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Kathryn's Blog: About Matchmakers and Dating Services
I’ve not heard good things about “Great Expectations.” Sounds as if the Attorney General of Arizona hasn’t either. See below.
Pricey dating service accused of deception
Jun. 18, 2008 06:33 PM
The Arizona Republic
Attorney General Terry Goddard on Wednesday accused Great Expectations, a Scottsdale-based matchmaking service, of coercive sales tactics and deceptive practices to sell expensive dating services.
The company, which says it has 30 years of experience in helping people find true love, said the case has no merit and looks forward to going to trial. It declined to respond to specific allegations.
The suit was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court against Sun West Video, Inc., which does business as
Great Expectations for Singles. The suit is seeking refunds for consumers and financial penalties against the company.
The Attorney General’s office alleged that Great Expectations:
• Misrepresented to consumers the overall number of participating members and members in certain age groups.
• Told consumers that two to three marriages occurred among members every month when it had no credible basis for such statements.
• Misrepresented to consumers that it had conducted a criminal background check on all of its members.
• Used high-pressure sales tactics that included sales representatives urging consumers to contact their credit card companies to get an increased credit limit to pay for a membership.
• Showed potential new members written profiles and photographs of people they said were Great
Expectations members when many were not available for dating.
Around Valentine’s Day, Sara Schaefer Munoz posted on a Wall Street Journal blog about high priced matchmaking services. She refers to an article in Financial Times which thank goodness clarified for me that Munoz was writing about introduction services that took both men and women, not like the trend we have seen to match wealthy men with gorgeous young women. I’ve written about those sites before, see here.
Munoz asks for readers’ comments, and she got lots of them! You might want to take a look at the comments yourself. The really interesting part is that practically none of the comments are about high-priced introduction services. Instead, they are about online dating, mostly success on Match.com! Hey, good advertising, huh?
For Busy Professionals Seeking Love, Are Dating Services Helpful?
Posted by Sara Schaefer Munoz
We’ve talked about how busy young professionals have trouble finding the time to focus on dating. According to this recent article in the Financial Times, several elite dating services — modeled on executive head-hunting firms — promise to find you the perfect mate for a price.
One service, the Country Register, charges £10,000, about $20,000, for an 18 month membership in its top tier personal search service, and is currently signing five new city-based clients a month — twice the joining rate for 2000, the piece says. The service spends at least half a day in the client’s home getting to know them and promises that respondents are met and screened in advance.
But why pay a premium when you could meet people at work, or take on inexpensive Internet dating? A former busy professional at Merrill Lynch says in the article that “The last thing I wanted after work was to socialize with bankers or sit down at a computer.” Singletons also say that online dating requires a lot of time to sort through profiles and craft witty responses to potential suitors. (It can take so much effort to present yourself that some are even plagiarizing profiles they find online.)
I’d love to hear from single professionals who are looking for love. What’s your experience with online dating? Where have you met — or looked for — a mate? Would you pay a premium for an elite match-making service?
Four years ago, I lived in a small city where it was hard to meet single, like-minded men. I posted a profile on Match.com and eventually received an expression of interest from a man who lived 90 miles away–someone I would never have met any other way. We e-mailed a few times and then arranged to meet in my city for a drink, which led to dinner…and, about 10 months later, marriage. We now have a 2-year-old son. Online personals don’t work for everyone, but they did for us.
When I met my final “date,” I had already been on Match.com once before. The second time, I posted new and improved photos (of myself) and a rewritten, snappier profile (that I wrote on my own). I resolved to keep the e-mail correspondence to a minimum. I set up in-person meetings as quickly as possible to avoid any fantasy, “virtual” dating, which is easy to fall into when you’re e-mailing someone you’ve never seen before.
For someone who had done everything I could think of to expand my social circle and meet new people in my city, online personals worked better than my other efforts–through which I met some wonderful friends, but no potential boyfriends.
Comment by anonymous - February 19, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I tend to think that the only real advantage that an ultra-premium service could offer is a signal between matched participants that both are monetarily successful. While online surveys are imperfect, I have no reason to believe that a person can’t put up a facade for half a day to present just as ideal an image to a premium service as they do to an online site. To be sure, there is more of an initial guarantee of the validity of the person’s identity and appearance, but if someone online presents a false appearance, that will be found out quickly in the light of a real meeting.
Totally free sites are probably so diluted as to be useless, but lower premium sites do some analysis to attempt basic compatibility and weed out people who are really on the fence about whether or not to put some effort into it; and ultimately, perception of compatibility is a rather imperfect science anyway, so having a range of options is probably a good thing.
I think that unless someone prioritizes financial success above all else, paying $20,000 is not going to produce markedly better results than paying somewhere in the $100-2000 range.
That said, while the traditional approach of meeting people in life is theoretically great, it’s a rather sensitive issue for people in tightly wound social networks; one bad relationship and one’s entire social fabric can become unwound.
Comment by Clinton - February 19, 2008 at 11:25 am
I watched the first episode of Millionaire Matchmaker and I have to say that even though I have set the Tivo to tape the whole series, I dunno if I am going to be able to stomach watching. The Yick Factor was VERY high.
I sorta liked last year’s Confessions of a Matchmaker. Patti Novak in Buffalo worked with average folks and did what she could to pair them up. I even sat next to Patti this last fall at a conference. She’s “just plain folks” herself. Doesn’t look like A&E has continued the show for another season. Maybe later.
But Millionaire Matchmaker—oooeee! These are not just plain folks at all.
Patti Stanger started The Millionaire’s Club in 2000. From the website: Patti realized that busy, upscale men simply didn’t have the time to go looking for a relationship, weren’t meeting the kind of women that they dreamed about, or were looking for a certain “type” that they couldn’t currently find. These men needed a service where they could be introduced to exceptionally beautiful women in a relaxing, discreet and confidential manner.
The Millionaire Club is based in Los Angeles, and it shows. Money money money— in exchange for looks looks looks. The guys? Puhleeze! On the first show, one of them made his money selling sex toys online, and the other was in his mid 40’s and wanted to date women in their 20’s. Even Patti thought the cradle robber was seriously deluded and told him so. Mr. Sex Toy had to be told to hide the sex toys in his office, but couldn’t be convinced to move the stripping pole there too.
Now, the Millionaire Club staff got together a bevy of gorgeous women for these two to look over—and amazingly enough, none of the ladies left when they found out about the source of Mr. Sex Toy’s money. They were all coiffed and made up to the 9’s, in teensy dresses that they hung out over on all edges, and were teetering around in high heels.
