The Truth Behind Why Matchmakers Are

Afraid of Women…by Julie Ferman

The matchmaking industry is slowly and steadily closing

its doors to women.

It’s the sad truth. The majority of personal

matchmakers today will only take on a male client.

These “Guy Clients Only” matchmakers are usually

happy to “inventory” women for free, through online

profile submission, but … they won’t spend much if

any time on women who inquire (unless she’s a 27

year old hottie) and they’re reluctant or simply

refuse to take women on as personal search clients. It’s time someone addressed this issue.

A quick online search for a “matchmaker” in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York or Miami will typically

lead to numerous high end matchmaking agencies, and a quick dig into their service offerings will

reveal the truth, which is that most are looking to work with high end men as clients, never or rarely

with women.

If they do take on female clients, it’s most likely a “blind date matchmaking” company, which will

provide a certain number of introductions, however neither he nor she have an opportunity to see

photos and detailed profiles first. That type of matchmaking agency might be the ideal fit for the

Average Joe and the Average Jill, but not usually for the highly desirable, deservedly selective client,

regardless of gender.

Why are matchmakers afraid of women? What does this

mean? And what can we learn from this tragic trend?

First, the context.

I know what it feels like to be that really great girl who can’t seem to find the right guy. I’ll never forget

the Friday evening back in 1990 when I was 29.9 years old, sitting solo at an Ethiopian restaurant on

the Delmar Loop in St. Louis. I was feeling crippled and compromised, having had a recent surgery

which left me with just half of one ovary, and I was a girl who REALLY wanted marriage and kids.

So there I was, feeling like the world’s greatest loser, combing the Riverfront Times personal ads in

this funky restaurant. I felt a wave of The Yuks rushing through my body as I entertained the notion of

placing a personal ad.

My savior?

There were three professional dating agencies advertising in that paper. I ripped the page out, ran

home and called all three agencies.

The agency I chose to join was the local video dating service. A rational concept – thousands

of single men and women, all in one place at one time, all having shelled out a pretty penny to be

there, in an earnest attempt to find a loving partnership. $1450 was the price tag, which was a chuck

out of my $35K hotel exec salary. I did shell out that dough, even though the marketing, the buy-today

sales pressure, and the slick office environment made me wonder if I was being taken for a ride.

All’s well that ends well – I did in fact meet my husband through that dating agency, and later dragged

my sister to that same office, where she found her guy, and we’re both thankful that we found the

courage to walk through that dating agency’s door.

Matchmaking Evolved.

There were two types of agencies that have dominated the marketplace over these past 25 years.

1. Blind-Date matchmaking companies:

Like It’s Just Lunch, Matchmaker International, Together – wherein the client has little or no control

over who they met. As with all traditional “blind date” agencies, at the most affordable service levels,

the clients didn’t have pre-approval for their matches; the clients were required to trust the agency to

match them with the most fitting, appropriate people. These clients were promised a certain number

of introductions, and the client would hope and pray that the matches would be good matches, from

both his and her perspective.

2. And then we saw a flurry of video dating agencies enter the marketplace.

These companies offered a certain number of months or years of service, but since clients choose

each other freely, using detailed profiles, current professional photos (extra fees attached), and

videos, there could be no guarantee that there will be any matches at all. The most appealing men

and women received LOTS of requests, and then there were so many who were never selected, who

met no one, or very few candidates through the process.

With both approaches (blind date matchmaking or free-choice matching systems) some clients were

thrilled, walking away with a new mate, and plenty of clients were unhappy that they had made the

investment to fork over what was typically $1500 – $5000 to join an agency, without the desired end

result.

The Internet changed everything.

Online dating brought new, inexpensive tools to love seekers, enabling them to enter into massive

databases to do their own searches. Whereas the high end video dating services have all but

vanished as a direct result of the Internet, we’ve seen a marked rise in the number of personal

matchmakers who’ve entered the dating scene in recent years.

The proactive search for love is more commonplace than taboo these days, as we all know someone

who found love online and most of us know a couple who met through a matchmaker.

Online complaints changed the landscape.

With the Internet came the advent of online complaint systems, which enabled anyone who felt inspired

to spew venom freely, and that’s where things got ugly for dating agencies and matchmakers. And not

all of these complaints are real – less than ethical competitors went online to write up fake negative

reviews, and then plenty of real clients went online to trash the agency or the matchmaker they’d

hired.

