Increasing numbers of Japanese men are giving up on women in favour of silicon sex dolls, with typical customers being single guys over 40, the Times Of India reported this week. The newspaper suggested sex doll sales are increasing partly because of the anonymity of the net but also because of increasing alienation between men and women. "Nowadays, women are sometimes more dominant than men in the real world, and they don't always pay attention to men," Hideo Tsuchiya president of doll manufacturing firm Orient Industry Co speculated, "More and more men are finding themselves miserable so we're making these dolls partly in support of men," he explained. US luxury doll company Realdoll said customers for their high tech $6,499 models include American women buying dolls for their boyfriends, in an interview with San Deigo newspaper City Beat last year, though indicated that customer profiles are broadly similar. "Our market is mostly 35- to 65-year-old men with disposable incomes. One customer has bought every 'type of" doll we make." Said Realdoll spokesperson Shelly Couture said last year. "Though some of the men who have bought our dolls are, well, vertically challenged," she added, "It's hard enough being a man in this world, but just think how hard it is for a short man," she said. In more modern romance news, US current affairs show NBC Dateline broadcast a special report on 'sexless marriages' last week, which included detailed advice on how to enhance sexual compatibility. "Sexual compatibility is the ability to adapt to differences in each other's sexual preferences. This becomes particularly important when sexual boredom sets in, and one of you proposes something new," marriage councilors Doctors David Schnarch and Ruth Morehouse told Dateline. "Think of sexual compatibility as two people being willing to stretch themselves sexually rather than stick with the same old things they like in common," they advised.