More people are leaving it until late to get married. The median marriage age for women is 29.4 and 31.4 for men.

Fewer people are tying the knot, too – the “never married” category of men has expanded nearly 61 per cent, and women, nearly 14 per cent.

The old boom is over for Hong Kong men finding wives on the mainland – that number shrank from 28,145 in 2006 to 15,300 last year. Instead, more women from the city are marrying mainlanders, though the number was relatively small at 7,626 last year.

Why Hong Kong career women marry men from China

What does all this mean? I had an interesting exchange with Ariadna Peretz, who runs the matchmaking agency Maitre D’ate and provides the kind of personal insight that you can’t get from statisticians and academics.

“That’s about 10 hours per day and when you add the commute, you’re left with precious little time and energy,” Peretz says.

“There’s a lot of casual dating and hooking up, but there is a dearth of deep and meaningful relationships.”

Is that because we’re too picky when it comes to finding partners?

“Hongkongers can be too focused on the outcome. We’re very goal-oriented people and that’s great in certain situations, but it’s not useful for everything, like love.

“Due to the prevalence of dating apps, there’s too much of a PBO [pending better offer] mentality and it means we have a foot out the door, waiting for someone better to cross our paths. This is everywhere in the world, but I think it’s especially bad in Hong Kong.”

Hong Kong’s gender imbalance and marriage pressure blamed for rise in online dating scams

And why do we have so many single women out there?

She cites advice from Facebook boss Sheryl Sandberg: “Marry the nerds and good guys – not the hot guys, not the rich guys! Also, she tells women, ‘The most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry’, so this decision shouldn’t be an afterthought.”

Loveless Hong Kong: The elusive quest for romance in city with a growing number of singletons

On a positive note, according to Peretz, we are not as shallow as I would have thought: “I’m happy to report that in my anonymous love and dating survey, most respondents say they would be willing to go down a couple of notches in looks to be with someone who met a lot of their other criteria.”

What about people who think love is overrated and genuinely don’t care?

“Not caring is totally fine as long as you truly do not care. But you need to be careful, because acting like you don’t care is a coping mechanism. Also, you may not care now, but if you think you may care in the future, you need to make sure you don’t put it off until it’s too late.”

There is a counter to that line of thinking. Serial monogamy, which can be defined as “spending as little time as possible being single”, can also be a coping mechanism.

Is it wrong to be alone? Different strokes for different folks.

Yonden Lhatoo is the chief news editor at the Post