Although the topic of single women is flavour of the month, psychologist Maureen Gaffney says that "men have a deeper need for relationships than women". She points to research carried out in the late 1960s and 1970s which showed "women were the ones who were least likely to gain from being in a relationship".
The overall mental health of a single woman was shown to be far superior to that of her married equivalent while the opposite was true of men: "Married men were in far better health than single men." Men have different feelings from women on the issue of having children: "They have a more take-it-or-leave-it attitude," says Gaffney. "Yet when they do become fathers they are usually devoted to the child."
Ross Skelton, a psychoanalyst based in Dublin and a lecturer in Psychoanalytic Studies at TCD, notes that single men experience "less social pressure" compared with single women: "The awful cliches like being left on the shelf are rarely used to describe single men."
This doesn't mean men are content to remain alone: "I see single men who are miserable. Typically they would like to meet someone, but find intimacy difficult and can't manage to chat somebody up. They never learned how and possibly never will." He adds that the loneliness experienced by single gay men is not significantly different from the heterosexual variety.
Some men, however, cope very well alone: "It'd be a shame to think that everyone has to get married and do the same sort of thing." But as they approach the age of 30, most men begin to think "maybe I ought to have a steady girlfriend", says Skelton. The issue becomes "more worrying" as they approach 40, but when it comes to talking about their sense of isolation, men are "more inclined to drink or deny their feelings". And expressing feelings of sadness and loneliness can be much riskier for a man than for a woman. Research in Canada, cited by Rae Andre, author of Positive Solitude, shows that "the depressed and lonely man is more rejected and more devalued and is considered more emotionally impaired than the depressed and lonely woman." Single men's social supports are less substantial than single women's, add the authors of Single In A Married World. This is hard for men because "the most important adult emotional connections single people have are often with their friends." And although "they enjoy income possibilities that exceed those of women, men's work life may still be affected by their single major US corporations in 1981, 80 per cent of the heads of companies stated that single executives tended to make snap judgments and 25 per cent said that singles were less stable than married people. Since the work system is highly significant to single people as a source of livelihood and as a socialisation network, potential problems in this area can become quite threatening to their well-being."
As is evident from the large numbers of men who are joining dating agencies, single men are not interested in staying that way for long. Father Michael Keane, founder and director of the Knock Marriage Bureau, notes that more men write to the Bureau than women, particularly farmers: "The biggest problem is in rural Ireland, among the smaller farmers with 30 or 40 acres of land. It is hard for them to make a decent living and a lot of women aren't interested. The women leave and come up to work in Dublin, often as nurses.
"In the west of Ireland, demographically, there are more men than women. It is sad, because the men are anxious to have a partner, but they can't find anybody."