As I write this weeks ramblings, I realise I am 10 days away from my 34th Birthday. On the celebrity death scale, I have long since passed my 'Cobain Year' (27) and this year, again figuratively speaking, will be leaving my 'Jesus Year' (33) and entering my 'Senna Year' (34).
This leads me to ask the a question that practically every male has asked himself at one point or another in his life, and the one that I find myself asking virtually every weekend whilst shaking off the inevitable hangover I subject myself to every Friday.
Why the hell can't I find a girlfriend ??
Unfortunately, there is rarely a hard and fast answer to the query. Many men try to reason their way through the dilemma nonetheless, often reaching a series of ridiculous explanations, each more self-deprecating than the last:
"Is it because I'm too shy, and not aggressive enough ??"
"Is it my opening lines ??"
"Am I a boring person ??"
"Am I too fat ??"
"Or am I simply too ugly and completely unattractive to women ??"
When all other plausible explanations have been discounted, most fall back on the time-honoured conclusion that "there must be something wrong with me" before resigning themselves to lives of perpetual celibacy.
While I'll be the first to admit that my chances of ever entering into a meaningful relationship are somewhere between the carpet and the floor, I staunchly refuse to admit that it has anything to do with some inherent problem with me. Instead, I am convinced that the situation can be readily explained in purely scientific terms, using nothing more than simple demographics.
At the risk of sounding like Dr. Sheldon Cooper from the "The Big Bang Theory", lest anyone suspect that my standards for women are too high, let me allay those fears by enumerating in advance my three basic criteria for the match.
First, she should be approximately my age … let's say 30, plus or minus three or four years. Second, yes, she ought to be beautiful, but I DO use that term all-encompassingly to refer to both inner and outer beauty … stop being so cynical, and stop sniggering, yes, you there at the back !!
Third, she must also be cultured and reasonably intelligent … she doesn't have to be Mensa material, but the ability to carry on a witty, insightful argument would be nice. Admittedly that rules out the entire female population of Cheshire, but we'll come to that in a moment.
So there they are, three simple things, which I'm sure everyone will agree are anything but unreasonable.
That said, I now present why the probability of finding a suitable candidate fulfilling the three above-noted requirements is so small as to be practically impossible.
In other words, proof as why I will never have a girlfriend.
Number of people on Earth: 5,592,830,000
We start with the largest demographic in which I am interested, namely, the population of this planet. That is not to say I'm against the idea of intergalactic romance (hey, if it worked for Rose Tyler from "Doctor Who" … ) I just don't assess the prospect of finding myself a nice Vulcan girl as statistically significant. Anyhoo … next breakdown …
Who are female: 2,941,118,000
This criteria goes without saying. In case anyone missed it, though, I am looking for a female companion. Accordingly, roughly half of the Earth's population must be discounted. Sorry, lads.
Who live in "developed" countries: 605,601,000
We now further restrict the geographical area of interest to so-called "first-world countries". My reasons for doing so are not motivated out of contempt for those who are economically disadvantaged, but rather by simple probability. My chances of meeting a babe from Barbados or a goddess from Grenada, (either in person … or on the Internet) are understandably low. In fact, I will most likely spend nearly my entire life living and working in Europe, so it is to these types of regions that the numbers have been narrowed.
Are aged 25 to 35: 65,399,083
This is where things get a bit tricky, for two reasons: first, "population by age" tables are not separated into individual ages but are instead quantized into groups (as anyone who works in Market Research knows … ). Similarly, the older I get the more I have to raise my chosen age limit. Thirdly, and unfortunately, roughly 1% of these girls will have died.
One of them being one of the closest friends I have ever had.
Who are beautiful: 1,487,838
Personal attraction, both physically and personality-wise, is an important instigator of any relationship. Of course, beauty is a purely subjective trait whose interpretation may vary from person to person. Luckily it is not necessary for me to define beauty in this blog except to state that for any given beholder, it will probably be normally distributed amongst the population. Without going into the specifics of precisely which traits I admire, I will say that for a girl to be considered really beautiful to me, she should fall at least two standard deviations above the norm.
And yet it is not necessary to resemble anyone from the cast of "Hollyoaks", "Made in Chelsea", or "The Only Way is Essex". Which, funnily enough, leads us onto our next category …
Who are intelligent: 236,053
Again, intelligence can mean different things to different people, yet I am once more relieved of making any explanation by noting that it, like most other characteristics, has a notionally normal distribution across the population ...
Unless you live in Chelsea or Essex, for reasons we have just described above.
And not already committed: 118,027
I could find no hard statistics on the number of above-noted girls who are already married, engaged, or otherwise committed to a significant other, but informal observation and anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that the proportion is somewhere around the 50% mark (Fellow unattached males will no doubt have also noticed a preponderance of girls offering, "Sorry, I already have a boyfriend" as an excuse not to go on a date).
For reasons of morality (and perhaps self-preservation), I'm not about to start hitting on girls who have husbands and boyfriends. Accordingly, that portion of the female population must also be considered off-limits.
Now for THE most difficult cut of them all …
Who might actually like me: 18,726
Naturally, finding a suitable girl who I really like is no guarantee that she'll like me back. Assuming, as previously mentioned, that personal attractiveness is normally distributed, there is a mere 50% chance that any given female will consider me even marginally attractive.
And that's even before I open my mouth and actually attempt to talk to them.
In practice, however, people are unlikely to consider pursuing a relationship with someone whose looks and personality just barely suffice. Let's make the rather conservative assumption, then, that a girl would go out with someone if and only if they were at least one standard deviation above her idea of average. In that case, referring to our previous calculation, only 15% of females would consider someone with my physical characteristics and personality acceptable as a potential romantic partner.
If that …
So then, here we are, at a pool of 18,726 females. At first glance, a datable population of 18,726 may seem a lot, but consider this: I would have to date one girl a week (presuming we even GET that far) for 3493 weeks before I found one of the 18,726.
That's very nearly 67 years.
As an English male born in the early 1980s, and taking into account the amount of Guinness and Whisky I drink and the amount of crisps I eat, my life expectancy is probably little more than 70 years, so we can safely say that, climate change and the advancement of plastic surgery notwithstanding, I will be quite considerably dead before I find the proverbial woman of my dreams.
Come to think of it, she'll probably be dead too.
Happy Birthday to me …