Both guys pick one for a date, both guys wanted to see the ladies again, and both ladies dropped out. Glad to see that the girls at lease had some taste. Mr. Sex Toy and date (Harvard educated, can you believe?) had a nice dinner in a restaurant, then HE TAKES HER BACK TO HIS PLACE AND DOES A DANCE ON THE POLE FOR HER. At least he kept his clothes on. Minus for her that it took her a couple of more dates to say “No thanks.”
Mr. Cradle Robber took his date out on what looked like a huge yacht with its own crew. Even though she said she’s see him again, she didn’t return his calls to set up the date. Bully for her.
I’d like to know what y’all think of these millionaire matching sites. Do they creep you out like they do me?
Here’s a story about other ways to find love other than Internet dating, if you are getting tired of that. I do think the stats they quote are wrong, though --- More like 10-15% of couples are meeting online, rather than the 3% quoted. Maybe folks still aren’t saying if they met on the Net? I’ve written quite a bit about matchmakers before—take a look here.
A match made ... where?
By Gina Kim - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, August 17, 2007
Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy and girl live happily ever after.
But what the fairy tales never seem to say is: How does boy even meet girl?
Now that we’re marrying older, working harder and socializing less, sometimes we need a little extra help from a modern-day matchmaker.
Most couples today still meet through traditional channels, according to a 2006 report on online dating by the Pew Internet & American Life Project: 38 percent of those surveyed met at work or school, 34 percent met through family or friends, and 13 percent met at a nightclub, bar or other social gathering.
But people continue to discover new ways to catch Cupid’s arrow, with 3 percent meeting through the Internet and 1 percent being set up on a blind date or through a dating service.
Modern matchmakers range from the professionals—such as a new Roseville company that sends singles on dates—to friends who just seem to understand the ingredients for love.
“Seventy-five percent of single people believe finding love is more of an art than a science,” says Trish McDermott, chief matchmaker at Engage.com and former dating expert at Match.com, as well as a former professional matchmaker.
“You certainly don’t need a degree to be a good matchmaker, but certain people are better at it—these rare people have good strong instinctual feelings and communicate well.”
Make me a match
The numbers say we’re getting married later and not staying married as long as we used to. Since 1960, the proportion of currently married Americans, ages 15 and older, has declined by 13 percent, according to a 2007 report on marriage by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University.
But that doesn’t mean we’re not interested in wedding bells. About 85 percent of Americans are expected to visit the altar at some time in their lives; it’s 70 percent in some European nations, the report found.
“Love has persevered because it feels good,” says McDermott, who noted a departure from that original purpose of coupledom—reproduction and protection. “We want to reach out and make connections, and most if not all of us feel an emptiness if we don’t.”
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, singles stepped up their date-seeking avenues, hoping to find a partner to experience difficult times with, McDermott says.
“You have your friends, you have your family, but there’s nothing like coming home and cuddling with somebody who tells you everything’s going to be all right,” says Julie Paiva, founder and chief executive officer of Table for Six Total Adventures, a personal matchmaking company that began in San Francisco in 1997 and expanded to Sacramento four years ago.
Yet with 92 million unmarried Americans—42 percent of U.S. adults in 2006, according to the Census Bureau—there is obviously some bewilderment over how to discover that perfect mate.
“In the past, people used to stay in the same community all their lives. They would meet their sweetheart in high school, or it was someone they went to church with,” Paiva says. “Now, we’re constantly moving and really gypsylike. ... There are no common touchstones.”
… Find me a find
Professional matchmaking has grown into a $236 million industry with at least 1,300 matchmakers, says Lisa Clampitt, co-founder of the Matchmaking Institute, a training and certification organization based in New York. The dating industry as a whole, including online dating, rakes in $1 billion each year, she says.
The Roseville professional matchmaking firm DinnerMatch is joining other dating services in the Sacramento area later this month, setting up three couples at a time during group dinners.
“The personal touch of matchmaking is coming back into style,” says Trish Stokell, who started the company with Ally Bush.
DinnerMatch not only gives singles the opportunity to meet other singles during dinners, whitewater-rafting trips, theater outings and trivia nights, the company also coaches clients on how to improve their appearance, conversational skills and manners. Memberships start at $1,200 a year. But while the company sets the scene, it doesn’t promise that sparks will fly.
“Chemistry is the mysterious element that is unpredictable in any new relationship. You can’t really predict if chemistry will be there—it just happens, it explodes,” Stokell says. “But the more people you meet, the better the chance of meeting the one you have chemistry with.”
Paiva of Table for Six, which charges clients $1,995 for a two-year membership, goes a step further and advises her clients to look beyond initial attraction.
“A lot of people think it’s just chemistry, but when they start a life with them, they’re disappointed when they can’t fulfill many of their needs, whether it’s communication or intimacy,” Paiva says. “People really need to look at a person and think, ‘Would he be a good husband? Would this be a good father?’ “
Paiva says she believes, like the Jewish yenta and the nayan in India, that values-based matches might be the key to lasting happiness.
“It’s not a bad idea to look at it from that angle, of will these lives mesh together easily,” Paiva says. “Physical characteristics are important—I’m not suggesting someone go completely against chemistry—but I think they would be a lot happier if they were looking below the surface and getting to know that authentic person.”
… Catch me a catch
While it may take a village to raise a child, that village may also be necessary to trigger that thing called love.
“It’s hard to meet people,” says Kevin Wehr, assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Sacramento.
Perhaps you’ve met everyone in your softball league and at the dog park. You’ve dated everyone available at work and your yoga studio, too. But you have yet to be bitten by the love bug.
“We’re more and more busy today, and we’re working harder than we’ve ever worked,” Wehr says. “Those things tend to isolate us more in terms of our social lives.”
Plus, Americans are getting their careers on track first and marrying later—the median age of women walking down the aisle is 26, up from 20 in 1960; and men are getting hitched at 27 instead of 23, according to the National Marriage project report.
By the time someone decides wedding bells are in order, it might feel a bit urgent, Wehr says.
Online dating has expanded from what Engage.com’s McDermott calls a “warehouse” model, with millions of people waiting for someone to sift through profile after profile and then offer a wink or a message, into a social community that happens to be on the World Wide Web.
Engage.com was launched in 2005 and allows singles to post the usual profile. Then it allows their single and non-single friends to authenticate what they say and look like, and set them up with other users, all for free. The goal is to move away from exaggeration over one’s rock-solid body or high-paying job.
“If you ask what people in their lives make the best matchmakers, it’s their friends,” McDermott says. “Sites like Engage provide opportunities for people to use technology to fall in love the good-old fashioned way, with a little help from our friends.”
