A 32-year-old ad copywriter, who sings in a downtown band and has a lot of tattoos, was on the phone from the East Village. His tone was confessional.

“For the last two years,” he said, “I’ve been chasing tail, sowing my wild oats, literally meeting girls and bringing them up to my apartment. And now”—his voice dropped a decibel or two—“I’ve gone three weeks without having sex. And I’m getting this response from some of my male friends: ‘Oh, good for you, that’s great.’ Almost like that’s more manly, more studly. They’re saying, ‘Oh, that’s cool, you’re laying low, maybe you’re clearing the way for something more meaningful.’”

The foppish owner of one of the city’s more exclusive nightclubs agreed. “Instead of saying you bedded four models, now it’s, ‘Hey, I’m in love,’” he said. “Now it’s like, ‘Check it out—I’m in a relationship.’ They rub that in your face. When he’s known the girl for three days.”

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Are New Yorker’s infamously brutal bachelors becoming lovesick? While it’s too early to tell if the wolves have decided to leave the hunting ground and search for a warm den, there’s no question that the appeal of playing erotic pinball through the city’s beeping and buzzing and blinking female population is wearing thin.

Meet the New Romantics. Perhaps stunned into hibernation over the past decade by the city’s Sex and the City-spawned, stiletto-and-Stoli succubi, New York males are often more apt to be spotted scribbling wistful journal entries while sipping tea at Smith Street cafes these days than prowling the night for nookie. And it’s not uncommon to hear a swain declare he’s itching to meet a woman for a “real” relationship—“but not one from New York.” Their role models are sensitive, wounded mooners such as Owen Wilson, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Gosling.

Until very recently, to be a single man in your late 20’s to early 30’s was a perfectly acceptable, indeed desirable, station in Gotham society. The bachelor walked tall with a devil-may-care air; he was the pride and joy of the gender. Go on, rough beast, his married buddies would say under their breath, survive as long as you can. Of all New Yorkers, he was willing to be lucky, and by God if he didn’t get lucky. And if he wound up barking at love’s door, so be it.

But today’s bachelor seems in a hurry to flee his lush prison of desire.

Over the past two years, Andrew, a 28-year-old lawyer, has witnessed the bachelor backlash. “Those in relationships have been getting engaged,” he said. “Those who were dating have been getting into relationships; and those who were playing the field have been dating.

“This Valentine’s Day, I’ll be hard-pressed to think of a friend who won’t be out on a date, and that’s definitely the first time I could say that,” he continued, noting that he has only one friend left who is not in a serious relationship.

“Bachelors are the ones who haven’t yet passed on to the higher level of Scientology,” joked 29-year-old novelist and man-about-town Dana Vachon, who added that when he’s around married couple friends, he feels as though the women are checking to see if he has hair on his palms.

In addition, a priapically-prolonged bachelorhood may raise questions about a man’s sexuality (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) “It was much better to be a bachelor in my day,“ said novelist Tom Wolfe. “Because today anyone who is not married or in a flamingly obvious affair is questionable sexually.”

“The bachelor stereotype has lost its luster,” said Adam, a 27-year-old consultant, explaining that he “signed off” the bachelor game about a year ago. Two years of chasing women had gotten the best of him.

One of Mr. Vachon’s pals recently got hitched. The news tore through his group of single friends like a love train. “We all psyched ourselves into thinking we really wanted to be in meaningful relationships,” he said. Mr. Vachon found himself on a trip to Madrid to meet a girlfriend’s parents. Another friend embarked on a “wooing campaign” in Monterey. The sea change reminded Mr. Vachon of a Gore Vidal line about how when he hit his 30’s, he watched so many of his friends “vanish into marriage.”

Speaking of woo: The owner of Magnolia Flowers confirmed that he’s had many more “young, hip” male patrons of late.

For Kenyon Phillips—the ad copywriter and rock crooner we met above—weddings have become a dreaded event. Weddings! The event bachelors once anticipated with bated breath. And, he allowed, “Even to be at a dinner or just going to parties, just going out—the fact that I’m alone, I feel like the odd man out.” He said he recognizes a similar sense of discomfort in his fellow young bachelors: “You can see it in their eyes, and in the fact that they’re alone.”

