‘Dating has just gotten harder’

Matchmaker Heidi Champlain, 59, makes a living by pairing singles — typically aged between 30s and 50s — throughout metro Denver. Working with matchmaking and social club SHIFT, Champlain collects information from both parties. Then, she connects them, “and we see if it’s a match.”

At SHIFT events, she’s crowdsourced answers from attendees in anonymous polls, which give Champlain deeper insight into their perspectives. A recent question: How would you like a member of the opposite sex to let you know that they’re interested?

“Every single man has said they want a woman to come up to them and let them know that they are interested,” Champlain said in a phone interview. On the other hand, “women would love it if a man would come up to them, and just smile, say hello and start a conversation.”

A single woman herself, Champlain pointed to “a lot of confusion across the board” — and Denver’s “laid back” attitude isn’t helping to improve that communication.

Denver counts as one of the top five markets for Girls Gotta Eat, a comedy podcast about dating, sex and relationships, so co-hosts Rayna Greenberg, 38, and Ashley Hesseltine, 40, hear from thousands of women about the city’s dating scene. Greenberg also got a personal taste of it in a previous relationship with a Denverite.

Based in Los Angeles, the pair has long been familiar with the Menver phenomenon. They even know women who moved to Denver with the intention of finding partners. Hesseltine joked, “Oh, it’s this land of men — just go and have your pick.”

But “the pandemic impacted everybody in every city,” she said in a phone interview. For Generation Z in particular, she wonders how missing out on several formative years of adulthood could have potentially stunted people emotionally, socially and more.

In the post-COVID era, Greenberg and Hesseltine said they’ve heard a shift in how people frame Denver’s dating dynamics. Common grievances from their listeners include noncommittal behavior by men who are more interested in finding skiing and hiking buddies than girlfriends.

But like others, they don’t think Denver is the issue. “Dating has just gotten harder in general,” Greenberg said. One Mile High City perk: “It’s the perfect city to, like, leave the house, do activities, say yes to everything, and you actually meet so many people through that,” she added.

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