… And make me a perfect match
Friends may know us best. But that doesn’t mean every friend is a qualified matchmaker. Experts agree that some people simply have the right intuition.
Trudy Somers, 47, an English teacher at Franklin High School, has set up at least 20 couples, mostly during her 20s and 30s, with at least half of the relationships ending in marriage.
“I don’t know what it was with me. I was always on the lookout for good matches,” Somers says. “I like to see people happy together, and it seems like when they were alone, they were miserable.”
Somers also had an active social calendar and served in a leadership role at her church. And she has always been a good listener who remembers the interests of her friends.
“I’ve had very few failures, and I think it’s because I figure out where they’re at at their core,” Somers says.
And even if fireworks didn’t explode at first, some of Somers’ matches found love in different packages than they were looking for—bringing meaning to the stories of frogs turning into princes.
“You have to have an open heart. Sometimes what you think you want is not the best fit,” Somers says. “I have friends who I would never set up because they’re so narrow and closed off, and they only want a certain type of person. ...
“But sometimes I can see that two people will mesh well together because their goals are the same, they want the same things and they’re both sincere about what they want—I think that’s the key.”
Last weekend, Drew and I were in New York City (or more precisely, Weehawken, NJ, which is right across the river from Manhattan) at the “Worldwide Conference” of Matchmakers. This was the first one ever, or at least in recent memory, and what an interesting group of people to spend some time with! Graciously, or perhaps to improve the attendance, the matchmakers also included dating coaches, which is why I was there.
I’ve written about matchmakers here in my blog before. Frankly, I am such a do-it-yourselfer that I just can’t see paying someone else to do the work for me. It’s hard for me to take people seriously when they complain about how much Internet dating costs. It’s CHEAP, particularly when you start looking around at matchmakers. One guy at the conference was with a business that charges $60,000 to $120,000!!! Yup, that’s the right number of zeros you are seeing.
Matchmakers have seen a surge in business by riding on the coattails of Internet dating. While dating sites do take a chunk of business that matchmakers might have gotten before, Internet dating has paved the way for people to actually think about hiring someone to help them find love. And the theme I heard over and over was the potential market for matchmakers in frustrated online daters.
Still, the fantasy that many may have about matchmakers being able to find you a mate when you can’t find one yourself has many limitations. First, you still better be pretty marketable yourself: Attractive, in good health, not too old, and with something to offer. Particularly if you are female. ALL the matchmakers complained about the shortage of men, where do you find dates for these ladies?
And remember, matchmakers can only match you with people they have on their own roster. What if your perfect mate lives outside the matchmaker’s area, or would never sign up? Most matchmakers do not allow browsing through their roster either. You are subject to who they pick for you. Me? Uh uh.
Matchmakers also remind me of eHarmony, in that they do not take on people they don’t think they can match. Or the less ethical may take a client regardless of their match-ability, simply for the money. Yick. In fact, matchmakers used to routinely reject all women Over a Certain Age (like 40 or 45). For sure, the older you are if you are female, the greater your chances of being turned down by the matchmaker. Let alone a date.
So if you are male, have the bucks to spend, and no time to waste, you might do okay with matchmaking. However if you are female and over 40, you’d do much better getting online and doing the work yourself. That’s where the guys are.
If you are a “Just give me the facts, M’am” kind of person and you want to know just what is going on in the Internet dating world these days, this article below is for you. Yeah, I know it is long, but it is CRAMMED full of info that curious online daters love.
The secret world of online dating
by Jennifer Litz
Google bought YouTube last fall for 1.65 billion, according to its press center; Time magazine’s last person of the year was “You,” for all “your” participation in online communities—from the MySpace juggernaut, to its many niche offspin communities, like the new “Eons” community targeted to 50-plus-somethings.
A majority of online daters is younger, employed and slightly more liberal than the rest of the population.
People are spending a lot of time online. But more specifically, people aren’t just paying bills, researching papers, and buying books or clothes there. People spend a lot of time as online voyeurs, looking, laughing at, and talking to people they may or may not even know.
Online dating is a natural in this sociological climate. According to a March 2006 report on Online Dating from the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2004, “dating Web sites created more revenue than any other paid online content category, as they netted roughly $470 million in consumer spending, up from about $40 million in 2001.”A flurry of institute research confirms that online dating emerged as a viable dating alternative several years ago.
In full disclosure, I will tell you that I have had a taste of online dating, but it took me a while to accept the “online dater” label. (A Pew report has spelled out the criteria of an online dater: “Looking at the total Internet population, 11 percent of all American Internet-using adults—about 16 million people—say they have gone to an online dating Web site or [a site] where they can meet people online. We call them online daters in this report.”) As the former resident blogger for an online dating site who met a guy by perusing user profiles, even I am considered an online dater—even though my examination of his user profile was part of my research to write those blogs.
Who Dates Online?
A majority of online daters is younger, employed and slightly more liberal than the rest of the population, but older people are online daters too. A February 2006 paper from the MIT Sloan School of Management called “What Makes You Click? – Mate Preferences and Matching Outcomes in Online Dating” surveyed 22,000 users of an unnamed “major” online dating service; users were located in the Boston and San Diego areas. The study involved observing the daters’ activities for three months, including introductory “profiling” information the users supplied to the sites, such as age, height, income, and other demographic and physical characteristics.
The MIT report found that online daters tended to be younger than their “general population” counterparts; the median age for a site user was 26-35, while the general populations of Boston and San Diego’s median age ranges were in the 36-45 range. The study also found that site users tended to be more educated and have slightly higher incomes than the general population and online users who did not go on dating sites.
The Pew study confirms these findings—to an extent. Surveying a “representative sample” of 3,215 phone-owning Americans in the continental United States, among the results found was that the online daters tended to be younger and employed. No reports of higher education or income levels were reported. Rather, since the largest segment—18 percent—of online daters were determined to be in the 18 – 29 range, those earning slightly lower incomes were determined to be online daters. Age breakdowns for the rest of site users were as follows: 11 percent in the 30–49 year age-range, and nine percent in the 50- plus range.
That study also found online daters were more likely than the general population to support gay marriage and women’s rights; less likely than the general population to be religious.
As mentioned earlier, about one in 10 Internet users have gone to a dating Web site; more specifically, 37 percent of a group who said they were single and looking to “meet a romantic partner” claimed having gone to a dating Web site, which represents about four million people.
But what is the perception among Internet users about those who used online dating services?
According to the Pew study, 61 percent of adults online do not think that online daters are “desperate”; 29 percent believe that online daters are in “dire straits,” and 20 percent think that online daters are “losers.” The Pew study says that the latter group has less experience online and tends to be less trusting of people in general.
