Here’s a new way to make some money that specifically eliminates sex from the deal (though who could stop you if both were interested?): RentaFriend.com It has a little bit of yick factor, in that people exchange money for what is usually done for free—the services friends do for each other. I guess I get itchy whenever money enters the equation, though I guess it always does, at some level or antoher. What do you think?
Popular rent a friend website allows people to pay for friendship; it’s created an internet buzz
‘Net Buzz ExaminerMarci Stone
RentAFriend.com allows people to rent friends from the US and Canada, and the site has created an internet buzz Monday morning. A friend can be rented to go to a movie, restaurant, a party, to teach you something, or show you around town, or just hang out. You enter your zip code and you can see profiles of friends available for rent in your area. In order to book that friend you must sign up on the website, and pay a small membership fee, and then you can contact the potential friends.
The site states that they are strictly a platonic friends website, and that they are not a dating website, nor are they an escort service.
A friend can be used for a variety of activities including: having a workout partner, someone to give you personal advice, go to a sporting event, or they can teach you a new language.
Many of the friends on RentAFriend.com are about $10 an hour, some are more. But most are willing to negotiate their fee depending on the activity. Once you become a member, you can contact the friend directly to speak about your plans.
If you are wondering why Internet dating hasn’t put matchmakers out of business, here’s why.
Matchmakers thriving despite rise of dating Web sites
Turned off by Internet dating sites that offer a vast selection but take a lot of time, singles are spending bigger bucks for more service that leaves the date-picking to a matchmaker.
By Susan Carpenter
What would you pay to meet the love of your life? Twenty dollars a month for an Internet dating site that lets you wade knee-deep into the dating pool and swim with millions of other singles? Or $1,000-plus for a personalized matchmaker who will do the wading, and weeding, for you?
Over the last few years, a surprising number of singles have been choosing the latter, despite the declining economy. Turned off by Internet dating sites that offer a vast selection but take a lot of time, they’re spending bigger bucks for more service that leaves the date-picking to someone else.
“Matchmaking should have been dead by now,” said Mark Brooks of Online Personals Watch, a Web site that’s been tracking Internet dating of all kinds since 2004.
Instead, the opposite has happened, he said. Matchmakers not only have survived but are thriving, having been aided and legitimized by the entity that was supposed to have killed them off — the Internet.
Like social networking, which had many dating industry experts inaccurately predicting the demise of paid Internet dating sites, Internet dating hasn’t killed matchmaking, but fed it. In fact, the three go hand in hand, leading relationship-minded singles to ever higher levels of paid service.
Though social networking sites such as Facebook may bring people together and do it for free, there’s no guarantee that those brought-together people are available and looking for a relationship. And though Internet dating sites such as Yahoo Personals do a better job of bringing together singles who are motivated to get together because they are paying to find dates, they don’t always do a good job of sorting out the serious from the players, or even to help individuals select people who are truly good for them.
Personalized matchmakers promise to do just that. Of course, they also charge a higher price — anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000, depending on the exclusivity of the service, the number of matches they’ve said they’ll provide and how willing they are to go the extra mile.
“You’re the therapist, the mother, the best friend, the sister, the nonsexual girlfriend. You have to be everything,” said Patti Stanger, star of the Bravo reality TV series “The Millionaire Matchmaker” and proprietor of the L.A.-based Millionaire’s Club matchmaking service.
“It’s not good enough to say, ‘Here’s a nice girl.’ You get them a girl, they’ll sleep with that girl, cheat on the girl. Then I’ve got to get that girl back. I have to go in and do an intervention and be on call seven days a week. That’s why I get the big bucks,” said Stanger, who charges men $25,000 a year and female “millionairesses” $55,000 for 28 months of unlimited introductions. (She finds her female clients take longer to match.)
Whether it’s hooking up her clients with a personal stylist to improve their appearance or enrolling them in an improv class to get over their shyness, “there are 5 million things to do,” she said. There are more details to attend to with clients: manners, appearance, expectations. “In the old days, it was, ‘OK. I know who I’m going to give you. Here she is. Bye.”’
There are two ways to work with a matchmaker. There are the clients who pay for introductions to potential partners and the people with whom those clients are paired. In many cases, the potential partners pay nothing, having joined the matchmaker’s network for free after electronically submitting photos and personal information through a Web site. Equipped with an extensive database of singles, the matchmaker then peruses the possibilities to determine who might be a match and calls in good prospects for one-on-one interviews that help to further hone the pairing in hopes of a click.
Then comes the big unknown: chemistry. A couple could look perfect together on paper, but they can’t know until they’re face to face.
Eight years ago, an actress (who asked to remain anonymous because of what she believes is a lingering social stigma) went on a date through a matchmaking service for the first time. At the time, the then-38-year-old woman thought getting set up through a matchmaker “was crazy” but worth giving a try because she “was never very good at going to Starbucks and seeing the cute guy across the room and smiling.”
After talking on the phone for 2 ½ hours, the two agreed to meet for dinner. “There was an immediate click for me,” she said.
Four and a half months later, they were engaged. Eleven months later, they were married. They now have two kids and are getting ready to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary.
That actress, it turns out, was part of the first marriage put together by April Beyer, founder of the 11-year-old, L.A. and San Francisco matchmaking service Beyer & Co. Working with 10 to 15 “very special bachelors” per year, each of whom pays her $40,000, Beyer’s talents have since paid off in an additional 29 “I Do’s,” a track record she attributes to understanding what a client needs, not just providing what he says he wants — like a significantly younger woman.
“A lot of times, a man doesn’t know to ask for the woman I give him,” Beyer said. “Matchmakers are not computers. Hopefully our clients are giving us the freedom to be creative and have a bit more latitude.”
That’s a very different idea from many Internet dating sites, which can’t verify all the information provided by their members and which match people based on self-selected criteria, allowing singles to choose their own partners, for better or worse. But increasingly, Internet dating is bringing in a matchmaking component.
