Singles Discover That It Really May Pay to Advertise

Pat Ruhlman is sure the right man for her is out there. Somewhere. It’s just a matter of keeping her oar in the water and--once in a while--paddling like crazy.

Bars, health clubs and workplaces are not her style. So in the last 10 years since her divorce, she’s tried everything else: Parents Without Partners, the video matching service Great Expectations, a singles group at the Crystal Cathedral, relationship courses at the Man-Woman Institute in Huntington Beach, blind dates arranged by friends. But Ruhlman, 55, says she was looking for love in all the wrong places.

Now, she thinks she’s found the right place: the classifieds.

Recently, Ruhlman raised some eyebrows with a first-person article in the Orange County Bar Bulletin, the journal of the Orange County Bar Assn., offering what sounded like a commercial for the personals. “Not only are classified ads private, confidential and cheap,” she told attorney readers, “but they work! “

Not a Joke

Although it was the April Fools edition of the Bulletin, she was not joking. Ruhlman, a law school graduate and director of Volunteers in Parole (a volunteer organization of the State Bar of California, the California Youth Authority and the Orange County Bar Assn. matching attorney-sponsors with recent parolees), said she’s received 60 responses in the last five years with such ads as: “This ad is paid for by my ex-husband who will describe me as slim, sensual and a wonderful companion. He will be lying. I am better than that. . . . “

And: “A very together lady, attractive and dynamic, 5’ 2” juris doctor, 50, has overcome all life’s adversities except not meeting you. . . .”

“Answer this ad or I’ll blow up your car . . . “ was one she composed but didn’t place.

Some friends--thinking advertising for dates is unsafe, degrading, foolish or embarrassing--have reacted with “Pat, how could you?” But she said others, including more than one Orange County judge, have asked her for more details. Professionals in the public eye, like judges, she explained, cannot afford to look desperate or on the prowl. “Say you’re a (single) minister. You can’t look like a barracuda waiting to snag someone.”

Over the last five years, the so-called respectable publications have been accepting a growing number of what used to be called lonely hearts ads from attorneys, physicians and other professionals, classified ad managers say.

Advanced Degrees, a Los Angeles-based singles organization for men and women with master’s degrees and above, recently surveyed members on whether they wanted the group to start a newsletter with personal ads. “The response was unbelievable. Fifty percent said ‘yes.’ I thought it would be zero,” the organization’s manager said. Ads such as “Attorney, 46, divorced, likes tennis and dining out” started to pour in two days after forms were mailed out, he said. “They must have mailed them back that night.”

Many doctors, lawyers or professors don’t have the time or inclination to socialize, he said. “Even people with all these degrees, very successful professionals, when it comes to meeting people face-to-face in a social organization are as scared as the next one . . . maybe more so,” he said. Writing personal ads, he surmised, is a less-threatening way to “let people know what you’re about.”

“I’ve seen a tremendous shift in the dating process away from the bars and into this,” said a spokesman for Los Angeles magazine’s classified department, which five years ago started a classified section called Matchmaker, Matchmaker. Some writers are still nervous, she said. “One lady called, the phones were going crazy and I had to put her on hold. When I got back to her, she said, ‘Please take it quick before I change my mind.’ She said she was attractive, in her mid 30s and an attorney. That’s not really atypical.”

Singles have become sophisticated about choosing a publication that might reach a specific type of person, she said.

In Los Angeles magazine, which claims 64% of its Southern California readers are executives and professionals, some typical ads begin: “Good-looking, successful, Beverly Hills Psychologist (Ph.D.) . . . “ “Very handsome, athletic eye/plastic surgeon . . . “ and “Good catch! 33, physician, handsome, athletic and sensitive . . . “ “Uncommonly Pretty Journalist” starts a personal ad in the New York City-based Columbia Journalism Review.

Some publications use codes such as SWF, meaning single white female, or DJM, divorced Jewish male.

Some--like the L.A. Weekly--allow ads offering uninhibited diversions for heterosexuals as well as homosexuals; the Orange County Register “Personals” section allows the suggestive (“ATTR curious W/M seeks yng cpl or F for safe fun or ???”) and publishes phone numbers; while ads in the Los Angeles Times’ year-old “Common Interests” section suggest genteel evenings of dining and theater going, use only box numbers and may be refused for bad taste.

Personal ads in Los Angeles magazine and Intro--a Los Angeles-based magazine devoted exclusively to personal ads--read like billboards of the soul, sometimes waxing philosophical (“Rosebud: You can’t boil down life into one word nor me into one ad. I’m complicated . . . “), witty (“Ecologist swallow with fledged offspring seeks bird-watching mate to monitor environment . . . in upcoming retirement . . . “), boastful (“Extremely handsome Burt Reynolds look-alike . . . ,” “Modern Madame Butterfly, sophisticated, good-looking, even foxy . . . “) or wounded (“I want a woman who doesn’t care that I’m living at home, that I’m working part time. . . .”)