Mr. Phillips said he knew he’d reached a desperate, crazy place when, after a third date recently, he found himself blurting out, “I really think I’m falling for you.”

Within an hour, the girl was out the door.

At a party a couple weeks back, Sean McCusker, a creative marketing director at a magazine, beckoned a young woman he had met only minutes before to allow him to cook her dinner.

“I don’t mind being single,” he said. “Of course, I would like to be in a relationship. I guess. I like going out on dates with women. And if that includes expensive dinners or trips—I enjoy doing that with a chick that I am into somewhat. Even if I’m not in love with her, I just enjoy that female companionship.”

Kimberly, 27, an assistant who lives in the West Village, agreed to a blind date last month. The guy was a friend of a friend, and had noticed her one night at a bar—he subsequently passed word along that he wanted to “court” her.

“Before we even went on our first date,” Kimberly recalled, “he called me three days in a row. Each time, he wanted to talk about feelings, our families, et cetera, which seemed odd, but innocent.” Come date night: “Before I could even take my coat off, he was asking me about my past relationships and what I’m looking for in a boyfriend,” she said. “He was very open and honest about wanting to find ‘the one,’ and said he wanted to date me because our families were on the same ‘level,’ and I was the type of girl he could marry.”

After the date he insisted on walking her home. Passing his car, he reached in and—voilà!—whipped out a bottle of champagne. She didn’t have the heart to reject his offer to have some bubbly at her place. But once the cork had been popped, the fellow insisted on showing her his match.com profile. Then he asked her if he would indulge her in a good-night snuggle.

“SNUGGLE!” Kimberly said. “I laughed and pretended I didn’t hear him, while trying not to vomit.”

Then there is the now-famous case of Patrick Moberg, the lovelorn Web designer who saw a face he liked on the subway, went home and created the Web site nygirlofmydreams.com, drew her picture, and then posted it with the note “I saw the girl of my dreams on the subway tonight. Please help me find her.” What has become of their romance since appearing on Good Morning America is anybody’s guess.

And what of the melancholy poetry that rock star Ryan Adams has been e-mailing to Gawker? “JJ,” he wrote, referring to his ex-girlfriend, model Jessica Joffe, “blocked my e-mail. If you like, here is a poem to share.”

“When a woman leaves, she leaves, and leaves,” the poem began, continuing on for another 40 lines.

Recently, Neil Strauss, author of The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, has been working with a competitor on the show American Gladiators who has biceps the size of your head.

“I’ve been watching him use this really sweet love talk,” said Mr. Strauss. “Suddenly he’s kind of mushy, cuddly, lonely.”

Some male beasts are bridling at their brethren’s newfound warm fuzzies.

“They take it too far, in that they cease to be men,” said Christopher Nelson, 31, an aspiring screenwriter. “And it’s not the women saying, ‘Hey, cool your jets, don’t go out, don’t get drunk as much.’ They’re censoring themselves. And that’s annoying. And boring.”

But the New Romantics say it’s not their fault.

“As a guy who’s dating, I’ve felt a certain pressure to be harder than I really want to be,” said Mr. Phillips. “There’s a sense that a girl will call you a pussy or won’t respect you if you blurt out, ‘I love you.’ If you appear too needy, the women are repelled. And if it’s so uncool in these women’s minds to fall in love, and be head over heels and be like the girl and the guy in A Room With a View, well, where does that leave me?”

When men are citing Merchant Ivory films, times are indeed most strange.

Freelance writer Joshua David Stein, who is currently “giving it a go” with a girlfriend in London—keeping with the new trend among New York males of searching for mates outside the five boroughs—chalks things up to a softening of the male identity.

“I’m talking to my guy friends,” said Mr. Stein, who recently published an article in a national magazine about getting his feelings hurt by a woman. “And they are sentimental.”

He added that after a while, the appeal of one-night stands wears off: “Sex can get to be basically like working out.”

Mr. Strauss, however, injected a note of caution into this flowery fog of dreamy dudes.

“The truth is that this type of man may be even worse, and more dangerous, than a sex-chasing player,” he said. “They may be love addicts—who are way worse than sex addicts.”

—Additional reporting by Leigh Kamping-Carder