I don’t know about you, but I’ve recently noticed this particular question come up whenever I find myself surrounded by a group of NYC females: Why are there no good men left in this city? The same answers get thrown around. They are here, we’re just going to the wrong bars. All of my hot coworkers are married. I guess I’m not trying hard enough. Maybe I’m just too damn ugly. And then the whining really commences.

There’s no reason for perfectly smart and attractive women to blame themselves for a lack of “good men.” Here are some ideas my lady friends and I have come up with to explain this city’s serious man void.

There are too many girls in New York. Think about it. Remember the last time you were in a bar (save Midtown happy hour during the work week) and you looked around? How many women did you see occupying those bar stools, and how many men? Maybe because I’m a woman I tend to notice the competition, but seriously, the room is always bursting with sexy ladies just waiting for you to buy them a drink. With all those thin, heel-wearing, immaculately makeup-ed women around, you men tend to get just a teensy bit cocky (no pun intended?). You get your pick of the litter; we get…the runt. Or another cocky asshole who has gotten way too used to picking up nines even though he’s a solid six.

Speaking of assholes, it seems more and more like only douchebags move to New York City. Why is this the case? Because the sorts of men whom the city attracts come for the following reasons: to make more money, to live somewhere where they don’t have to ever move in order to feed, and to live in a city with lots of hot chicks everywhere. If they don’t come for these reasons, then they stay for them, making what were once good men smoothly transition into greedy, lazy womanizers.

My friend’s boyfriend of over a year recently moved all the way from Santa Barbara to NYC to be with her. Her big mistake—allowing him to move in during fashion week. It didn’t take long for this guy to start turning his head at every model who brushed past him on those crowded streets. He quickly moved from head-turning to staying out all night and covering with patchy excuses the next day. I mean, what heterosexual, grown males regularly have sleepovers with other men in their one-room apartments?

Beyond that, this guy had loved to exercise. Hiking in the constant sunny weather out West had been his passion, but in New York, he took to sitting on his ass, insisting that working out indoors “wasn’t his thing” and neglecting to get up and go grocery shopping if he wanted food. Delivery became his new hobby when he wasn’t out drinking and chasing tail. Their relationship in the city lasted almost two months.

Plenty of couples do survive the city. Not only do they survive, they end up thriving financially. What’s cheaper than a one-bedroom apartment in New York for one person? The same deal for two people… who feel comfortable sharing a bedroom/don’t have to convert the living room into the kind of second bedroom that leaves a chronic masturbator in constant fear.

What I’m getting at, here, is the true location of the remaining “good men” in NYC. They exist, but they share a bedroom with the lucky women who got to ‘em first. The guys who leave the comfort of their apartments to go grocery shopping already ran into approximately five thousand sexy women between their place and the Trader Joe’s in Union Square, one of whom was savvy enough to take that opportunity to notice a guy carrying grocery bags and start making conversation about the kind of apples he’s purchased. Whatever it was (“I hear Fuji apples are particularly juicy this season!”), it got her noticed and got him domesticated.

That brings up another surefire way to turn a good guy into a bad guy in NYC. Send a dude with a girlfriend out into the throngs of women. The competition between women seeking nice guys will tip the balance in his favor, and soon he’ll be having plenty of suspicious “male sleepovers.”

Oh, and all the thus far unaccounted for good men are—you guessed it—gay.