And who was writing the vast majority of these online complaints? Sadly, it was and is the ladies,

most often.

Disappointment and unrealized expectations were a tough, harsh

reality for women who signed on with matchmakers and dating

agencies.

The reality is that each and every person who walks into a dating or matchmaking agency is already

struggling with dating, not meeting or attracting the people they think they should be dating and

settling in with. The hope is that the matchmaker will be able to wave a magic wand to provide for

the client access to and magical attraction with a higher quality candidate that he/she is able to find

out there in the world.

If the client’s expectations aren’t in line with reality, then matchmaking will likely be no more fruitful

than online dating. The higher the expectations are, the more rejection the client will experience, as

the highly desirable candidate who is the “target” is very much in demand and has lots and lots of

dating options already.

Rejection is part of the dating process, and given that men have culturally been expected to be the

initiator, perhaps they are just more accustomed to dealing with rejection, and while they hate getting

the No Thanks response as much as women do, they’ve learned to “take it like a man.”

Our dating culture and demographics have caused very real

challenges, far beyond the control of the dating agencies and

matchmakers.

In the deep, rich history of human culture, we’ve never before seen a situation like we have today –

with huge numbers of older women in their 40’s / 50’s / 60’s and beyond dating and hoping to

partner with attractive, successful men who are emotionally, physically and financially fit. There

simply aren’t enough older men (especially of this ilk) to go around.

Young men are also demographically challenged, as there aren’t enough women in the sought-after

target zone (27 – 32) and women are waiting longer to get serious about finding a mate. Once a

woman is in the 37+ category, everything changes for her, as regardless of how fabulous she might

be, or how young she looks, the men she’s hoping to meet and attract are targeting her younger

sister, for one reason only — the fertility stats. This guy has one shot at marrying well the first time

around, and he will always be pulled toward the woman who’s more likely to be able to bear his

kiddos for him and with him, even if that young, hot cutie type isn’t likely to return his calls. It’s the

conundrum of our times in our wacky dating culture.

Anger spurred vindictiveness.

Lots of women had exhausted every other dating avenue and finally bellied up to the bar with a

matchmaker or high end dating agency to shell out hard earned cash in an attempt to find a loving

relationship. Throughout the 80’s, 90’s and the 00’s, lots of dating agencies willingly took on women

whose expectations were not in line with the reality they could provide, which surely didn’t help. And

when the matchmakers found that too much of their time was being gobbled up with calls and letters

from their unhappy and often disgruntled female clients, who were demanding a better quality man

and NOW, matchmakers started getting uncomfortable taking on new female clients altogether.

Demands for refunds, online complaints, and the spreading of ill will through word of mouth caused

agency after agency to cease being profitable and so many found the need to close their doors

altogether.

The model that revealed itself as “safest” for matchmakers was

and is today the high end male client model.

These highly successful men in American culture, even the unrealistic of them, who insist on dating

women 15 – 20 years their junior tend to be manageable clients for the matchmakers to take on, and

so more and more new matchmakers gravitate toward that business model, recruiting attractive

women (mostly 20’s and 30’s) and with price tags in the tens of thousands, they don’t have to take

on very many gentleman clients in order to be profitable and stay in business.

Women DO have options with matchmakers.

My suggestion for every woman who’s “out there” dating is to be privately registered with the best

matchmakers, find-able when the matchmaker is searching for her male clients. And there ARE

some matchmakers who can and do take on female clients, selectively, when it’s a good fit, when

they see that the client’s expectations are line with the reality the matchmaker is likely to be able to

provide, and when the matchmaker has sufficient “inventory” on hand to make appropriate

introductions for this particular client.

Ever-evolving technology and a rapidly growing national / international community of matchmakers

who truly care and who want to help women is enabling us to provide better solutions for women of

all ages.

What to do? Register privately here, to be eligible for personal matchmaking referrals throughout

California, the U.S., Canada and beyond. As technology has developed, enabling matchmakers to

begin working together, sharing candidates with each other, broadening our search capabilities for

both male and female clients.

For more interesting articles on dating and matchmaking, visit http://blog.julieferman.com