A NEW TREND IN DATING: AFFLUENT MEN TURN TO PROFESSIONAL MATCHMAKERS

New York, NY —- For decades, single women had been the overwhelming number of clients at dating services. Men had shied away from such services perhaps for the same reason that they don’t like asking for directions. They’ll find the right woman on their own, just as they will figure out how to get to a destination.
Now, however, busy professional men between the ages of 30 and 60 who don’t have the time, the inclination, or even the confidence to look for the right woman are turning to experts who can do it for them.
According to Gary Ferone, president and co-founder of Great Date Now, “since 2004 our clients are increasingly men, most of whom are affluent professionals. When I started this business with my wife, Lisa, our client base was 60% women, 40% men. That has been shifting more and more each year so that we now have equal numbers of men and women as clients.
“Based upon our survey of male clients, we found the following information: 32% say they are too sophisticated to partake of the conventional dating scene, 34% say they are too busy to spend the necessary time looking for the woman of their dreams, 16% say they just don’t have the energy and inclination to do it, and 18% say they hate the dating scene and haven’t been part of it for years, and all of them want a knowledgeable person to map out a strategy and find the right person for them.
“Among our clients, we also deal with those who may have special problems. For example, we recently helped a very successful estate lawyer who has a degenerative eye disease that will ultimately result in blindness. He had never married and was lonely. He is bright, successful, witty, and good looking. He has a home on Long Island and loves to sail his boat on weekends. He saw his disability as something that might turn off women. We introduced him to three women, each of whom we carefully investigated and interviewed, and he is now in a long term relationship with one of them; she had been a nurse who subsequently opened a private duty nursing service.”
More commonly is the case of James Smith, a successful Manhattan stock broker, who said: “I had tried several online dating services and was very disappointed. The women I met were not the people I thought I would meet. Some had lied about their ages, some about their careers, some about whether they had little children at home. Though I had sworn off Internet dating services, I found myself surfing the Internet late one lonely night. I clicked on greatdatenow.com and read a list of dating tips which I found straight forward and helpful. I was impressed with what I read, so the next day I called. I spoke with a matchmaker, whom I interviewed extensively. I didn’t want to deal with a sales person. I discovered that she was a certified social worker with degrees not only in social work, but also in psychology. I was convinced that she could help me meet the kind of woman who could be a friend, a companion, a lover. In other words, someone with whom I could have a long-term relationship. It took a few weeks for her to introduce me to the kind of person I had in mind, but she did, and we have been in an ongoing relationship ever since.”
“Jim is typical of many male clients who want a professional matchmaker to help them,” said Mr. Ferone. “In just the last month, we have worked with a 40-year-old never-married surgeon, a 38-year-old real estate lawyer who had divorced his wife of ten years, and a 48-year-old stock broker whose wife had died of cancer several years ago.
“To make sure that our clients are not targets of fraud, we do investigations into their backgrounds. We make sure that they are who they say they are, and that they don’t have criminal records. We make sure that our clients meet exactly the kind of people that they want to meet. For example, we find women who are boaters, who fly their own planes, who windsurf, sky dive, ski, compete in horse back riding competitions, and even race cars.”
In addition to having well-trained, sensitive matchmakers, Great Date Now provides the optional services of dating coach, Ron Salon, a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, who has been helping singles for thirty years to jump-start their lives by providing guidance on finding and maintaining new relationships. Great Date Now provides such services to affluent men who live and work in Manhattan; Garden City and Hauppauge Long Island; Westchester county; Darien and Milford, Connecticut; and Englewood Cliffs, Morristown, and Red Bank, New Jersey.
“For years women have been disappointed at the number of available single men; the equations are changing to the advantage of women,” said Mr. Ferone. “The world of dating is becoming one of equality.”

From: Jeffrey Sussman, Inc.
Marketing Public Relations
249 East 48 Street FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York, NY 10017

For: Great Date Now

Contact: Jeffrey Sussman
212-421-4475
marketingpro@aol.com
www.powerpublicity.com

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