In late 2008, Match.com expanded its hunt-and-peck model with a service called the Daily 5, delivering “five matches based on our prediction of which two people would most want to engage in a conversation together,” said Match.com Chief Executive Greg Blatt. In December, the site added yet another matchmaking feature called Singled Out, for “when we have a match with a stronger likelihood of connecting and want to highlight that to our users,” Blatt said.
“A lot of people put their relationships on the wrong course because they select the wrong people,” said Gian Gonzaga, senior director of research and development for Pasadena, Calif.-based EHarmony. “A lot of the things that are powerful forces for initial attraction are different from what makes a relationship successful.”
According to Gonzaga, attraction is important because it gets people into a relationship, but it’s the similarities between individuals that keep them together and lead to more satisfying relationships. It’s that philosophy that’s shaped EHarmony’s extensive member questionnaire and given EHarmony its reputation as the most matchmaker-like of Internet dating services.
If dating is, indeed, a numbers game, then Internet dating sites have the edge. But matchmakers have gut instincts. And for many singles, especially those with more money than time, or more discriminating criteria, or those who, for various reasons, would rather not post a photo online for the entire world to see, that’s even better.
“Women are very attracted to the concept because it’s private. They can’t be browsed,” said Julie Ferman, founder of Cupid’s Coach in Westlake Village, Calif., a matchmaking service that charges $2,500 to $25,000 annually for an average of 2.2 introductions per month and takes both women and men as paying clients.
Matchmaking is strongest among thirty-, forty- and fiftysomethings, according to Fermin. Her average client splits the difference at a median age of 46 and makes at least $50,000.
“If you’re having a hard time making rent or saving for your kid’s college education, I’m the first one to tell someone, ‘Don’t hire a personal matchmaker,’ ” Fermin said.
But if they do have money, Fermin is confident she can help. In 14 years, she says she’s formed the beginnings of more than 144 marriages.
Not everyone’s a believer.
“What smooth James Bond character with a great personal image is going to write a check to meet somebody?” asked L.A.-based dating coach David Wygant. “These men are looking for women they’ve never been able to get in their lives. They want the 27- to 31-year-old even though they’re 46 to 65. And the women, they can tell you they’re in it for love, but they’re looking for guys with money. This is not love. It’s a gold digger looking for a guy that wants eye candy.”
“Nothing is better than opening your eyes and flirting with the people in front of you,” Wygant said. “People need to get out of fantasyland and think somebody else is going to do it for them.”
That is, of course, easier said than done. And the thousands of singles using hundreds of matchmakers — ELove, It’s Just Lunch, the Millionaire’s Club — seem to prove it .
My client Leslie has been working her way through my book “Find a Sweetheart Soon! Your Love Trip Planner for Women” and also my ecourse “Ten Days to Get Lucky at Love.” She’s a great student and taking to it all like “a fish to water.” After President Obama’s Inauguration, she emailed me the following – I liked her views so much that I asked if I could preprint it here so you could enjoy it too:
On page 16 of “Get Lucky at Love,” you write:
“BTW, women find men who can dance VERY attractive. And a man willing to get out on the dance floor, despite not being perfect, can ask any woman there to dance. And she will probably say ‘Yes.’”
Analytical student-type that I am, I’m looking everywhere for Love Luck and Bright Spots, and I found one in the coverage of the inaugural festivities. What I saw really proves what you say about guys learning to dance—or even trying to dance. Just a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have seen this myself, so thanks a lot for that, too!
Everyone—absolutely everyone—is talking about the new President and First Lady and their first dance. The recap on ABC opened and closed with footage from it. They do look terrific; I think it’s the first time I’ve thought any of our American presidents actually looked romantic. But here’s the thing. President Obama isn’t doing anything all that complicated. People are saying that they “glided” through a “slow, dignified two-step,” but it’s the same left-LEFT, right-RIGHT, three-two-one-spinnn that I remember from high school.
So lesson A: You do not have to know how to move like a professional to look awfully good. You just have to look comfortable and into your partner. People will think you’re attractive even if you’re the President.
Fewer people are talking about the new Vice President’s first dance, but he’s happy to say why. He says he can’t dance. He’ll tell anyone who will stand still long enough to listen. He freely admits stalling so that he won’t have to dance as long. But here’s the thing. The new VP DID dance in front of the assembled company, even if he didn’t think he was good at it. And for double bonus points, he said he might not care much for dancing but he loved being close to his wife.
So lesson B: Willingness will get you almost as far as ability. In some cases, it will get you even farther.
Now, there were doubtless tons of guys at the inaugural balls who couldn’t dance, told their dates they couldn’t dance and then punished themselves and their dates by refusing to dance. I can’t say for sure because no one at all is talking about them.
Which leads us to lesson C: You only lose if you don’t play.
Dance-shy people take notice!
Talk to you Friday,
Leslie
When I was dating online back in 1998, I met a guy who not only was doing online dating, but also “It’s Just Lunch” and several other organized activities. When I asked him why he was doing all those things as well as Match.com, he said his philosophy was to start up as many avenues as possible that might lead to love, the more, the better. While I think that Internet dating is the best thing since sliced bread for singles, I agree that Match.com and the like are not the only shows in town when it comes to finding love. This fellow was right: The more options that you create for finding a partner, the more likely it is that you will find one.
I’ve been interested in the Meetup Group phenomenon for awhile, and last week I met with a woman who is active here in Tallahassee Meetup groups. We actually met because she wants a Romance Coach, but come to find out, she coordinates several Meetup Groups here and has had dates and relationships with men she has met through the Meetup Groups. For those of you who don’t know, here’s the definition of Meetup for Wikipedia:
Meetup.com (also called Meetup) is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as politics, books, games, movies, health, pets, careers or hobbies. Users enter their ZIP code (or their city outside the United States) and the topic they want to meet about, and the website helps them arrange a place and time to meet. Topic listings are also available for users who only enter a location.
