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Washington, D.C. attracts ‘high estrogen’ men: tenth-best city to find romantic guy

Laura Donovan Contributor
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Disgusted by late night text messages, embarrassing blow-offs, and never receiving the phone call you were promised? Leading dating site Chemistry.com has a list of the top ten cities full of romantic, expressive, “high estrogen” men who probably wouldn’t slip into cad territory.

Though bursting with government employees, politicians, political journalists, and all things polarizing and serious, Washington, D.C. is tenth on the list, nine spots below perpetually romantic San Francisco.

Asked how bureaucratic, soulless Washington ever earned a spot on a list of romantic cities, Chemistry.com’s Dr. Helen Fisher told The Daily Caller that D.C. draws a lot of sensitive men who are concerned about the state of the world.

“Washington is, I suppose, a little bit surprising,” the anthropologist told TheDC, adding that 10 million people were surveyed for the list. “Except, an awful lot of [educated] people wind up in Washington, I think. And, I think a lot of the not-for-profits pull in a lot of the high-estrogen types who really sort of care about the state of the planet and the state of the polar bears and the state of the United States. So I’m not surprised that Washington does attract men who are sort of the big, broad, long-view thinkers who are good with verbal and people skills. I think Washington is a town that thrives on that. Along with that, they tend to be more romantic.”

Keeping with the Washington theme, Fisher said former president Bill Clinton is a high-estrogen, emotionally aware person.

“I think that Bill Clinton is a good example of a high-estrogen man,” Fisher explained. I mean, he cried at his daughter’s wedding. His wife didn’t.

“There are a lot of traits that are linked with the estrogen system,” she continued. “These people tend to, they see the big picture … They think long-term. They’re very intuitive, insightful. They tend to be very imaginative and memory flexible. They’re empathetic, nurturing, trusting.”

Explaining the mating habits of high-estrogen dudes, she continued: “When they date, they tend to be sensitive to the feelings of their partner. They can also be very romantic and very emotionally expressive and imaginative. When they date, they tend to only want to go out with one person at a time and build a really deep, intimate connection with that person.”

Fisher added that these men are usually liberal, which is right in line with many Washingtonians’ political leanings.

“There’s no question about it that high-estrogen people tend to be more liberal, and they are also more romantic,” Fisher said. “But I think they both stem from their biology, from their inherited activity of estrogen.”

According to Fisher, these men will fulfill “all the little daily touches that are romantic, from simply telling you that they love you to remembering anniversaries, to doing something special for you … They’ll plan a surprise party or moonlit hike, or leave a note under a pillow, or start to dance with you in the street when they hear street musicians … They’re the kind that’s going to go and make everybody breakfast or do a morning cappuccino for you.”

Washington may be home to poetic scribes and emotionally demonstrative lads, but the city still resembles “an intellectual meat market.” (MORE: Washington an ‘intellectual meat market,’ tough dating hub for women)

In June, Bloomberg reported that Washington is a tough relationship pool for young professionals and twenty-somethings.

Washington residents are “really sort of dating their jobs,” Christy McConville, a 34-year-old political communications professional, told Bloomberg of her D.C. dating experiences.

Conville, who lived in the nation’s capital for almost a decade before relocating to southern California, recalled having much better luck with men on the west coast because they inquired about her hobbies instead of focusing on her work.

The head of one social networking group explained to Bloomberg that speed-dating events for college-educated singles sell approximately 50 percent more tickets in the nation’s capital than in most other U.S. cities. Bloomberg also noted that females outnumber males in the district. Washington has 112 women for every 100 men, the highest such ratio in the United States. With so many ladies to choose from, men have their pick but females have to compete with each other.

“Young women are more likely to come into the District than young men,” William Frey of the Brookings Institution told Bloomberg.

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Laura Donovan