What about the physical characteristics of online daters? It’s hard to ascertain physical attractiveness of online daters, as not everyone posts the optional picture with their profiles—though according to practically every “how-to” online dater’s guide, those with pictures posted get more messages and responses than those who don’t. Liz Edelbrock, a spokesperson for Match.com, says that Match.com members who post pictures get 15 times more attention, in the form of views, correspondence, or “winks,” an acknowledgment feature their site has.
There is, however, the “Reported Physical Characteristics of the Users.” According to the MIT report, 27.5 percent of assessed online daters posted their pictures. For the rest of the non-picture posting users, a survey was used for online daters to rate their own looks. According to the report, 19 percent of men and 24 percent of women reported possessing “very good looks,” while 49 percent of men and 48 percent of women reported having “above average looks.” Those who selected “looking like anyone else walking down the street” included 29 percent of men and 26 percent of women. Less than one percent of users claimed “less than average looks”; a few joked, “bring your bag in case mine tears.”
But are they being honest? According to the MIT report, there is a discrepancy between certain physical characteristics survey respondents supplied and those corresponding to national averages. For example, the average survey-stated weight of women tends to be six pounds less than the national average, while the stated height of men is 1.3 inches taller in the online survey than in national averages. Either online daters are a skinnier, taller, more attractive bunch than the rest of us, or they may be stretching the truth.
One thing certainly rings true in both real and online dating, according to the MIT report: physical attraction is the biggest predictor of dating proliferation.
What do Online Daters Want?
The MIT report found that online daters tended to be younger than their “general population” counterparts; the median age for a site user was 26-35, while the general populations of Boston and San Diego’s median age ranges were in the 36-45 range.
Much like the real world, physical attraction is the biggest predictor of having a prolific online dating experience. Those men and women in the lowest “looks” decile, according to the MIT report, received only half as many e-mails from other online daters as members whose rating were in the fourth decile; users in the top decile were contacted twice as often. Echoing what Edelbrock said about pictureposting daters being more active, the MIT study showed that women with photos received at least twice as many e-mails as those without, and men received 60 percent more e-mails than those without who described themselves as having “average looks.”
The data goes on to confirm that men in the 6’3” – 6’4” range receive more messages from users than those in the 5’7” – 5’8” range, while women from 5’3” – 5’8” fare better than their counterparts. The report even pinpoints the optimal BMI for men and women to receive optimal email messages from online daters: for men, it’s the slightly overweight BMI of 27; for women, it’s the underweight BMI of 17. That latter figure corresponds with that of a supermodel. According to the report, a woman with a BMI of 17 received 90 percent more first-contact emails than a woman with a BMI of 25, which is considered healthy by the American Heart Association. These sorts of physical preferences bear themselves out even in hair length; men with long, curly hair and red hair fared worse than their counterparts with “medium straight hair”; women with long, straight hair faired better than their shorter-hair contemporaries.
Conclusion? Online daters are a picky bunch. What they are, according to many, is serious about finding a mate. “I think Match.com is generally for the serious dater,” Edelbrock says. “We have 400,000 people a year resigning, saying they met the person they were seeking on Match; once they find that person they’re not staying online. People who put themselves ‘out there’ online are saying, ‘I really want to meet someone’—if not for marriage, then at least a serious or long-term commitment.” The MIT’s study corroborates that statement.
How Does Online Dating Work?
Usually, there’s a physical/demographic portion to fill out, followed by a variety of “compatibility tests” to help with member pair-ups. And there’s usually a charge, too—with a cheaper monthly rate afforded to those who sign up for multiple months.
According to comScore Media Metrix, Match.com was only second to Yahoo! Personals as of January 2006 in attracting the most users. It won that distinction with 3,893 unique users that month. Match.com capitalized on its popularity last February by launching Chemistry.com.
According to Chemistry.com press releases, this site is for serious daters who want to be matched with someone compatible, instead of having to search for matches. The “Chemistry Profile,” a lengthy survey the potential site member fills out about his or her personality, likes and dislikes, is common among online dating sign-up protocol. It may be different from other online dating surveys in that “renowned biological anthropologist, author and expert in the science of human attraction” Helen Fisher, PhD, created this particular survey.
Who else but such an “expert” could compile dating questions dealing with the comparative lengths of one’s ring and index fingers? Or have a “sensory perception” interlude that has respondents match figure shapes and sizes…
Then there’s the question in which survey takers are asked, after seeing a book cover with a man and woman— one backgrounded, one in the foreground, and both looking off over the sea—to label it with one of the following titles: “Adventures on the Rhein”; “Anatomy of Friendship”; “Power Plays”; or “Things Left Unsaid.”
Despite questions like this—which some men and women may find off-putting—many people who sign up to find love on the Web do get their wish. According to the people polled for the Pew study, “Three percent of the Internet users who are married or in long-term committed relationships say they met their partners online. That represents about three million people.”
If three percent sounds small, realize that in the Pew’s “representative” study of thousands of Americans, less people reported having met their spouses at church, at a “recreational facility” like a gym, or through a blind date or dating service, to name a few traditional meeting venues.
Of course, online dating is not for everyone. Three years ago, Christine, a Texas-based art director, logged onto eHarmony®. She had just broken up with her off-and-on boyfriend of six years, and was ready to meet the “love of her life” the Web site promised to find. She completed the elaborate entry questionnaire that had asked about her beliefs, ideals, characteristics and upbringing. She then pressed the button that asked if she was ready to find her ideal mate, and waited patiently for twenty minutes while the site combed through its thousands of user profiles to deliver her perfect match.
“We have no matches for you. Try expanding your search area,” the result said. She had already put the whole world. She married her ex-boyfriend.
Here’s the New York Times’ take on “Confessions of a Matchmaker”:
Specialist in Tough (to) Love
By SUSAN STEWART
Published: June 16, 2007
Hype and hokiness aside, some reality shows are appealing because they seem real. Buffalo is the setting for “Confessions of a Matchmaker,” tonight on A&E. Nobody will confuse that town with Hollywood, Manhattan or the castle on “The Bachelor.” Establishing shots show us a gritty, snowy industrial city in the unforgiving north, with a heroine to match.
Patti Novak, who runs a dating service within spitting distance of Niagara Falls, is a fine representative of Buffalo and a fine character for the reality genre. She’s plainspoken but not rude, a classic dispenser of tough love. When Charlie, her first customer comes in, she sizes him up pretty quickly.
“You’ve made a choice between doughnuts and sex,” she says.
