By the time she took her first job after graduating, she planned to be single long term. “It just gets such a negative rap, and it’s fantastic,” said Carly, now 41. In the nearly 18 years since she ...

Or at least that’s how it often feels for singles, who can seem hard-wired to fixate on different cities’ dating reputations.

For some single women in their 30s and 40s, their biological clocks add unwelcome stress to an already fraught process.