Does no one ever leave home for college or move to a different city in your world?

People move. I moved to go to grad school recently, and have made the following local friends:

• A woman who complimented me on my jacket at the bus stop; conversation went from there
• Her (male) roommate
• My roommate's brother (I'm not counting my roommate because we were already friends when we moved in together)
• Two classmates
• The boyfriend and husband, respectively, of the classmates

It so happens that I could not or would not date any of these people because of various obstacles, but they all have other friends. Odds are good that if I were inclined to spend more time on expanding my social network, those individuals could introduce me to twenty or thirty other people; in my experience, people like their friends to know each other. And so on and so forth. I hasten to add that while I'm generally friendly, I'm kind of a hermit. I haven't made any of my friends via the supermarket, mall, or bar. They're pretty much all people I've been thrown together with or been introduced to by people I already knew.

Another example: I spent last summer in Salt Lake City living with my best friend, who I met on the Internet, as an alternative to living with my parents. Over the course of that summer, I met:

• My friend's other best friend from work
• My friend's boyfriend
• My friend's boyfriend's brother, his wife, and their two children
• My friend's boyfriend's sister, her husband, and their three children
• My friend's D&D group
• My friend's father and one of her brothers
• My friend's friend from high school and his wife
• My friend's lunch gathering group (5 other people)
• People my friend knew from volunteering at a convention
• Another Internet friend who lived nearby and her husband
• The other Internet friend's sister and three of her other friends

I also held down a job and became acquainted with, easily, fifteen people at work. One of them invited me to her house along with a couple of other co-workers for scones and Disney movies, and I met her family.

I hope these examples serve to illustrate what I mean.

s a matter of fact, they unsolicitedly remark about how "women must be all over you!" and "some lady's going to snatch you right up before you know it" (note the similarity of their assumptions to yours). But then they inevitably don't know anyone's they'd introduce me to.

This is something people say to be nice. It does not typically mean what it denotes. If they have not invited you to any social functions where you could meet any of their friends, I doubt they like you very much. If you'd like to add a less polite data point, I'd neither date you nor introduce you to my single friends based on what little I know of you.

relatives don't help if they all live far away

This is no longer the case with the Internet. I have never been to Australia in my life, but if I went there and landed in the right city, I know a guy who'd let me crash on his couch. You know someone who knows someone who knows someone who lives within acceptable travel distance of you. And that someone, even if they aren't someone you'd date, knows someone who knows someone you'd date.

And again, before you say how I must be soooo much of an outlier that I can't possibly be a representative case, keep in mind, I did get a date with a woman in a group that I joined, so really, I'm apparently not that much of a freak.

Being a freak is different from not having enough of a social network to find new people regularly.