New York is a difficult place for dating, even with the active social lives that most of my patients lead.

Traditional social-support systems that used to bring people together are waning. Relocations are frequent. Work committments now go well beyond the almost-forgotten nine-to-five schedule.

To expand their dating opportunities, 40 percent of the 100 million U.S. singles have turned to the billiondollar-a-year online-dating industry.

This phenomenon has drawn the interest of social researchers at the most distinguished universities. And their findings point the way to why the dating experience is so frustrating and unsatisfying to so many.

Overcoming Negative Self-Perception

According to a recent review article in Scientific American, Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that 90 percent of online daters tell lies in the personal profiles they submit to identify compatible partners.

For men, major areas of deception include educational level, income, height, and marital status; at least 13 percent of online males are married. Women, on the other hand, deceive about weight, appearance, and age.

Only 1 percent of online daters describe their looks as “less than average,” which puts me in mind of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone…that fictional chunk of America where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

There are seemingly practical reasons for the lies, sometimes. Men who claim incomes over $250,000 get 151 percent more replies than those who claim less than $50,000, and women often list younger ages to make sure that they turn up in searches by picky male suitors.

But investigators at Rutgers and Georgetown University conclude that online daters make it an active rule to construct an “ideal self” rather than present their real one.

Even attractive people see themselves as too fat, too bald, too something they can’t even identify. They fear being rejected because of who they suspect they really may be. They want to protect themselves from pain.

Welcome to the Best Show in Town

Lack of self-knowledge is experienced by all of us, to some degree, and it almost always causes problems in relationships. Why? Because if we don’t understand who we are, we can’t expect to be understood and satisfied by others.

I help my patients take that hard, sometimes reluctant look inside and discover that their real selves aren’t negative at all, they are the solid bedrock for the best show in town. Really.

Once we begin to know better who we actually are, we can identify better the people who can actually bring us the fulfillment we seek. We can more easily avoid damaging behaviors like drinking too many shots and making too many booty calls with partners whom we barely know.

The rewards we get from having a genuinely close relationship with another person are the most substantial ones that it is possible to have in this life.

There’s no better time to start the process than now…and then go on to take the right next steps.