Is Breaking-Up Worse When You Live in a Small Town?

You’ve heard enough people complain about Aotearoa being too small. At 5.1 million, we have less people in our entire country than in London alone. Even Auckland, our biggest city, only has 1.6 million people bouncing around between Albany and Manuwera. 

Our comparatively miniature population can make dating feel hard – whether you’re comparing that to living somewhere bigger or not.

How do you meet people?

How do you get space from the circles you already know? 

How do you keep your dating life private from prying eyes? 

And when a relationship ends you’re faced with even trickier issues, like avoiding your ex or dividing friends, flats and finances. It’s a circus, no matter where you are in little ol’ NZ.  

So imagine not only trying to navigate dating and breaking-up in a small country, but in our smaller cities… Towns, even… Villages… Does it bring a shiver down your spine? 

Aside from a few cottage-core lovers who are busy romanticising the idea of traipsing through wheat fields and reading a book on the porch, accompanied only by the sound of the birds, city folk tend to think everything about small towns is worse. Most of the time, these outside-looking-in judgements are wrong, but when it comes to dating, there might be a little more truth to it. 

One of the most common issues shared by the locals from Oamaru to Balclutha was the lack of a large and varied dating pool. 

Even if you live in a population of one million, you still might only meet one person a year you’re actually interested in romantically (maybe more, maybe less, we’re all different!) – but in these tiny towns, the likelihood of meeting even one person can be rare. Jamie from Gore, which is 1/100th the size of Auckland, told VICE “My single friends find it so hard.” 

Many of us accept the idea that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find one that turns out to be a prince, but that becomes a lot less viable when there are no frogs at all.  

Bluff takes this small pool to the extreme. Residents told us how the lack of a high school or nearby university in Bluff means that there’s a huge deficit of people in their teens and twenties as they disappear to other cities to study. 

And small towns also mean there aren’t that many places to meet people – think the smoky bars, climbing gyms and life modelling classes you might find in Wellington – or places to go when you do actually get a date. “The pubs don't really go off,” Jamie said. 

One way around the lack of spaces to bump into people is venturing onto dating apps. But even Tinder doesn’t lend much of a helping hand in NZ’s smallest cities. 

“Tinder exists in Bluff, allegedly,” said one local, which about says it all.

“No one goes on dates here. Unless you find someone out of town,” said Milla, from Gore. 

Travelling to other cities and jumping on dating apps – or simply setting your radius much wider than your hometown – was a running theme in places with small populations. One Bluff resident shared that her daughter met her partner by setting the distance to include several other small towns. She met her partner, who was living over an hour away, and they meet up in the middle to go on dates. 

There’s also the pressure that comes with “everyone knowing everyone,” and sometimes worse, everyone’s already dated everyone. With this comes the gossip, the jealousy and the drama. Anahera told VICE, “Nothings a secret in Invercargill.” 

A break-up is never the end goal in a relationship, but unless you’re part of the very exclusive group who’s never had to endure one, for most of us it’s an inevitable hurdle. And the same plights of small town life that make dating itself hard have just as much of an effect on the saga of ending a relationship. “It makes breaking up hard… what should be your own business is unfortunately well known,” said Jamie.

Bailey, from Invercargill, emphasised how growing up in a tight-knit group made things extra complicated once a lover was introduced. “I’ve got a group of friends I’ve known my whole life and a lot of the time that ex ends up being friends with all those people as well.” When it finally is time to split, it’s not easy to get away from an ex with the same social circle. 

Gray from Gore shared this sentiment: “the hardest part is that you’re always gonna see them.” 

Even in Dunedin, which is hard to describe as a small town compared to our other southern destinations, the 130k population is felt by the people living there. Hannah, a student at Otago University, told us that avoiding past old flames was near impossible.

 “Once you've matched with them, you see them everywhere, like, Dunedin is small. You see them in the supermarket, outside your flat. They'll be walking to uni, you'll open your door and you're like f***!” said Hannah. 

And even if you’re not seeing the actual person, memories of a relationship can be built into the places themselves. “Everything will remind you of something, that’s what the biggest struggle is,” said Susie from Invercargill. 

“Everything you see is like, oh we went there last week, or I know this person because we did that thing… If you guys went to the movies a lot or went to laser tag a lot… That’s pretty much everything there is to do.”

Unfortunately, in a town like Invercargill there aren’t many escape routes other than retreating into your own space. “You need to put your interests on pause until you’re emotionally ready to go back to that,” said Susie. 

But even a break-up at the bottom of the world doesn’t mean it has to be the end of it. Sure, having a bigger playing field can make it easier when you’re trying to put yourself out there or get away from your past, but there’s plenty of beauty in every small town worth reminding yourself of. 

And if you’re ever feeling trapped by the physical size of your town, remember the internet has your back. It can be a ridiculous and sometimes hateful place, but it’s also an incredible opportunity for community, joy and support when you look for it. With Zoom calls, online book-clubs, forums, movie nights and even professional care at our finger-tips, no one’s world has to feel that small. 

Own the Feels is brought to you by #LoveBetter, a campaign funded by the Ministry for Social Development.

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Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa. You can find her @rachellydiab on IG and Letterboxd and see her film criticism on Youtube.