The Inconvenient Truths About Dating in Zurich

I am very surprised by how rarely people talk to each other. To get a sense of the magnitude: 46 percent of the overall Swiss population is officially single – people are simply not finding each other, and when they do, they don’t stay with each other, but that’s another story.

The solution is embarrassingly simple: talk to people. Almost no one does it, so you feel weird doing it, but success in the dating market – and in general – is weird. A simple “Hey, I think you are cute” can take you surprisingly far. It’s like getting fit in a world where hardly anyone exercises.

The idea that approaching someone is hostile or inappropriate is largely a narrative promoted by those who never try.

Swiss Social Protectionism

Life in Zurich is efficient but socially closed: there are few random encounters and little room for serendipity. People often keep hanging out with their high school friends for their whole lives. Airtight friend groups are basically Swiss protectionism in social form: the least desirable stay comfortably sheltered in a group with more attractive people, and the whole market becomes painfully inefficient.

Over time, it becomes clear that Zurich’s problem isn’t that people aren’t interested, but that anything is rarely started. The city isn’t closed; most people simply never meet someone who dares to initiate – and who has done the work on themselves to make it worthwhile.

Be Worthy of a Worthy Mate

Remember that you are half of every date you go on. Fine-tuning your life isn’t optional – it’s decisive. As Charlie Munger  – Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner and legendary investor – once said: “To find a worthy mate, be worthy of a worthy mate.” So get knowledgeable, fit, and build a career for yourself.

The sexual marketplace is brutal – and always will be. You have two options: raise your game , put your life in order as much as possible, and date better people; or complain about the world’s cruelty and settle for the worse ones. The choice is yours.

Narrow Band in the Middle

Once you understand that people tend to date others with a similar overall level of desirability, an interesting pattern emerges. There appears to be a trade-off between the attractive traits; here, attractiveness and intelligence. The attractive people you date aren’t as intelligent; the intelligent ones are less attractive. But I don’t think this perception is real. It’s just how the dating market looks from your position inside of it. We all date within our own range, so the people slightly above you in one trait often compensate with another — and vice versa.

If you imagine an average of intelligence and attractiveness as a rough mate value, the illusion becomes clear. It is not that there are no people who are both smart and attractive. It’s just that those people probably have better options than you  Because the most desirable people have better options, they tend to reject you, and because you have better options than the people less attractive than you, you tend to reject them. What you are left with is a very narrow group in the middle. This narrow “selection band” creates the illusion of a negative correlation between desirable traits on which there is consensus. If this self-sorting by desirability doesn’t happen, we react with the popular: “she/he could do so much better”.

It is a simple version of the Berkson effect: when both sides filter each other out, your dating sample becomes biased toward extremes, even if the real population is evenly distributed.

Dating teaches you what kind of people are currently within your reach – and what you would need to improve to date the kind of people you aspire to be with. This isn’t a judgment about what people should value; it’s an observation about what they actually do. Your chances improve immediately if you simply talk to the people you’re interested in. Working on yourself helps as well. Do both. Be honest, relaxed, and friendly. Go to events, join activities you genuinely enjoy, and put yourself in places where like-minded people naturally gather. Take care of your body: work out, eat well, sleep well. Take care of your mind too, read good books. Zurich is full of wonderful people quietly waiting for someone to make the first move. In an illiquid market, one sincere“ can change a life.