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Article about man meeting with woman:
Yes, She's Out There. The saddest thing you will ever see in a bar is the lights on at closing time. It's the moment you realize that although you've been bankrolling her martinis since midnight, she won't be going home with you.

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And why should she? You're a stranger, and this is just a game. When the filaments flicker on, the fantasy ends. Men are possessed by the myth of the pickup," says David Grazian, Ph.D., an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife . It's in their heads that these bars and clubs are "teeming with anonymous females who are dying to have sex with any guy who is confident enough to talk to them." The reality is that less than 6 percent of women report having had sex with their partners within 2 days or less of meeting them, and less than 20 percent of adults say they first met their most recent sexual partner in a bar. Perhaps it's the nasty stigma of nightlife: A survey of 1,034 women by StrategyOne, a market research agency, reveals that nearly one in four women would be embarrassed to admit that she met a mate in a bar. (But just incase you do take home the girl of your dreams this weekend, make sure you know how to blow her mind in bed.) So why does the alcohol-soaked pick-up scene still exist? Aside from the obvious reasons (tequila, vodka, rum), there's a surprising one as well: inexperience. Men are new to this 21st-century version of the boy-meets-girl game. In 1970, the median age for marriage was 23 for men and 21 for women. Today it's 28 and 26. "It used to be that people felt they'd somehow missed out if they didn't have a spouse by the time they graduated college," says David Popenoe, Ph.D., founder and codirector of the National Marriage Project and a professor emeritus of sociology at Rutgers University. "Today, people feel they need to establish themselves economically first." The postponement of "I do" means most men will be single in their 20s, a trend that populates the bar scene and empties the church aisles. The real world of dating is rough on men. The risk and onus of rejection are almost always on them, because men initiate about 80 percent of encounters. And the competition is brutal for men in their 20s and 30s: For every 100 unmarried women there's an average of 113 unmarried men, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And those men just aren't doing the job. The Pew Research Center found that about half of young singles reported going on no more than one date in the 3 months prior to its survey, and 55 percent of singles who were looking for love said it was hard to meet people. But the situation doesn't have to be that bleak. In fact, there's no better time to be single than during economic uncertainty. A recent eHarmony survey found that one in four single women say that financial stress has increased their interest in a relationship. Compare that with the 61 percent of men who say money worries are causing stress in their love lives. Look at it this way: More women are on the market, and they're primed to connect. But men are looking to meet them over $12 martinis—and are going home alone and broke. There's an opening here for you: Think patterns, not people. Forget the pickup lines and rely on the new rules of attraction. We can help you with the odds. Rule 1: Build Your Romantic Network You're 227 percent more likely to meet a potential girlfriend through a friend or family member rather than in a bar, at the gym, or on the street. Malcolm Parks, Ph. D., knows the secret to meeting women: Don't. Instead, meet people. Parks, a University of Washington communication researcher and author of Personal Relationships & Personal Networks , has determined that 75 percent of the people who dated extensively the year before said they had help from a friend. In their corner is what Parks calls "the social proximity effect," which holds that the probability of two people meeting is directly proportional to the number of contacts they share. In other words, more friends means more female referrals. "Our research has shown that two-thirds of people who initiate a romantic relationship had met at least one of the dozen or so members of their partner's closest social network prior to meeting their part ner for the first time," says Parks, "and nearly half had met two or three." If you know Tom, and Tom knows Betty, then there's a greater chance you'll meet Betty. And if Tom also knows Susan, Heather, and Kimberly . . . well, then you owe Tom a fruit basket. The potential is there, but the problem is that most men's social networks are too small or too stale to be effective. The average guy would have difficulty mustering enough friends to round out a Fave 5, according to a 2006 survey in American Sociological Review . In fact, our close social networks have shrunk by almost a third since 1985. But it's not just the friend famine that's starving our sex lives. Socially inbred crews are detrimental, too. "In a tightly knit group, you know the same people," says Parks.