Meetup has only been around a few years now, really taking off after 2002. Meetup’s became part of the political action in Howard Dean’s campaign, then John Kerry and John Edwards. The grass roots efforts that were so important in getting Barack Obama elected have a strong Meetup flavor.
But Meetup is far more than a political movement. Meetup groups spring up for all kinds of reasons, but basically, they are a way for people to with similar, perhaps obscure, interests to meet when they otherwise would not.
A segment of the singles population that really suffers in the online dating world are those with disabilities, particularly disabilities that show up in looks. Thank goodness that dating sites have cropped up that cater to the disabled population. Just Google a disability and “Dating site” and I’ll bet you find something somewhere for folks who are similar. But it can be real hell on the mainstream sites if you are less than perfect. Online Dating magazine is starting a column for disabled daters. Here’s the first one:
Dating with Disabilities
by Melissa Blake
What Does it Mean to Love in Today’s World?
Editor’s Note: We are pleased to welcome Melissa Blake to the Online Dating Magazine team where she will be writing about dating with disabilities on a weekly basis.
My good friend, Claire, once dubbed me “a downhome Carrie Bradshaw.’ I’m not quite sure what exactly she meant by this moniker, but she coined it one day after we’d had lunch together at our local diner. She later told me she saw me zooming down the street in my wheelchair, past the lagoon on a bright, sunny day, chatting away on my cell phone. I took the new name as a compliment; I suppose this puts me somewhere in the middle of a fast-talking, fall-in-love-too-fast power girl from Manhattan and a laid-back and hugely awkward girl from a small Midwestern town.
So who am I, really, besides just a girl sitting behind a computer screen and giving you an inside look at my heart and my thoughts?
I’m the girl who can usually be found wearing a chic polo shirt (red is my favorite!). I’m the girl who is a bit awkward, a bit dorky and still a bit innocent. I’m the girl who isn’t afraid to laugh at herself. I’m the girl who still, at 27, celebrates her half birthday. I’m the girl who colors outside the lines. I’m the girl who is bold and confident (though I’m not sure men have picked up on my boldness yet). I’m the girl who likes to leave a little mystery behind her.
I’m the girl who writes about anything and everything in her life, even the boys she falls madly in love with who don’t even know she exists. I’m the girl who is still so shy that she gives said boys code names in said writing (you’ll see….). I’m the girl who’s mastered the art of loving from afar, but ultimately, never having the courage to tell the gorgeous, sweet, funny, charming guy that he is, in fact, gorgeous, sweet, funny and charming. Or when I try, it always ends up not sounding anywhere near as sleek and sophisticated as it did in my head.
I’m the girl who, at 16, wrote a list in my diary of Personality Traits I Want My Future Husband To Possess. I’m also the girl who lets these 20 traits guide her heart still today.
I’m the girl who thinks imperfections are beautiful and sexy.
And I’m also the girl who has overcome great obstacles – 27 surgeries, countless hospitalizations and enough needle pokes to last me two lifetimes – despite being born with a physical disability. I’ve never let it define who I am or my life, but in the last few years, oddly, my disability has seemingly morphed into the defining factor when it comes to my attempts to strut my stuff on the dating scene. I ve often asked myself these questions: How can you get someone (a guy, in my case) to look past your disability – or any other of your insecurities – and see the real you. Not the you with makeup on. Not the you wearing a sparkling dress and heels. Not even the you who smiles even though
she’s sad. The real you – without makeup, metaphorically naked and not ashamed to show people who you are.
I can’t say I have all that much experience in the world of love, romance and the intensity of relationships that drives people to do crazy things in the name of love. In all honesty, when it comes to said relationships (especially those involving the opposite sex), my run-ins have all had three things in common: dorky, awkward and quirky.
But I do know I’ll find The Big L someday.
What’s better than redefining love altogether? Injecting my own brand of quirkiness into it – in heavy doses. The way I see it, love and relationships are like a one-way street always under road construction. You can see your destination, but can’t quite get there, right? And let’s not even get started on all those confusing signs pointing every which way. What do those signs even mean?
But really, what does it mean to love in today’s world? What is it that keeps our blood pumping and our hearts racing? Because let’s face it, love in the modern age, with an inbox full of emails and an overflow of texts messages, isn’t what it was even 10 years ago. The ways we find love and the ways we keep it have all changed, and I, just like you, am trying to keep up.
Come along for the journey; you might learn a thing or two about yourself along the way.
Who knows? Maybe someday I really will be the Midwest’s answer to Carrie Bradshaw. Anyone up for a glass of spiked lemonade on the porch?
~ Melissa
P.S. I realize this all sounds like one big profile on Match.com. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll let you be the judge.
Cereal daters
By Rod McPhee
Finding a partner over breakfast - it’s the next big thing, apparently. Rod McPhee dropped in on a Leeds event to find out how it works and, more importantly, if it works.
MARIE is eyeing up the staircase bannister which is smack bang in the centre of the bar.
“I love going down on them backwards.” says the 45-year-old divorcee and mother of three. “It’s my party trick. I was half tempted just to leap up during one
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of my dates and do it – just to break the ice, you know.”
Marie isn’t over-impressed. Not because three minutes wasn’t enough to get an insight into the men who attended this breakfast speed dating event but because it was sometimes too long.
The 13 women in attendance are seated around The Living Room bar and the 15 men who’ve also come along have to switch tables every time the organisers ring a bell.
“I wish they’d put a bell on my table,” says Marie. “I’d have rung it myself after about three seconds with some of them. God, some of them were so boring, just not my type at all.
“That said, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the quality of people here, if you know what I mean. It’s not a sleazy thing at all, which is what I sort of expected it to be, if I’m honest.
“It’s all very civilised really, even if I didn’t actually like anyone I met, and I have to say I would give it another try.”
