In this blog, I will share with you my unique dating challenges as an atheist, American born, Chinese ethnicity girl living in Singapore.
Social Development Network initiative
Because of Singapore’s relatively low birth rate as well as more and more couples getting more academically educated and marrying later in Singapore, the local government instituted this government office known as the Social Development Unit SDU, which was then rebranded Social Development Network SDN to deal with this problem. (Though SDN website will be officially closed down after 15 November 2023.)
Although from what I have realized, some locals feel embarrassed when surveyed whether they will join such an organization to look for a potential boyfriend or girlfriend.
This is a potential option, though it is for locals only, and non citizens would be unlikely to benefit from such a dating initiative.
Dating agencies in Singapore
There do exists different types of dating agencies locally.
Some of them specialize in speed dating, which is group events.
There are also some agencies in Singapore which are one to one matchmaking agency Singapore. These are usually for the extremely serious clients, who are not only looking to date, but also to marry.
Since I am not that serious about settling down yet, this is not an opti0n for me.
Escort agencies or sugar dating in Singapore
Well, I did not think about this initially, but some of my readers have private messaged me asking about whether these are prevalent in Singapore, because Singapore is clearly a more culturally conservative country than Western countries where this is really common.
I have to say that while I personally do not directly know any one in the expat scene who are either doing social escort work or sugar dating, I do know of friend’s friends who are doing it.
I think escort girls are more for male expats to meet casually, so those really are only applicable for male expats in Singapore. However when it comes to sugar dating, there are some expats who are being sugar babies in Singapore – after all, SG is known to have lots of wealthy locals and foreigners.
Unique issues expats may be facing
This goes out to the fellow expats looking to date in Singapore, but are also like me and are Asian but not Singaporean.
While I am Chinese in ethnicity and living in Singapore now, my parents are from America, and hence my upbringing was probably always going to be a little different from the local Singaporeans. As a result of that, despite my looks, I find that I am able to connect much better with fellow expats. This can result in a unique issue for me, which is that using traditional, local Singapore-based dating applications or websites can be a tough match for me.
Additionally, I am also atheist, and I find that most people in SG have some kind of religion, whether that be catholic, christian, buddhist, or whatnot, it can be a little difficult for me to truly connect with the local dating scene when it comes to potentially sensitive topics like this. It can be quite difficult for me raising the topic that I am an atheist in Singapore in the relationship arena, without being secretly judged negatively. At least, so far that has been my experience.
Mobile dating applications in Singapore
These thankfully exist, and most of them hail from the Western parts of the world, such as Okcupid, Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel. However, with applications such as Tinder, you will meet the same issues as you will anywhere else around the world as a woman, and that is a lot of thirsty men or rather, too many unqualified men approaching and sliding into your DM!