“Life takes its toll,” Charlie responds with a shrug. He’s a former Mr. Nude Universe, but those glory days are long gone. Charlie now weighs 346 pounds and was recently kicked out of an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Still, there’s hope.
“I see sensitivity and a great pair of blue eyes,” Ms. Novak says. She takes him out for a test dinner and cringes as he slurps pasta: “For God’s sake, chew with your mouth closed.”
Charlie learns his lesson better than another client, Ashley. A cocktail waitress, she refuses to give up her fake tan and layers of makeup. “He might want to take you home and roll you over,” Ms. Novak tells her, “but I bet your bank account he won’t want to take you home to Mother.”
Some reality shows are predicated on cruelty, or at least a survival-of-the-fittest mentality. That “American Idol” seems increasingly to fit both those models may be why its ratings are slipping. Sometimes a little kindness is preferable to a freak show. Ms. Novak’s clients are not weird enough to be laughable or pathetic enough to pity. They are people with whom a lot of us could identify, at least on a bad day.
A very bad day, in the case of John. At 41, he says he has never had sex. He blames it partly on the economy. Ms. Novak tells him to get real.
“It’s not cute that you’re a virgin at age 41,” she says. “It’s a red flag the size of Texas.”
It takes John two dates to figure out his problem. (The viewer may guess it sooner.) Over a shared plate of appetizers, dawn breaks. At least Ms. Novak, who is watching, detects “chemistry.”
Ms. Novak’s criteria for success may be debatable. I know a lot of happily married couples who would probably fail her chemistry test, but her heart is in the right place. And heart, on a dating show, is what counts.
From my January 1, 2007, *eMAIL to eMATE*:
Internet dating is LOOKING GOOD!
My, how things have changed since I first tried online dating on
Match.com in 1997. Looking for love on the Net was brandy new
then and quite suspect. A few brave souls were tip-toeing onto
the sites and trying out the medium, but, land sakes, was it
scary or what? And no help anywhere. I know, because I looked.
For you newbies to the Internet dating scene, matters took a
dramatic turn after 9/11. The tragedy suddenly refocused the
country: Everyone now ached for connection and family. Singles
started signing up on dating sites by the hundreds of thousands.
Listing on a dating site became okay, even mainstream. No longer
is it unusual to hear that a couple met online. Now, your
computer is second only to friends and family as a way to connect
with possible mate candidates.
The influx was heady. Online dating sites experienced mammoth
growth for several years as folks signed up and plunked down
their credit cards. Growth has slowed to single digits, but that
does not mean that Internet dating is a fading fad. Far from it.
Did you know that online dating is one of the top money makers
online? “After nearly a decade of double-digit growth, online
dating revenue rose 7% last year to slightly more than $515
million, per Jupiter Media. (Match’s share is about $250
million.)”
Remember that there is only a somewhat finite number of singles,
so at some point the growth would have to stop as the percentage
got close to 100. At present, the estimates are 1/3 of singles
have visited online dating sites. Also, people come on and off
the sites every day. Taking your profile down off the dating
site where you and your Sweetie met has become a sign of
increasing commitment with cyber couples.
My buddy Mark Brooks recently posted some interesting info on his
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com blog: Here’s a summary and link to an
article on dating site usage in 2006.
Interestingly, Yahoo! Personals is pulling way ahead of
the crowd in membership and visits. Since I write for Yahoo!
Personals, I’ll take a little credit for their #1 position.
True.com’s stats are deceptive, as comparing the two charts show.
(I cannot recommend True.com—if you wonder why, look at my
http://www.find-a-sweetheart.com/blog/C37/ “ title="many blog posts">many blog posts:.
Match.com (my personal favorite, since that’s where I met hubby
Drew) is stumbling on in 3rd and 4th place on the two charts.
Another of Mark’s postings led me to “Market Spotlight: Online
Distilling the verbiage, it looks like number of visits
to dating sites are down, but revenue is nicely up. To me, that
says daters are getting serious and paying up, and fewer people
are visiting sites to snoop. Good.
Interestingly, the article also points to what I have sensed:
Singles get busy after Christmas, and particularly after New
Year’s. Online dating sites’ business soars then (and so does
mine). Seems as if the loneliness of the holiday coupled with
New Year’s as a time to start new habits gets folks off the
stick.
Tip: That means new people are signing up, right now! This is a
particularly good time of year to be active and looking on your
favorite site. Remember, new people come on every day—and
others drop off as they find partners. Be ready with your spick
and span profile. Be proactive: Contact others. Don’t wait,
because you don’t know how much longer this new Cutie might be
available.
A third posting on OnlinePersonalsWatch is an interview with
Match.com’s CEO Jim Safka. Looks like Match is going stylish and
pursuing a more upscale market: a new look to its site (adding
lots of snazzy black), offering a stylist to help with photos
Lots of
black and white there, too. And Match is piloting a real
matchmaking program with what looks like real matchmakers:
Platinum.Match.com It’ll probably be
pricey, sounds like perhaps around $1000 per year. Still less
that a tractional matchmaker, though.
Yahoo! Personals still looks about the same, and I think is a bit
more unwieldy to maneuver than Match.com. But they are doing
something right at Yahoo! You can’t argue with #1.
So I will stick with Match.com and Yahoo! Personals. Why go
elsewhere, except for a special niche site like JDate? Stay
where the numbers are.
From YOur Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
If you’ve ever thought about finding a millionaire to marry, you ought to read Valerie Gibson’s article in the Toronto Sun: “A Million Reasons to Marry” While the middle of the article is all about Patty Stanger’s site The Millionaire’s Club, Gibson throws in some interesting tidbits at the beginning and end.
(You might also want to take a look at The Millionaire’s Club site: I can’t believe anyone with ten cents would join such a tacky looking site, frankly. But the deal is obvious, I guess.)
(And I have written here about the Millionaire’s Club before: take a look.)
Here’s what Gibson identifies as the risk of marrying rich:
He may not stay a millionaire. He could lose his money and/or end up in jail.
You may be treated as an acquisition that he bought and paid for—which in a sense he did. And he may feel that money is all he needs to contribute to the relationship.
Here’s my piece:
You could become as disposable as last year’s Lexis. Especially as you age and lose your looks. Rich men want the goods they are paying for, and looks and youth are usually part of the deal.
Your rich guy may not be rich. The fancy car could be leased, the debt could be sky high.
And if you have money, don’t bother signing up with The Millionaire’s Club. Owner Patty Stanger says “Most successful men don’t want successful women.” Stanger also lists advice for women who want to marry a millionaire:
Always be a lady.