Quality is pretty much a given at these events since all those taking part have signed up with the organisers http://www.datingdirect.com who’ve organised three breakfast speed dating events around the UK.
Leeds was chosen, alongside Birmingham and London, because it’s one of the cities which boasts the highest number of subscribers to their online service.
But why speed date over breakfast?
Katie Mowe is the company’s lady with the bell. “Well, it’s the complete opposite of an evening event if you think about it. We’ve held some of those before and whenever there’s alcohol involved it gets to the point where we turn up the lights at the end of the night and there are couples snogging in the corner!
Less pressure
“I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that from our point of view, but other people don’t necessarily want that kind of environment. With breakfast it’s much less pressure, much less intense.”
That sentiment was echoed by Mark, a 29-year-old hospital worker who has come along with best friend Marie to offer some moral support.
“I think it does work, actually,” he says. “And I think it works because you have a set period of time in which to talk to everyone so you know that if you don’t like someone, or anyone, you can just go through the motions and leave, or if you do meet someone you like you can arrange to meet again.
“Whereas if it’s in the evening, or even over lunch it feels much more formal and you can sometimes end up with the same kind of atmosphere as going out to a bar or club or something and that’s exactly the kind of thing I hate.
“The whole reason I’d consider doing this is to avoid a situation where you’re trying to get to know someone by shouting over thumping music, getting pushed around by drunk people.
“The only reason I haven’t met someone here today is because there just aren’t many around my age.”
Professional
The age range does vary substantially. The youngest is 28, the oldest 48, with the majority in their 30s. And, if appearances are anything to go by, the majority look like professional people – and a quick check of the datingdirect.com’s list confirms that in attendance is a teacher, a surveyor and a handful of self-employed businessmen and women.
Among them is Lisa Randerson, a 35-year-old who runs a business in Wakefield handling accident claims. She’s been divorced for eight years, during which time she’s rediscovered herself but now wants to find herself a suitable man too.
“I know it sounds a bit funny,” she laughs, “but looks aren’t that important to me. I need someone who’s a professional so I can feel they’re on some kind of level with me. I want someone I can talk to and have a laugh with.
“I thought I’d stand a better chance doing that through something like this because it has something of a structure to it and you know you’re likely to meet a particular type of person.
“I’m a very sociable person and go out all the time. I even let guys give me numbers and stuff but it’s all so random – you never know who they are, what they do, what they’re about before spending any amount of time.
“And what’s great is, I’ve actually spoken to a couple of guys here I’d really like to get to know a bit better.”
So, at least one satisfied customer. But why not more? More pertinently, why didn’t more people attend?
“There is still a bit of a stigma attached to it,” says co-organiser Daisy Swan, who’s been ensuring every man gets to meet every woman during the two hour event. “Up until about four years ago internet dating and speed dating was seen as something for losers
“Which is strange because in Europe online dating is seen as something on a par with going on Facebook really, but over here it’s still something people want to keep secret, even though that’s changed a lot now.
“So getting people to attend something like this can be tricky, but it’s definitely growing in popularity. In London we had something like 35 people attend and in Birmingham there were some absolutely gorgeous people – a couple of the guys I wouldn’t have minded going on a date with, but I couldn’t, obviously.”
Things are going swimmingly when controversy arises – someone, at some point, has decided they really rather liked one of their brief breakfast dates and gone back for seconds, knocking the order of rotation out of kilter.
It seems it will take more than orange juice and pastries to negate human nature, but the organisers don’t seem to mind too much. They ring the bell, clear the plates and quickly check the corners of the room, just in case.
I’ve said any number of times that Internet dating is the closest grownup singles have to the experience of being in college. College is the last time you probably were in an environment where just about everyone was single and looking. Little did we know then that things were going to change big time one we left for the real world. This column below is from “The Flat Head” out of the College of William and Mary. The author, Maya Horowitz, speaks with wisdom from the other side—she is still an undergrad, it seems, but recognizes what a good deal college people have when it comes to finding sex. She also correctly recognizes that the next best thing to being in college when you are a grownup is Internet dating. Yes, as she goes on later, online dating is not perfect and has its hazards, but for those of us over 21, it’s the best thing to happen yet.
Jeez, though, when I was in college, our paper NEVER had columns like this one….
Behind Closed Doors: College: the perfect sexual paradise
By Maya Horowitz
My Thanksgiving break was marred by a harrowing look into our collective sexual future. All of what I’m about to say may be obvious, but I think it bears repeating because most of us forget to think about it.
College is the sexual jackpot. Granted, the College of William and Mary may not be the orgiastic sexual Valhalla that some of us would like it to be, but we’ve still got things pretty good. With around 5,000 undergraduates, the vast majority of whom are unmarried, finding a coital partner should be as easy as pie (apple pie that’s warm and gooey inside).
Now, maybe it hasn’t been so easy for you so far. But let’s just take a step back and think about this for a second. The sexual environment on the College’s campus is unlike anywhere else. There are thousands of us, independent for the first time in our lives, stuck together in the middle of colonial-nowhere with very little responsibility and a lot of free time. All of our bodies are young, hot, supple, panting, panting, panting, searching, waiting, expecting, seeking release …
Ahem, I may have digressed. The point is that there are a lot of good-looking people (it’s easy to be beautiful when you’re young and healthy) living in close quarters. The chances of you living in a sexual environment as fertile as this one ever again are very slim. When we graduate, the balloon bursts (and not in a sexy, cherry-popping sort of way).
If you attend graduate school, you may be surrounded by a large number of individuals again, but many of them will be older or married. Those who are not will still probably have their own thing going on. Chances are, you won’t be attending loose sexual dance parties themed “bros and hos” when you’re 25.
