been immoral or unethical to lead her on with false pretenses,” he said.
Today, his business is thriving, and their two children are in private school. “This never would’ve been possible had I propped myself up with a false image in the beginning,” Mr. Sama said.
After she graduated from college three years ago, Charlotte Maracina, a journalist who lives on Long Island, started dating a physics student from London who had no income of his own. Because she had a full-time job, Ms. Maracina paid for most of their dates, including concerts at Madison Square Garden and Broadway shows.
“He would pay for pizza dates,” Ms. Maracina, 23, said. But her partner’s resentment at her spending power grew, and the relationship lasted only four months. As for his promises to pay her back for some of their more expensive outings?
“He never did,” Ms. Maracina said.
None of this is entirely new. In 2016, Sajae Elder published an essay in Vice with a bracing headline: “Dating While Being Broke Sucks.”
“During my lowest times, I recall going on a slew of first dates but never going much beyond that,” Ms. Elder wrote. Her efforts at a sustained relationship were frustrated by “the feeling of not being settled, comfortable or contented with my life as it was. And not making enough money was a huge part of that.”
Nine years later, the cri de coeur still resonates, though Ms. Elder, now 36, is in a more comfortable financial position. “I feel like it’s more relevant now,” she said in an interview from Toronto, where the former journalist works as a copywriter. Things were cheaper in 2016. “Even if you were kind of broke, you could still have a fairly good time. Ubers were still $5.”
Ms. Maracina said many of her friends had recently been laid off from media jobs. One had been hoping to move in with her boyfriend, but has been unable to find unemployment for six months running. That prevented the relationship from evolving, she said.
“Up to a limit, money buys happiness,” Dr. MacDonald said.
Mr. Sama, the executive coach, said one of his wealthier New York clients was so determined to find a partner that he went on 28 dates over two months. The expense was enormous, but apparently worth it, as he found a woman he wanted to keep seeing exclusively. “They’re still together,” Mr. Sama said. “They have a great relationship now.”
Dating can be especially difficult for men of lesser means, like Ms. Maracina’s erstwhile partner. “Men are still expected to provide financially both in dating and in relationships,” said Maya Diamond, a dating and relationship coach in Northern California. A single man with a lower income, she added, “might be concerned that he’s not going to be able to have the time or energy to put into a relationship.” For all the upending of social norms in recent years, the expectation that men pay for dates has filtered down to younger generations.
With the wage gap narrowing for young people, “men are being asked to bring something to the table other than income,” Dr. MacDonald said. “I think with other things, like emotional availability or willingness to contribute to housework, men have the opportunity to up their game.”
Some recent surveys have indicated that young women are earning more than young men, at least in some large coastal cities. Social pressure to marry young and have children has largely diminished in recent years.
Hannah Williamson, who studies low-income families at the University of Texas at Austin, said that given the trends in American society, the future of relationships was not auspicious. Policymakers could take steps to lessen pressures on younger people and encourage family formation through European-style social policies, such as extended parental leave, Dr. Williamson suggested. But there is little evidence of such efforts, especially in Washington.
“It’s a bit of a depressing area to study,” Dr. Williamson said.
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