Always be nice to him and make him happy (being a good cook is essential).
Make his life easier.
Stay positive.
Be willing to relocate.
Don’t be a gold digger.
Be energetic and enthusiastic.
Have long hair and wear minimal makeup.
Cultivate what you shine at.
Be intelligent and educated.
Ugh.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
If you get the cable channel “W Network” (cable channel 34?), you
might want to check out a series they are playing called
“Manhattan Matchmaker.” I don’t get the channel, but the show
looks interesting. Click here for the program schedule.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Oi! Another good reason to avoid the sites that promise to hook you up with a millionaire: Charlie Sheen is looking for love through MillionaireMatch.com. You may remember Charlie as one of the clients of the “Hollywood Madame” Heidi Fleiss. Read here what I have written previously about such sites.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Houston Dating Services sounds like they ought to take a few lessons from the Australian matchmaking service Millionaire Matchmaker International. Houston Dating Services charges more than Millionaire Matchmaker International ($4000 vs. $2995) and it sounds as if Houston Dating Services doesn’t even bother to go out and find dates for their fellas: They set them up with their own employees!
Isn’t there another name for that sort of business, like “Escort Service”? (That’s the polite term.)
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Three different takes on the moves of American men to find “foreign brides” via the Internet or “international matchmaking companies”: The most positive by Craig Harris of The Arizona Republic (focusing on the Phoenix-based A Foreign Affair), a decidedly more mixed take by Erwin Lemuel Oliva for INQ7.com about Philippine matchmaking, and then a poorly written review by Gina Cadavid of a “mockudrama” called “Mail Order Wife” that nonetheless got my attention. (I went looking for what others had to say about “Mail Order Wife” and got links to 41 links for other articles and reviews at RottenTomatoes.com.)
I’ve written about before about this—not new, for sure—phenomenon. I was even sent a book by the author about his own experiences. I’ve conveniently forgotten both the book name and his. He fit right in with what Texas attorney Lisa Schwankrug described: “Many of the men who use such services have become disillusioned with American women, believing they are too career-oriented and not as submissive as foreign women.” The author (I do remember his first name: Sebastian) interviewed scads of women all over everywhere, eventually decided that a Chinese woman less than half his age and size was Ms. Right. Well, okay.
Sounds like “Mail Order Wife” examines the nasty underside. Has anybody seen it? Give us a first-hand review. I’ll have to wait until I am in the same place more than a week at a time (I’m going back and forth between Mississippi and Tallahassee for the next few months) before I renew our Netflix membership so that I can see it, too. The reviews are so mixed that I hope I can manage to sit through it....
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Rich men in Australia are now signing up for dates with “stunning and savvy” women—at up to $2995 per year. Millionaire Matchmaker International has claimed the territory that the 4M Club and the Millionaires’ Club here in the states is working: busy, very rich men and the women who want them.
Sounds like being rich does not necessarily mean tall, dark, and handsome, because Millionaire Matchmaker International also counsels the guys, if necessary, on wardrobe, dating skills, and the need for dentistry and plastic surgery, even. Short on the romance? Millionaire MatchmakerInternational will even do the creative work on the date, complete with ordering flowers and the limo.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Marketdata Enterprises has just released “Matchmakers and Dating Services: A Consumer Guide.” I thought about getting a copy, but the jaw-dropping price of $250 for 57 pages drew me up short. I went to the site to check out the Table of Contents and was not impressed: “Your Odds of Success — Finding A Match” was dealt with in one page. “Types of Dating Services” got four pages. At almost $5 a page, that type better be pretty teensy to get your money’s worth.
The news release for the report has some juicy tidbits though, and here are some of them:
Some Major Findings:
* The Better Business Bureau reports that in most complaints received about dating services, the consumer is at fault because they did not thoroughly read the contract.
* A number of dating services have been sued by state Attorney General’s offices or by consumers. Do you know which ones?
* Research shows that members of minority groups, unattractive or overweight people, those with rigid religious beliefs, singles with more than two children living with them, and chain smokers will have limited success.
* Singles have an equal chance of finding their soul mate no matter what kind of dating service they use. A higher-priced service is no guarantee of better results, although many will claim that their match rate is superior.
* Off-line chains such as Together or Great Expectations typically charge $3,000-4,000. Independent matchmakers (which are growing in number in the U.S.) charge anywhere from $500 to $100,000 for their services. The top ones usually cost $10,000+.
* Virtually anyone can call themselves a matchmaker — no license or certification is required. They are also hard to find, since most do not advertise. Word-of-mouth referral is used instead.
* Matchmakers today may offer many other services to make you more marketable: image makeovers, personal training and weight loss, wardrobe assessment, hair/skin care consulting, professional photos, written profile editing, etc.
And related to my earlier post on dating and matchmaking services:
“In many ways, dating services is a wild west environment, where ‘let the buyer beware’ is very much the rule. The number of services, both on the Internet and companies with physical offices, has exploded since 2001. Each type of dating service has its own positives and negatives. Prices for services vary tremendously — from $20 per month to $50,000+. Consequently, it’s more important than ever for dating singles to know what they are getting into before signing contracts,” according to John LaRosa, Research Director.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
My clients and readers often ask about other resources than Internet dating sites for singles. Matchmakers (people who maintain a list of eligible singles and pair them up for a fee) are favorites with both men women, I think because it allows them to stay relatively passive while someone else (the matchmaker) does the work. Matchmakers charge stiff fees, and also, you are restricted to the people that they have on their lists. You can read more about what I have to say about matchmakers on one of my earlier blog postings.
Dating services are similar to matchmakers, except they seem to function more like business, not relying on one person (a matchmaker) and their intuitive skills, but on employees who change, sometimes rapidly. Dating services are also expensive, maybe somewhat less expensive than matchmakers, but still pricey, starting at a low of about $1000. You can buy a lot of months on a dating site for $1000.
Dating services have poor reputations. Here’s an article about a Houston dating service called Together Dating, poor service they gave one of their customers, and the dozens of complaints that had been filed against Together Dating with the Better Business Bureau. Together Dating appears to be a franchise, not unlike McDonald’s. If you are interested in buying a business, here’s how to get more info on how to purchase a Together Dating franchise—price $98,400 to $254,900.
I’m far too tight to spend that kind of money to have someone else do the picking for me. I want to see what is being offered, have LOTS of choice, and save my money to fix myself up to go on a date. What about you? Anyone out there tried matchmakers or dating services?