As a working professional, you can’t expect your colleagues to be young, single or ready-to-mingle. You may meet singles at bars, but you’re entering at your own risk. You have no way of knowing anything about the random hottie you approach. At least here, when you’re at the delis, you can expect the chick you’re approaching to be a little nerdy, very smart and touchy about the whole “applying to UVA” thing.
What it comes down to is that the real world is scary. As in, scary because there aren’t enough opportunities for safe fucking.
The beacon of hope for our generation is online dating. Services such as match.com and eHarmony are becoming more and more popular. Most of you probably scoff at the idea of using one of these services, but the stigma of needing help in the dating scene is being sloughed off in favor of a modern approach to seeking a mate. Many of my older friends and family have used these services successfully.
But, here’s the catch: Online dating is vicious. You may be matched on 1,500 levels of compatibility, but the first thing prospective daters do is check out all of your pictures. Even with Myspace angles, sepia tinting and sixty different shots of your gorgeous face, a dater may find one picture they don’t like and fixate on it. Or they might check out what you’ve written about yourself and decide that you don’t seem that great.
When you meet someone in person, you get the benefit of the doubt. Your personality and charm may win them over, even if they’re not used to dating girls who are taller than 5’6’’. Online dating essentially allows people to filter out potential mates for idiotic reasons. Sure, I’d love to date a man with a body that looks like it’s cut from marble, but in real life I’m going to give the guy with a few extra pounds a chance. Whereas on match.com, I’d probably click away and never look back.
Here’s an example: What if you are a mustached divorcee who is a former smoker with six kids. Gross, right? I would never go out with a man of that description. But if I met Brad Pitt in person, I’d probably rip my clothes off and tell him to park his pink rocket ship in my garage of love immediately.
The lesson of today’s sermon is: Enjoy the college life while you can. I have looked into the crystal ball that is my older cousins’ and siblings’ dating lives, and the future ain’t pretty. Or, at least, it didn’t seem pretty from its eHarmony profile pictures.
Ladies, if you are really serious about finding love, an Irish accent turns you on, and the thought of moving does not terrify you, buy a ticket to Lisdoonvarna.
SARAH IN THE CITY: Luck of the Irish . . . ?
by Sarah Swain
I WOULDN’T normally trust a 65-year-old man with a Father Christmas beard to find me a date.
But I made an exception for Willie Daly.
I was in Lisdoonvarna, an Irish spa town with a special attraction - its annual matchmaking festival.
It’s a time for the single farmers of County Clare to attend to a much more pressing matter than milking - finding a wife.
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First set up to help farmers find love 150 years ago it still serves that purpose today - and a massive 40,000 people will arrive from all over the world during the five weeks of the festival which runs until October 5.
The local newspaper even reports a “Pamela Anderson lookalike” from Texas is in town looking for a hunky Irish husband - and she also happens to be an oil heiress.
As Lisdoonvarna’s official matchmaker, Willie knows what he’s talking about.
He’s matched hundreds of couples and claims to have a 90% success rate.
From a little booth in the corner of the Matchmaker Bar, Willie introduces people he thinks would be suitable for each other.
Men pay 20 euros to go on his books, while the cost for women is “negotiable”.
But could he help me?
“For you I would find a man with a strong build, daftish hair and blue eyes,” Willie told me.
“Not very tall, but strong. And a handsome man.”
And just half a glass of wine later, Willie beckoned me over to introduce me to someone.
“I’d like you to meet Sean.”
A small bloke with a cheeky smile got to his feet, swayed dangerously towards me like a Weeble Wobble.
His eyes lit up like the runway at Shannon airport when he saw me.
“Are you REALLY single?” he said in his lovely accent, not letting go of my hand for about 20 minutes.
But, after chatting with Sean, who had been enjoying plenty of the black stuff that night, I decided he was a little too young for me.
So I decided to take things into my own hands and look for a man in The Matchmaker myself.
But, you see, in Lisdoonvarna, the usual rules don’t apply.
It’s assumed everybody is there for one reason only - and there’s no time to lose.
An innocent trip to the toilet saw me get chatted up three times - but sadly they all looked like they’d parked their tractors at the door (as they probably had).
On another walk to the bar a dozen men looked up from their pints like meer cats, stretching their necks to make sure they didn’t miss a potential Mrs passing by.
Though, again, most of them looked like they’d just sailed in from Craggy Island.
But then I spied a stag night. I could tell they were a stag night as they’d all grown matching moustaches and were wearing cowboy hats in different animal prints.
And I wouldn’t usually approach a bunch of stags.
But I’m glad I did, as I was soon holding court with a hot lawyer from Dublin who looked a lot like American actor Adrien Brody.
His latest case, he told me, was between two rival hair growth drug companies - maybe that was the daftish hair Willie was on about.
He was a strong, silent type, taller than me - and he definitely did have blue eyes.
And I was thrilled when he let me gaze into them.
I might not have found a match for life but, to be sure, it was a great night…
# Thanks to http://www.tourismireland.com, http://www.fernhillfarm.net and http://www.matchmakerireland.com.
Publication date 19/09/08
Just about anything you want can be found on the net, even love, right? Here’s a resource for singles with a yen to find both love and adventure:
Travel Briefs
Travel dating pairs couples on the road
Single and like meeting people on vacation and business trips? Or simply want to put the downtime spent in the airplane, on layovers and between business meetings to better use? Matchmaking travel agencies can help you connect with like-minded singles who share your flight or itinerary.
TripLife, at http://www.triplife.com, lets you create a personal profile including photo, occupation, favorite sport, alma mater or any appropriate information, enter your travel plans, then instantly see profiles of other people on your flight or already at your destination. You can e-mail invites to prospective golfing partners or dinner companions and remain in the network for later notification whenever you and other TripLife members are in the same city.
Then there’s speed dating aboard a 737. SkyDate, http://www.skydate.eu/v1.0/eu/home/home.php, offers travelers to Europe this opportunity to enjoy brief encounters with several people on an airline flight. Women remain seated, and men make the rounds. Participants are discouraged from asking each other out and instead rate their speed dates by vote. Those who voted to meet each other again are then given contact information.
