Despite my best intentions, thoughtful consideration, emotional IQ, and diverse network I am a lousy matchmaker. The few times I’ve introduced people have generally led to a, “What were you thinking, setting me up with someone who hasn’t been to graduate school and lacks a goatee?”

I know more women than men, have more women friends than Bros. There is no real reason for this beyond working primarily in the female-dominated non-profit and arts world. Well, there probably is a reason for it. Women tend to be more loyal, interesting in conversation, smell better, and so on.

Having many women friends means I inevitably get asked to set up my Sisters with all my presumed Bros. But it is short list of eligible bachelors in my world. Most of the cats I know are married, in long-term relationships or are a Hot Mess of emotional unavailability or career disaster. If you are reading this, Bro, I don’t mean you.

So I have little to offer except perspective to my Single Amigos. So I will offer that.

As an Urban Dweller and Student of the Human Condition, I watch the groups of young people in our pubs, restaurants and gathering places, dresses to impressed and looking for love, fun, and inspiration. And so it will ever be.

Can I tell you a secret about men? Approaching a woman that you don’t know in public takes extraordinary mental resolve and a certain sort of courage. The Average Joe simply cannot do it, roll up to a stranger in a pack with her home girls, with a clever opening and an offer to converse. The prospect of public rejection is much, much too terrifying.

Is it an attractive feature, this rare confidence? Of course it is. Confidence is endlessly attractive to all of us, and especially, I think, to Women-kind.

So it isn’t easy to talk up attractive stranger, and those who can do it are too often a certain sort of Lothario, practiced seducers (often) and not at all the sort of Fellow you want to spend time getting to know. Guys who learn to do it often learn nothing else.

So stop it. Stop hanging out in bars listening to Players spit their Game.

What to do instead?

Instead, young people of America, I invite you to get involved with a non-profit. Serve on a committee, volunteer at an event, join a board of directors.  That’s where the best of you will meet each other, in service of a greater good. Handsome and confident strangers are great, dressed in their striped shirts and smelling of clove cigarettes but even better is the earnest fellow in work clothes and leather gloves, up early on a Saturday morning to clean the river or plant trees.

And so this message is really for the Bros of America. The women you want to meet are already there volunteering. They are active in the community, engaged in causes they care about, spending their evenings and weekends making their cities beautiful and the kids smart. This is exactly who you want to be getting to know. And what’s even better is you won’t have the competition of the Players in Striped Shirts. Plus your efforts will be tax deductible. For example, you should be able to deduct the mileage to and fro the event, unlike driving to the club for 80s Foam Night.

So my friends, Volunteer your time – at the theatre, for the kids, during the Festival, weekly at the Soup Kitchen, handing out water at the 5k run. It is where you will find one another, in service to your community and with an eye to eventual tax deductibility with your romantic partner.

Go and Volunteer. Serve Mankind. Get some Fresh Air. Meet Someone of Quality.