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
All the chatter that has been going on here on my blog the last couple of days (see postings and comments on “Who DOES eHarmony Work For Anyway?” and “Your 1% Towards Making the Internet Safe") the last couple of days has really had me thinking again about the issue of paid/not paid memberships on dating sites. And my correspondents bdb777 and Jennifer have spurred me on to clarify my thoughts. Here they are:
Background for the uninformed—Most Internet dating sites allow people to post a profile without paying. This is to the dating site’s advantage, because they want to get lots of profiles up for people to look at. Big membership numbers are a big incentive to for singles to join a site.
The sites get non-paying members to convert to paying members, which the sites needs to stay in business, by restricting certain privileges. The most common restriction is that those people who do not pay cannot email anyone. On some sites, you can send out a “wink” or icebreaker, but nothing more.
Most sites give no indication on the profile of who has paid and who hasn’t. How this plays out is that if a non-paying member is emailed by a paying member (who doesn’t know if the other is paying or not), then the non-paying member has to decide if the contact looks good enough for them to pay a fee to make the first contact.
Having to pay a fee (around $20) to email is a powerful incentive not to do so, whether or not the person contacting is a possible match. Even though it seems rude, it’s all too easy online to simply not answer emails at all, especially on dating sites, because of the anonymity. So non-paying members account for a good percentage of the very high non-response rate to first email contacts. For instance, Match.com claims around 1 million paying members. While you never see the numbers paired, they also claim 8 - 10 million members. Only 1 in 8 or 1 in 10 members then (those registered and posting profiles) are paid members. So when a hopeful single sends an email to an attractive other, the odds of an email response may only be 10%.
As my correspondents have pointed out, this policy of free memberships with restrictions also works out well for lots of singles, who can post their profiles, wait to be contacted, and look at who is posting, all without paying. It’s like trolling for fish and throwing back all but the biggest guys. (I’ve always thought that “catch and release” made no sense and was cruel. Who says the fish don’t feel the huge hook in their mouth anyway? It could kill the darned fish, probably hurt like the dickens, and all for the fun of the fisherman.)
Additionally, if the poster is clever or the site allows or misses the action, the poster may also imbed an off-site email address, by-passing the need to join all together.
Who this does not work well for are the folks who are new or who haven’t figured out the system. Here’s why:
- First, their fees are supporting the site for everyone who has posted and not paid up. Conceivably, those fees could be cheaper for all if more members paid their fair share
- Second, newbies (or even seasoned daters) may not understand the difference in privileges between paid and unpaid, and most assume that because everyone is presented equally, that they are members at equal levels.
- Third, new Internet daters are new—they are inexperienced, at least with online dating, and maybe to dating in general. They don’t know “the rules,” they are scared, and they are vulnerable.
- Fourth, fear of rejection looms big with these folks, and even an unanswered “wink” can pack a wallop.
- Fifth, they are jumping right on an already fast-moving speed boat with a “sink or swim” mentality. Who knows how many folks can quickly figure out a dog-paddle, or how many just sink and drop out?
I call this paid, full privileges and unpaid/restricted privileges memberships that dating sites routinely offer as “Internet dating’s dirty little secret.” Dating sites really don’t want you to know the differences. That’s why they never pair the paid and unpaid membership figures. Unless you are an experienced, savvy cyber dater and have figured this out on your own, or unless you have read my many writings on the subject or had me explain the phenomenon, you don’t know why you have such a high non-response rate to your emails. Every single time I have explained this phenomenon to singles, new daters or not, they are surprised. Usually, they assumed that everyone listing was a full member and able to email back. And all had no idea of the disproportionate numbers of paid versus unpaid members (80 or 90% unpaid on Match.com, for example).
Also, I don’t know what the figures are for first-time Internet daters versus the old timers, but I know that new folks are coming online all the time. And as Internet dating has moved into the mainstream, the users who have been on for awhile become more sophisticated and more able to manipulate the systems to their advantage. There is no T-Ball or Little League that I know of for new online daters. Every newbie jumps right into the major leagues, right along with veteran World Series players.
These new players are most often recently out of a long-term relationship and/or have not dated for a long time. They are tender, vulnerable, naive, and easily frightened or discouraged. They have not developed the thick skins that experienced daters, online or off, may have. However, they are excellent mate material, maybe even better than the experienced daters, who maybe jaded, calloused, or just plain not good mate material in the first place.
When my clients ask me why their emails or overtures are not being answered, I tell them about non-paying members, how many of them there are on sites, and how they would have to pay a membership fee to answer back. Then I suggest that they think about what they can infer from this. Here are my theories:
- Most likely, either the non-responding poster is too cheap to join the site and play fair, or he/she is rude, because whether paid or unpaid, not to respond to an overture from another is rude. Or both - cheap AND rude.
- Or the poster may be lazy and not attending to his/her profile as he/she should: If the poster has met someone and is dating, so not available, or perhaps taking a break, planned or unplanned, the poster should hide their profile or resign from the site. Continuing to post when not really available is false advertising.
- The other, more excusable but least likely, reasons for non-response might be broken computer at the other end, sick or dead, or possibly the site has kept up the profile even though the poster has dropped his/her membership (some dating sites reportedly do this routinely to keep the numbers of profiles up).
Spelling out these possible reasons for non-answered emails softens the sting somewhat. Over and over, I tell clients: “People tell you who they are from the very first contact. Are you really interested in someone who doesn’t care enough to be polite? Or is cheap and trying to manipulate the system?” Be aware, those of you who do not answer polite indications of interest: That’s how you may be being seen. Is that the image you want to convey?
It is to everyone’s advantage to take good care of these new daters. Dating sites ought to make clear the differences between paid and unpaid members with some kind of designation, like Yahoo! Premier is now doing. That designation could be seen as a premium and thereby encourage members to pay up. (Yahoo! Premier members have to pay and get a purple P seal on their profiles. While these profiles are mixed right in with all the other Yahoo! Personals, it’s easy to tell who is a Premier member. Yahoo! is also marketing the Premier designation as a membership level for singles who are serious about finding a committed relationship.)
Experienced daters should pay their fair share and kindly and politely email everyone who contacts them. Just because you can do something does not necessarily mean that you should. It’s all too easy on the Internet to be rude and callous in ways that you might never be in face-to-face dealings. Dating sites and experienced daters should take on the obligation of welcoming new folks and helping them get up to speed. Wouldn’t that add to the general ambiance? Isn’t finding a life partner hard enough as it is?
Just think: Your perfect match could be nervously writing their first profile right now, getting ready to post. Don’t you hope that other singles treat Mr. or Ms. Right well until you find him/her, or your Sweetheart finds you? Wouldn’t it be awful if your heart’s desire got treated rudely, got discouraged, and dropped offline? Before you ever met?