Other travel dating services include O Solo Mio, http://www.osolomio.com; and MatchTravel, http://www.matchtravel.com.
Isn’t the Internet wonderful? I love being able to go to Google, type in just about any shred of data, and find pertinent information. What did we do before Google? It wasn’t even that long ago that we had to do without it, and we didn’t even know what we were missing.
Likewise with dating sites: There are the biggies, Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, and eHarmony, but more and more, these sites are for “normal” folks with few if any flaws. What if you have a big flaw, as far as dating goes, not just a few extra pounds or too few little inches in height, but lots of pounds or very few inches? Or a sexually transmitted disease, or surgically altered genitals, or a genuine disability like deafness or paraplegia? Presto! The Internet is coming up with sites just for you.
Here’s an article below listing lots of sites for the out of the ordinary. Some may be understandable and welcome, like DateaLittle.com for very short-statured people, but you may wonder about others like DailyDiapers.com. Then again, it’s like sites for married folks looking for affairs: It’s just as well that these folks have their own place to go so that they aren’t lurking around the mainstream sites looking for unsuspecting victims.
If you are “out of the mainstream” and looking for a date, you may find a resource in the article below. Or if not, go to Google and type in your defining term (Like dwarf or transgendered) and then +“dating site”. And see what you get. Good luck!
Deaf and single? There’s a dating Web site for you
By MEGAN SCOTT
Associated Press
Paraplegics need love too. So do cross-dressers, dwarfs, addicts and burn victims.
Oh, and we can’t forget the impotent, diabetic and irritable-bowel sufferers.
How do they find true love on Match.com, eHarmony and Yahoo! Personals?
Dating went digital a long time ago, but the options these days are dizzying. Web sites cater to people with HIV and herpes, people who are tall or short, who are “married but looking,” who love pets, wine, tennis, scuba diving and golf.
There are niche dating sites for every political affiliation, religion and ethnic group. There are ones for Trekkies (TrekPassions.com) and lonely Ayn Rand fans (atlasphere.com).
Of course, none of these niche dating sites can boast the huge memberships of a Match.com.
But some people find them more appealing than sifting through thousands of profiles. If a quadriplegic wants to date another quadriplegic, why waste time on eHarmony?
“You have a few gigantic general dating sites that have so many members. Most people are going with them,” said Lisa Daily, a relationships expert and author of Stop Getting Dumped! “But what’s happening is a lot of people don’t want to date in the general public. Relationships are based on shared experiences. If you come into it already with something like herpes, that can be a help.”
What are some of the most specialized sites?
• 18wheelsingles.com: “Where single truckers meet significant others.” SWF looking for a truck driver for companionship and to ride the open road. Also check: truckerpassions.com.
• Airtroductions.com: Who hasn’t dreamed of meeting someone on a plane? Create a profile, enter your flight information (flight number, airports, date and time) and select a match.
• Cisforcupid.com: Breast cancer survivor searching for prostate cancer survivor for companionship and emotional support? Cancer survivors founded this site earlier this year.
• DailyDiapers.com: Wear Depends? Or Pampers? This site is described as a community for adult babies, diaper lovers, big kids, mommies and daddies.
• DateALittle.com: This dating site caters to people with dwarfism and others of short stature; men under 5 feet 6 inches tall and women under 5 feet tall. Also check out LittlePeopleMeet.com.
• Datingpro.com: For those with no luck finding a perfect match. Design your own professional dating site.
• Deafs.com: “Where deaf friends and singles feel at home!” Partially deaf man seeks woman for intimate conversation. Must not mind speaking up. Sign language knowledge a plus. Also check out: deafpassions.com, deafsinglesconnection.com and soulmatesource.com/deafpeoplemeet.html.
• Disabledpassions.com: For the quadriplegic searching for that special someone. This site caters to people with disabilities, ranging from visual impairment and deafness to people who use wheelchairs. Some others: disabled-world.com, whispers4u.com.
• Hairfetishpersonals.com: Men, get rid of that toupee. Women stop hiding that bald head under a wig. The singles on this site love the bald look, whether it’s on a man or a woman.
• IrritatedBeingSingle.com: This site is for sufferers of irritable-bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease because, “there is no better feeling than being with someone who understands exactly what you are going through.”
• Kizmeet.com: Helps you find those missed connections. (You danced with a hottie at the club last night but never got his name.) Search postings within specific locations, such as bar, club, coffee shop, in 17 cities.
• Marry-an-ugly-millionaire-online-dating-agency.com: Beautiful woman searching for ugly millionaire to shower her with diamonds. This dating site matches the poor with the filthy rich.
• MeetAnOstoMate.com: Wearing a colostomy bag? A dating site designed for ostomates.
• NoLongerLonely.com: A dating site for people with mental illess. Also check out: bipolarparty.com.
• Poormatch.com: Bills itself as the worst dating site in the world.
“Over one million people have had lukewarm romantic encounters since joining Poormatch.com.”
Prescription4Love.com: P4L is for singles who suffer from an array of health conditions, including burn victims, arthritis, infertility or impotence, deafness, HIV and lupus.
Recoveringmates.com: For people recovering from an addiction, such as alcohol or drugs. This dating site boasts the largest database of sober singles.
Sugardaddie.com: Boasts that it has the “most attractive, wealthy and desirable people in online dating.”
Talldates.com: M4M (men for men) dating site because “ordinary gay sites seem to exclude guys who get off on height differences.” Also check out: Tallmentogether.com.
Transpassions.com: MTF pre-op searching for FTM pre-op for a real relationship. NO GAMES. A dating Web site for cross dressers, transgenders and transsexual singles. Some others: tgconnect.com and tg.matchopolis.com.
