Saturday, Feb. 14, 1998

Singles say it's tough to meet people here

Young professionals decry dating scene

By RACHEL POLLACK
Staff Writer

   Being single in Corpus Christi left Rob Butler feeling depressed.
   But drinking a beer at the Executive Surf Club on Thursday night with his Syntex co-workers, Butler wasn't experiencing any of the single's angst he had for eight months last year.
   That's because Butler, 27, transferred to Houston two months ago.
   ``As a single man, I felt almost hopeless here,'' he said, staring into his beer glass, his broad, attractive smile dimmed for a moment. ``I felt that in staying here, I was becoming much less selective. I was dating just out of someone being in the same age group, not as much out of common interests and mutual attraction as convenience.''
   Every one of the nearly two dozen young singles who spoke to the Caller-Times agreed with Butler's complaint that finding people to date here is difficult.
   But even as they lamented the lack of dates, many said they enjoy living in Corpus Christi, were developing their careers here, and had no plans to leave. Others, who are considering moving on like Butler, said they wouldn't hesitate to stay - if only they were married.
   That's the case for Paula Biedenharn, 33, an assistant professor of psychology at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, who has lived here for 4 years. Biedenharn said she has looked for employment elsewhere.
   ``I have the best job in the world,'' Biedenharn said. ``I'm living in a beautiful place. There's just one piece missing.''
   That missing piece makes it hard to attract employees, said Butler's boss Joe Stough, president of Syntex. Other area employers say they haven't noticed similar difficulties.
   Stough said several single Syntex employees have left Corpus Christi complaining of a poor social life.
   ``We opened a Houston office, solely because people didn't want to move to Corpus Christi.''
   While some of the job candidates who refused his offers were married, a lack of activities for singles was a prime factor in making it hard to draw young professionals to the informations-consulting company here, Stough said.
   Stough, who is 30 and unmarried, can empathize with his employees, though he said the social life in Corpus Christi is ``not horrible, there are just a limited number of places to go and a limited number of professionals.''
   There are no statistics available to reflect the number of single professionals in Corpus Christi, but 1990 census figures showed that of the nearly 46,000 people older than 18 who had never been married, fewer than 10,400 were earning an income of $25,000 a year or more. Only 2,300 never-married men between the ages of 25 and 34 had either a bachelor's or advanced degree. For never-married women between the ages of 25 and 34, fewer than 2,000 had a bachelor's or advanced degree.
   It's a small city/small dating pool problem, said Butler, who experienced a similar lack of social life while living in Reno, Nev.
   ``It seems like in a city of (small) size, single women tend to go to away to school or get a job elsewhere,'' he said.
   But other small cities, especially those that have large universities with extensive graduate degree programs, do offer more, many single professionals said.
   Even with a smaller population, Charlottesville, Va., offered a larger pool of single professionals, said Margaret Eeckhout, 32, an attorney who has lived in several cities she considers more single-friendly than Corpus Christi.
   ``It was also a college town. There were significantly more people to date.''
   Dario Bargas, a 35-year-old attorney, said it is as much the availability of things to do as the opportunity to meet others that attracts him to other cities.
   ``I'd move to Austin in a heartbeat,'' he said.
   Still, said computer specialist Bradley Bates, 25, Corpus Christi's singles scene is improving.
   ``I think there's more opportunity than two or three years ago,'' he said.
   Bates counts new additions to the city, such as T.G.I. Friday's, as bringing varied opportunities for meeting people.
   ``It has a huge bar area, but it's a restaurant. At a bar, people expect to be hit on. At a restaurant, it's more laid back. I've been sitting eating dinner or lunch with friends and girls have come over to my table and started talking.''
   There is no research comparing the dating patterns of professional adults in cities of varying sizes, said Michael Wiederman, an assistant professor of psychological science at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. But the anecdotal evidence shows that there are advantages and disadvantages in cities both large and small.
   His own brother, said Wiederman, illustrates that.
   ``My brother moved from Tampa to a small town in North Carolina,'' Wiederman said. ``He said, `There are so many more people in Tampa, but it's hard to meet people. The atmosphere is colder. In a small town it's much more friendly but there are so many fewer people.'|''
   For many in Corpus Christi, it's that dream of chance romance, of striking up a conversation at a street fair, of locking eyes across a crowded restaurant, of bumping into someone in a coin laundry even, that seems missing from day-to-day interactions.
   Corpus Christi demands planning, says 30-year-old attorney Joseph Huerta, who attended law school in Austin.
   ``You can't just go out on a Friday or Saturday and have the night, or day, of your life.
   ``In Austin, there were more places to be social, more settings like restaurants, bars, coffee houses. There were a wider range of opportunities. Chances were pretty good of meeting someone randomly and being interested in them. Here, there isn't a wide range of opportunities.''
   The bar scene, he said, is more of a meat market atmosphere.
   ``It's hard to meet someone in an environment like that and have them take you seriously.
   ``In Corpus Christi, the best luck I've had is meeting friends of friends.''
   That, said psychological science professor Wiederman, is not surprising, regardless of locale.
   According to a landmark study of American sexuality done in the early 1990s, the primary ways people met their most-recent sexual partners were through friends, at work and through family, Wiederman said.
   ``When they met their most-recent sexual partner at a bar, they were much less likely to still be seeing that person.''
   And as to fantasies of easily encountering chance romance in the big city, Corpus Christi native Richard Weber, 28, now a senior account executive with Brouillard Communications in New York City testifies it's not always that simple.
   ``I moved to the Big Apple a year and a half ago,'' Weber said via e-mail. Dating there has its own set of rules and hassles, he said.
   ``I believe the reason is primarily due to a much more powerful distrust factor working between the sexes. `Do men just want a one-night fling?' `Do women just want a wealthy boyfriend?' Also, everyone here is so crazy with their careers that there is simply not enough time to develop social contacts outside of work.
   ``IT IS MUCH HARDER TO DATE HERE.''