According to Intro publisher Mel Lannert, half the advertisers are men. Those advertising in the June issue seem bent on finding beautiful, slender women under 35, independent and happy. The women want men who are financially secure, intelligent and sincere. Almost all want photos. They don’t want: women who use a relationship to “escape,” smokers or drug addicts, chauvinists, health nuts, religious fanatics.

Lannert estimates 35% of the adult population is single. But they’re kept apart by their high standards and complicated, mobile life styles. Under the circumstances, he says, society “has not come up with enough answers as to how people can meet selectively.” Even advertising, he admits, doesn’t work for everyone.

It worked for Lannert, though. He said he found his wife by advertising in his own publication.

So did Fred Deutsch, a self-employed marketing consultant, whose wife, Nada, was the seventh woman to answer an ad he placed four years ago. “We had a Cinderella story,” said Deutsch, 47, of Hermosa Beach. She was a divorced Irvine elementary school teacher who had been reading and answering--but not placing--ads for six months. She had also joined singles ski and tennis clubs and had met “a lot of playboys.” He was a divorced marketing vice president who had moved to Los Angeles two years earlier but did not fit into the “singles scene” and had not met “an awful lot of ladies with whom I felt comfortable.”

He was skeptical about placing an ad but was persuaded by an Intro ad sales representative he had met during a business call, who wrote and placed an ad for him. It mentioned his athletic hobbies and that he missed home-cooked meals. “I love to cook and that sparked an interest right there,” Nada said. “He liked to sail and play tennis and ski and do all the things that I like to do outdoors.” They both had grown children.

Their first phone call lasted an hour and a half; on their first date they talked and danced until 3 a.m. He had been impressed with the others who had answered his ad: “They were definitely interesting, high quality, moral standards and attractive . . . (But) I met Nada and that was it. It was immediate.”

Six months later, they married. “It moved faster than I thought it would,” Nada said. “I think the reason is that because right off the bat the intentions were clear. Marriage was something I wanted and something he wanted. Sometimes in a dating situation, it takes a while to admit that’s what they want.”

According to Intro’s Lannert, people who are not successful at advertising “tend to blame the process rather than looking at themselves a bit.”

Women complain that men lie about their age, their success and often their marital status; men complain that women advertisers lie about their weight, publishers said.

“It’s very common for a smallish man who advertised for a petite woman to be aghast at the ‘Miss Piggies’ who honest-to-God think they are petite,” said SuSu Levy of Los Angeles who has been writing personal ads for others the last five years.

After personal interviews and a fee, Levy has helped “a couple hundred” tongue-tied singles sum up their attributes and desires in 35 words or less.

Levy said she has made writing personals into a “little science” of rules and regulations that includes avoiding cliches (“everybody wants to walk barefoot in the park”), avoiding use of the word “class,” (“if you have to say it, you don’t have it”), not lying (“it destroys rapport”), and responding to all those who write to you.

Going to meet a person who has answered her ad produces a strange moment of excitement and self-hate, Ruhlman said. “You think, ‘Oh, it’s come to this . . . ‘ ‘I hope I don’t see anybody I know . . . ‘ ‘I hope he’s not Jack the Ripper. . . . ‘ “

One reason The Times has not accepted personals for the last 20 years is that in the ‘50s and ‘60s, both men and women who had placed lonely hearts ads in the now defunct Mirror reported assaults and robberies from respondents, said Gordon Lowe, coordinator of customer relations for the classified ad department. Now, however, most publications that accept personal ads offer a box number to protect advertisers from respondents knowing their address or phone number.

Since she is, in effect, arranging a blind date for herself and knowing date rape is a real danger, Ruhlman said she has developed her own common-sense rules of dating a stranger.

She said she does not give her last name to the person over the phone. They discuss basic interests and the “geography involved in their lives.” If they decide to meet, she suggests meeting for coffee during the day or a drink in a public place.

She said she always puts her age in the ad. It helps weed out those who say “It’s OK for me to be a grandfather, but I don’t want to date a grandmother,” she said.

Most of her experiences were positive and the vast majority of men she met through ads are still friends, Ruhlman said.

Despite her testimonials for the personals, Ruhlman placed her ad in Intro on hold four months ago. The reason? “I met a terrific guy. A very, very terrific guy.”

And how did she meet him? Not through the classifieds. “I joined a swing dance club. The first day, he came up and asked me to dance.” The four months they’ve been dating exclusively are marked in red on her office calendar.

Still, she believes the personal ads are the best way. “I went out with a lot of men. All the others,” she said, “made me realize what I wanted.”