I did a house exchange many moons ago, trading my Maine island house for a suburban place south of London. It was probably the best vacation I ever had. Here’s an article aimed at hooking up singles (for travel only, not sex—well, maybe not sex) for travel adventures. Just points to the great uses people are finding for the Internet and online dating-type of connections.
Have cyberfriend, will travel
Rules of the web
Fellow travellers just a click away
The internet is bursting with potential travel companions – but what happens when you make them a reality? Suzy Bennett finds out.
# Is the internet the best place to find new friends?
‘Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter,” wrote Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler, after what was presumably a very sociable fishing expedition.
Marrakesh, Have cyberfriend, will travel
‘A few days later, our trip to Marrakesh is booked: shopping the souks, gawping at riads and being pampered in hammans’
Other well-known travellers would no doubt agree: Samuel Johnson and David Livingstone both famously enjoyed the benefits of companionship on the road.
Today, Britain has 15.4 million single travellers - up from 9.6 million a decade ago - and while some happily embark on trips by themselves, most still prefer the security, companionship and economy of travelling with someone else.
Until recently, if friends or family didn’t share your interests, it meant signing up to a singles’ holiday, joining an agency or cruise, or posting an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine such as The Spectator.
But as people began to book their holidays at the last minute, this process became outdated. Something quicker and more efficient was needed, and it was only a matter of time before the internet came to the rescue. Travel networking was born.
Social networking sites such as MySpace, which allow like-minded people to meet and chat over the web, have been big news for a couple of years. What’s new is that travellers have joined the party.
In the past year, about 25 internet-based clubs have been set up with the sole aim of introducing holidaymakers to each other and helping them meet people local to an area they want to visit.
The advantage is that instead of being confined to a four-line advertisement or an agency’s questionnaire, travellers have entire pages to themselves - a kind of cyber CV - on which to post photographs, list their favourite destinations, their likes and dislikes and describe the kind of companion they are looking for.
On some sites, such as MySpace’s travel arm (http://www.myspace.com/roaminggnome), launched in April, you can even post your home videos. People simply contact those who share their interests and weed out the rest.
If you are a single traveller, the chances are there’s something for you. High society? Asmallworld.net is an exclusive, invitation-only club whose members are rumoured to include Naomi Campbell, Paris Hilton and Quentin Tarantino. Pensioner? Retiredbackpackers.com hooks up adventurous oldies. If you’re looking for love, Travelhotties.com cuts to the chase, matching people looking for romance, while Welcometraveller.com connects people with local hosts.
There’s no need to worry about your street cred, either. “A few years ago there was a stigma attached to meeting someone on the web, but now it’s normal to be looking for a travel companion online,” says Tom Hall of Lonely Planet, whose Thorn Tree website was one of the first to connect travellers.
How much time you spend with your fellow traveller is up to you: you can search for someone to join you on a gap year, or for a local to meet for a drink and a dose of insider knowledge. You don’t even have to meet. Many people just exchange tips by email.
There are, or course, risks associated with meeting people over the web. Information is rarely checked, and the person in the flesh can vary wildly from a persona that has been crafted over a keyboard. But for the most part, communication is friendly and horror stories tend to be more of the “we didn’t get on” variety rather than anything sinister.
According to Christine Davies, a former producer of the BBC’s Holiday programme who set up a travel-networking site, the Thelma and Louise Club, after searching for a companion herself, the chances of getting on with someone you meet in cyberspace are about 60 per cent.
“It’s a spin of the roulette wheel, but when it works, it really works,” she says.
Her company boasts dozens of success stories, including that of Chris Baker, a recently retired pharmaceuticals manager from Perth, Scotland, who went on a two-and-a-half week holiday to South Africa earlier this year with a woman she met on the site.
“I love travelling and have reasonable funds to do it in luxury, so I was looking for someone in a similar position,’’ she said.
‘‘Jill and I both had a burning desire to go to South Africa, so we did, and had a super time. We went diamond shopping, ate in lovely restaurants and went to wildlife reserves. We got on really well, with no cross words, and spent 90 per cent of the time together. We’d both be happy to travel together again.”
Travelchums.com, one of America’s biggest travel networking clubs, has had its share of successes too, and its first marriage. Its home page is crammed with endorsements from customers, including a pair who got on so well they wrote: “We are twins separated at birth.” So, is travel networking really a land of limitless potential? What would happen if a thirtysomething like me tried to find a companion? Armed with my dream holiday itinerary, I log on to find out.
I choose Davies’s Thelma and Louise Club, set up for women looking for companionship. Named after the 1991 film starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, it’s aimed at adventurous women of all ages, although most members are between 40 and 65. Britons make up the majority, but Americans, Europeans and Asians are there too.
As well as connecting single travellers, the club, which is free to join, organises regular group holidays, from trekking in Nepal and cruises round the Caribbean to shopping excursions and city breaks. Road trips are on the itinerary, but the Grand Canyon, scene of Thelma and Louise’s famous cliff exit, is not. “It would be tempting fate,” says Christine.
I plug my details into the four-page questionnaire and upload my photograph. Application approved and profile page set up, I am free to start searching. They are a mixed bunch: intrepid backpackers seeking like-minded companions, young career women, housewives with busy husbands, and young-at-heart pensioners. Scrolling through them is like browsing through a mail-order catalogue, only instead of buying some CDs I’m shopping for a travel buddy.
To refine my search - the club has 4,000 members - I use the automatic matching service, which links people with similar requirements. It throws up 24 potential travel companions. I decide to poke six of them - not a literal poke, of course, but a virtual one, the cyber equivalent of a friendly hello. Of the three who reply, one can make the same dates as me.
Her login name is Flying Solo. She looks nice. From her profile page, I learn that she is a university educated, 31-year-old living in north London, a social drinker and non-smoker. She lists her hobbies as sightseeing, clubbing, food and outdoor sports.
