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Single life altered for a time after 9/11

Date: 2006-09-16

This past week all of America remembered the tragedy of 9/11, an event burned into our collective and individual memories.

How single men and women reacted to the events of 9/11 and the weeks thereafter is symptomatic of major differences between men and women, and how they each deal with extreme adversity.

On that fateful Tuesday five years ago, shortly after the Twin Towers fell, the phones started ringing at my dating service.

Nearly all the calls were from women, canceling their dates. It was a Tuesday, and like most mid-week days we had probably arranged for 30 to 40 couples to meet in a nice restaurant for a "lunch date," either actually for lunch or for a drink or dinner after work.

By about 2 p.m. that day just about all the dates had been cancelled. After all, who could think about going on a date on Sept. 11, 2001? Single men, that's who.

When my counselors contacted the men who had dates scheduled for that day in order to cancel them, some of the men seemed taken aback. They had been looking forward to meeting a woman, and some of the men just didn't understand the need for the cancellation. Moreover, some of the cancellations came at the very last minute, just as they were leaving their office and heading for the restaurant.

Furthermore, most of the women not only canceled their dates, they did not want to reschedule them, requesting that we place their membership "on hold." They were so distraught by the events of that day that they did not want to even think about meeting a man for the foreseeable future. But very few men wanted to freeze their memberships. Most wanted to reschedule their date for later that week.

Over the next several weeks, we observed several interesting trends. September and October were usually very busy months at my dating service, as single and divorced men and women usually were eager to meet someone in time for the holidays.

It was also usually a time when far more women than men would join, as women tend to plan ahead, hoping to have a boyfriend to take to the office Xmas party or for New Year's Eve, while men often don't think about such things until just a few days in advance.

But that year things were 180 degrees different. For about six weeks following Sept. 11, 2001, only a handful of women contacted us. And far more men than usual called us and eventually joined.

Why was that? This is what single men and women told me. Basically during the weeks following 9/11, women were busy comforting and consoling each other. "I just don't want to sit home alone," one woman said, "so every night I either visit a friend or a relative."

From the very evening of Sept. 11 on, women made plans to get together with one another. They cried together and talked together. They had small intimate dinners together. But the last thing on their minds was joining a dating service, placing an ad on an Internet dating site, going out to singles events -- or meeting men in general.

For men the weeks following 9/11 were totally different. As I mentioned in a previous column, single men tend to only hang out with other single men for the following reasons: To watch sporting events, play sports, or to frequent bars to drink and (hopefully) meet women.

But when these guys went to bars in September and October 2001 there were no women in sight. It was as if single women had suddenly disappeared. One man specifically recounted that during a visit to one of his regular haunts, he did not see one woman in the bar. "I actually wondered whether it had become a gay bar," he told me somewhat facetiously.

And while married couples were staying home watching CNN and Fox News, and single women were spending time hanging out with and consoling their friends, single men were sitting home alone. And they were lonely.

A headline in the Sunday New York Times on Sept. 30, 2001, read "Being Single in New York Is A Little Lonelier Now." The same was true in Boston.

Over the 23 years that I ran a dating service, I hardly ever heard single men describe themselves as "lonely." Usually when they called, their first words would be something like "I'm not lonely, but I would like to meet a woman."

But during the weeks that followed 9/11, I received many calls from single men, blatantly admitting they were, in fact, "lonely." And considerably more men than women joined during this period.

Then, just as the calendar turned to November, more than six weeks after the attacks of 9/11, things began to change. Suddenly women members started unfreezing their memberships and single women started to call us again.

And things began to return to "normal," although normal was never the same for many of us.

Steve Penner was the owner of the Boston-based dating service LunchDates for nearly 23 years and interviewed and listened to feedback from thousands of single men and women from all over New England. "The Truth About Dating" reflects insights and observations based upon his experience. He welcomes feedback and comments at pennerst@hotmail.com or at the web site www.thetruthaboutdating.com.





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