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Now that Internet dating has hit the mainstream and so many singles have given it a try, suddenly the old-fashioned profession of matchmaking is re-emerging from the dark ages. (Read my discussion of matchmaker Samantha Daniel’s book. And this is my longer treatment on the subject.)
Here’s why, I think: People are lazy and scared.
Once you get out of high school and college, never again will you be in a situation of such similar others, almost all of whom are single and not wanting to be so. Getting hitched up after that takes effort, usually more and more as you get older. For those of us over college age, online dating sites have been such a welcome respite from the old complaints of “Where can I find a date?” or “There are no good men left!” Dates, plenty of them and all ages of them, are on the Net, looking just like you are.
But finding a good date that may lead to a great mate takes time and work. And we just love our labor-saving devices. So here comes professional matchmakers again.
If you want to pay lots of money, passively let someone else decide who you will meet, and rely on this someone to have a large enough pool of potential candidates to make a match likely, then by all means: Hire a matchmaker.
Not me. I wanted the best. I wanted to see what the choices were. And despite the effort involved, I was willing to do the work.
You know, I had not thought about it before, but my total mate search (not including actual expenses of meeting the guys) was probably less than $100. I already had a computer.
Not a bad deal.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Good Morning America has been doing a series called “Suddenly Single,” and today the topic was starting dating again. The expert of the day was Samantha Daniels, matchmaker and author of ”Matchbook” that I reviewed in an earlier blog posting. Don’t you just love how they tell you for two hours that what you want to see is coming up next? Then you watch and watch what you don’t want to see before it finally comes up in the last half hour.
I’ve learned that you can’t depend on morning TV for in-depth coverage of subjects, but Daniels with three mid-life divorced women just didn’t shed much light on the topic. As I said in my review of “Matchbook,” while the book was a fun read, a weakness was that Daniels had not been married. Therefore, she certainly has not been divorced, and I don’t recall that her single clients were divorced, either. So how could she speak with expertise about divorced women starting dating again? Daniels kept repeating that the women needed to accept and feel okay about their divorced state, and be wary about talking too much about their kids. Wow. That really is a big help.
I can think of lots of folks who would have been better choices for this “Suddenly Single” series. Like me, for instance. ButI’m really not interested in being a Network TV “expert,” or I would have hired a publicist who got me that kind of gigue, whether it was appropriate or not. Well, maybe if Charlie Gibson called me personally and begged. Maybe.
By the way, the last segment was baby animals from the zoo, and the cloud panther kittens made my watching the rest worthwhile. They were so CUTE!
Every once in awhile, one of my clients will ask about using a matchmaker to find a spouse. Since I have had no personal experience with matchmakers, I’ve been watching and reading to see what I could learn. I wrote about matchmaker Samantha Daniels in an earlier blog entry. Dr. Phil had a show on recently featuring women who self-identified as gold diggers. The segment about KT featured Patti Stanger of the Millionaire’s Club:
Dr. Phil introduces Patti Stanger, the founder and CEO of the Millionaire’s Club, an upscale matchmaking service where millionaires pay anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000 to meet beautiful, single women. “It goes from the low-end millionaires up to the billionaires that you see in the news and hear about daily,” Patti says about her clientele. “They get married and they get into relationships fairly quickly. They’re marriage-minded men. They want to be married.”
As for the women, she says, “We have about 25,000 women on file and we continue to get new ones every single day. Women just log on, fill out an application, send in professional photos and then we screen them.”
The women list for free. It looks good, ladies, until you find out the pesky gender ratios again: Dr. Phil asked how many active male clients the site had, and as I remember, Stanger finally admitted to 200 or so. 200 guys to 25,000 women??? Guys, if you’ve got the money, got for it. But it doesn’t look too good for the women. Stanger’s website is www.millionairesclub123.com
I got a link this morning to a posting on Ryze.com, a networking site where I am a member. Steve Lewis, a professional matchmaker, wrote about the difficulties of starting a matchmaking business. Now, there’s something you rarely see spelled out, so if you are interested at all, I’d advise that you take a look. His point #9 is:
9. The business model offering women free has worked for many. Theses services usually have only a few male clients that pay 5-50K for a membership. You must be in a large area like NYC, Chicago, LA for this to work.
This seems exactly the model of the Millionaire’s Club. And who knows? Maybe True.com too, which is charging men and not women, evidently (see my last posting). Get lots of women to sign up for free, then the few guys who then pay get their choice of a HUGE pool of ladies. And guess what, ladies? If you are not under 30 and magazine cover material, you don’t stand much of a chance.
Last Tuesday, we got six packages in the mail, all books. Two packages were for Drew, the rest for me. Clearly, we like—and buy—books. Most of mine were how-to dating and relationship books that are flooding the market. Who knew that so many people knew so much about how to find and keep a Sweetheart?
If you read these books like I do, you’ll find that not too many people do know much at all. A good proportion of the books are pretty bad. I’ve taken on sifting through the piles to find the best to recommend to my readers so that they don’t have to waste their time and money. (See my Top Ten list) They’ll need all the time and money they can squirrel away for their mate search.
One of the books I knew was “just for fun”: “Matchbook—The Diary of a Modern-Day Matchmaker” by Samantha Daniels. It’s a quick and fun read, with a titillating peek into the high priced world of professional matchmaking—Daniels’ fees START at $10,000.
Don’t read this book to find pointers on finding your Ms. or Mr. Right. I usually underline and use Post Its liberally. “Matchbook” only got four markers. But I had a good time, and thoroughly enjoyed my few hours with Daniels.
I did find Daniels (also single) and her clients depressing and irritating. She and the singles she worked with had one common characteristic: turning down candidate after candidate for the most trivial and superficial reasons. These potentials were doctors, lawyers, financiers, business owners, male and female, most at least high salaried, many down right wealthy. All sounded good-looking at least, often model material or even real live models.
Actually, this commonality became the one good learning that I took from the work: The search for perfection is doomed to failure, because no one is perfect.
So here’s my advice: Either read this book for fun, or to see if you see yourself in Daniels or her clients. If you are as picky as the people in these stories, you may need some of Daniels’ advice. Here’s what she writes on page 221: “I also tend to go out with guys who would be good for me but somehow I fixate on the one bad thing about them and fixate and fixate and give them a hard time about it until I ruin things. And then after the fact, I look back and say to myself that maybe that one bad thing wasn’t so bad. I need to work on not sabotaging...”
Sound familiar?
P. S. Here’s another of Daniels’ quotes I bookmarked: “‘So if you don’t hire me, how do you plan on doing things differently so that you have different luck?
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