New to the UK, she has written in her “further information” box: “Looking to meet interesting, fun, adventurous types.” Ditto.
After exchanging a few emails, Flying Solo and I agree to meet in IRL - cyber speak for “in real life”. It’s awkward at first, and feels peculiarly seedy. Why am I meeting a strange woman in a Soho bar on a Friday night?
But I soon get over it. She is a high-profile entrepreneur, articulate, cultured and well-travelled. We talk about our holiday successes and disasters, our likes and dislikes. She has a self-confident air and our discussions are frank and open. “I think we are reading from the same page,” she tells me at the end of the evening, and we agree to give travelling together a go.
Back home, a Google search reveals she was recently ranked one of the world’s most powerful young businesswomen.
A few days later, our trip is booked: four days in Marrakesh, shopping the souks, gawping at riads and being pampered in hammans - Moroccan steam baths - with one night in a kasbah in the High Atlas Mountains. To save on single supplements, we choose to share a twin room and agree to split bills down the middle.
When we meet again at Heathrow airport, the sense of camaraderie we originally felt is still there and conversation flows easily. It’s a promising start.
There’s something thrilling about travelling with a virtual stranger. With friends or family you always know what you’re in for, but with a stranger you have no idea what will happen next.
Our hotel is an exquisitely restored riad in the Medina: all intricately carved woodwork, cool marble and orange trees.
The benefits of being with Flying Solo pay off immediately. Her haggling skills in the souks, honed by years living in India, are ruthless and she bags us countless bargains. She has an ability to sniff out a tasty lamb tagine, which borders on genius and encourages me to be more adventurous with local delicacies, although I stop short of boiled sheep’s head.
Being together in an Arab country such as Morocco allows us more freedom than we would have by ourselves. We wander around Marrakesh late at night, watching snake charmers and fortune tellers, eat in beautiful courtyard restaurants and mingle with the Marrakshi elite in bars and clubs.
I’m painting an idyllic picture, but it’s not all mint tea and bougainvillea. After just two days, some of my companion’s habits start to niggle at me.
On such a short trip it hardly matters, but if our holiday were longer they would be irritating. She warned me that she was a late riser, but she is rarely up before 11am, meaning I either have to wait for her or go on ahead by myself. She’s a poor timekeeper too, rarely apologises when she’s late, and leaves all the organising to me.
Worse, she has virtually stopped talking. I’m hardly a chatterbox, but entire mornings go by when she says nothing. We shop the souks in silence. We drive for two hours through the mountains - not a peep. We have a six-course meal, and still nothing. I try to engage her in conversation, but she replies in half-sentences that don’t invite further comment.
When I confront her, she seems genuinely surprised, and assures me she feels no animosity towards me. “I’m just tired,” she explains, but things don’t improve.
Instead of reading from the same page, I now feel as if we are in completely different libraries. I would be better off alone.
By the final day, I have given up. I spend the afternoon by myself in the souks buying last-minute presents, and she stays at the hotel. We meet only to catch our flight home.
Despite the disappointing outcome of my first internet-meets-reality experience, I am addicted to travel networking. I join the party at my desk each evening in my dressing gown and slippers and when “new messages” flash in my inbox, my mind spins with the promise of finding the perfect travel buddy.
So, my advice for anyone wanting to give it a try? Remember that, if good company can make the journey seem shorter, bad company can make it seem like a lifetime.
Read between the lines, take time to find the right person, and stay clear of anyone who eats sheep’s brains for breakfast.
# Suzy Bennett travelled to Marrakesh with the Best of Morocco (0845 0264588, http://www.bestofmorocco.co.uk). A four-night break, including flights, transfers, two days’ car hire and half-board accommodation at the Villa des Orangers, Kasbah du Toubkal and the Dar Zemora, costs from £770 per person during June and July.
Rules of the web
# 1 Get to know your potential companion by email before disclosing your telephone number.
# 2 If a site verifies users’ details, check that your potential buddy is registered.
# Meet your companion as many times as possible before travelling with him or her.
# Ask about shortcomings and be upfront about your own.
# Ensure you are both on a similar budget, but avoid discussing personal finances in detail.
# Give family or friends your buddy’s contact details.
Fellow travellers just a click away
http://www.flight-club.org
With free membership, this site links people who are on the same flight or in the same airport to relieve the boredom of long-distance flights.
http://www.someone2travelwith.com
A unisex version of the Thelma and Louise Club, this site offers single travellers the chance to scout out buddies. The fee is £30 for 11 matches. Most members have had their names and addresses verified, so it is relatively safe. Companions2travel.co.uk is similar.
http://www.asmallworld.net
“Anyone have a private jet I can borrow for a weekend to Capri?” These are the kind of requests posted on this ultra-exclusive website. Those who manage to get behind the virtual red rope share information about restaurants, clubs and hotels.
http://www.welcometraveller.com
Welcome Traveller is a free hospitality service that links travellers with local people in 30 countries. Members are grouped by very specific interests. Accommodation with a local host costs from £5 a night.
http://www.singleagain.co.uk
Looking for love as well as companionship? Try the traveller section of this British-based dating website. Annual membership costs £25. Travelhotties.com and speedbreaks.com are similar.
http://www.thelmandlouise.com
The website through which Suzy Bennett found her travelling companion.
If you’d like a subtle way to meet and get to know other singles over an extended period of time while traveling to interesting places AND affordably, check out Contiki. Read this article by Sheila Flynn which describes the experience of a Contiki tour. While not specifically billed as a singles’ tour (those in relationships can also sign up and travel), singles can identify themselves as available for dates with a red or green light designation. Romances can bloom while all are traveling in the company of like-minded others (well, travel-lovers, anyway). And I would think that the arrangement would be both safe for otherwise solo travelers, and potentially more fun with soon-to-be friends.
The tour options are world-wide, and better-known in Europe. But how about expanding to older age groups? Lots of us are over 35, ya know.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
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