Whether you are settled in a relationship or still swiping through dating apps, where you live may play a bigger role in your romantic prospects than you realise.
A new interactive map highlights the areas of Britain with the highest share of couples, as well as the places where single people are most common.
Researchers found striking regional differences in relationship rates. Major cities such as London, Liverpool and Edinburgh had some of the country’s largest populations of single adults.
By contrast, rural parts of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and East Anglia were more heavily populated by people in relationships.
The research also suggested that single people tend to report greater happiness when they live in communities with plenty of other singletons. The difference in life satisfaction between single and partnered people became more pronounced in places where being in a relationship was the norm.
“People in romantic relationships often report higher life satisfaction than single individuals,” the researchers wrote in the journal Psychological Science.
“We have demonstrated that the size of this life-satisfaction gap is not uniform, but instead varies systematically across geographic contexts.
“Specifically, we found that the gap was larger in regions with higher relationship rates and smaller in regions with lower relationship rates.”
For the study, researchers examined responses from 382,000 people living across 379 areas of Great Britain.
The findings revealed substantial differences in the likelihood of being in a relationship depending on a person’s location.
Bolsover in Derbyshire recorded the highest figure, with 80.2 per cent of respondents saying they were in a relationship.
At the opposite end was the London Borough of Brent, where only 54.8 per cent of those surveyed said they were coupled up.
The researchers’ map showed that relationship rates were generally higher in eastern Britain, while many western areas recorded lower levels.
Britain’s biggest cities also emerged as clear outliers. London, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Aberdeen all had lower relationship rates than the areas surrounding them.
For single people living in large urban centres, that pattern could make the local dating scene feel less isolating.
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The analysis found striking differences in relationship rates between London’s boroughs
A closer look at the capital also revealed sizeable variations from one London borough to another.
Bromley, Havering and Richmond recorded some of the highest relationship rates, while Camden, Brent and Ealing had larger proportions of single residents.
The researchers said people often feel more content when their own circumstances resemble those of the people living around them.
In communities where most residents are partnered, being single may feel less socially typical and more disconnected from the expectations of local life, the researchers suggested.
Singles may also find themselves excluded from couple-focused social circles or facing more pressure from family and friends to find a partner.
The authors suggest that social expectations, community culture and even local institutions may contribute to the pattern.
Overall, the researchers concluded that relationship experiences cannot be separated from geography, because where people live helps shape how they feel about their relationship status.
Their findings remained even after taking account of factors such as age, health, income, employment and personality traits.
‘Using large-scale data from Great Britain, we replicated previous findings showing that partnered individuals, on average, report higher life satisfaction than their single counterparts,’ they wrote.
‘Extending this research, we have demonstrated that the size of this life-satisfaction gap is not uniform but instead varies systematically across geographic contexts.
‘Specifically, we found that the gap was larger in regions with higher relationship rates and smaller in regions with lower relationship rates.
‘Although modest in size, this effect was robust across numerous confounds and model specifications and replicated also at a finer geographic scale, across neighbourhoods within London.’
The research was led by Dr Tita Gonzalez Avilés of the University of Bamberg in Germany and Professor Tobias Ebert of the University of St Gallen in Switzerland. Data was collected by Professor Peter Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge.
