Matchmaker, Matchmaker

 

Fiddler on the Roof 1971, Hello Dolly 1969, The Matchmaker (1958), CrossingDelancey (1988), Emma (1996, 2020),The Matchmaker (1997), The Deviants TV series (2004), Hitch (2005)

Anyone ever gone to a matchmaker? 

Raise your hands.  Right, it’s all dating apps these days.  Swipe left or right.  Put your picture up on social media and see who bites.

I went to one. And in the interest of full transparency here, I was raised Irish Catholic, so it wasn’t really on the menu growing up.  Meeting some nice Catholic boy at church or choir practice maybe.  But not a matchmaker.  That was exotic, and kind of…desperate.

My Dating Scene 1900's

So, I am old enough to have been pre apps in my dating hey-day. I know, shock and horror.  The wild west days when Facebook was new and cell phones weren’t smart. Back then it was going to clubs where you mostly gyrated in the flashing dark with strange men that you occasionally screamed small talk with.  Alternatively, friends set you up with their friends for awkward dates where you mostly talked about the friends that had set you up.  Of course, there was always Match.com but that’s another post.

 

Let me sketch this out with the picture of my dating progress at that point.  I had moved to a new state to work for a prestigious corporation.  I’d been there about 2 years and had begun to realize that the dating pool was a little shallow for my type—intellectual, funny, hopefully into movies or tolerant of my obsession with them.  I was not looking for Adonis, that had never been my thing—in fact that sort of intimidated me with my own body image issues.  He could be any shape or size, color, or fashion sense, all I insisted on was a decent brain inside and a personality that clicked with mine.

 

It was like sport fishing if you were a complete fishing amateur that tended toward sea sickness.  Admittedly I sucked at luring men.  I loathed clubs.  Also, my dancing started out like that timid junior high side-step and morphed into a rhythmless epileptic fit.   

Sliding next to a guy at a bar without an invitation would turn my mouth into a sticky wasteland where dinosaurs and clever conversation went to die.  But I did try.  Either I didn’t like them or, much more rarely, I did like them, but they didn’t like me.

Matchmakers, really? 

I think the matchmaker thing showed up in a brochure at my apartment complex.  The word matchmaker was on the front fold.  No fooling around.  It sat on my dining alcove table for weeks.  I would glance at it as I passed by on my way to work, meditate on it as I ate dinner or breakfast.  Did people actually still do this?  Clearly or no brochure.  It was glossy and printed on thick paper.  Not one of those cheap throw-away flyers. The layout and photos were neat and respectable, the people in them average, happy, clean-cut.  It all said, “You can trust us.  We’re not you’re Grandma’s shadchan and we won’t treat you like a freak who can’t get a date.”

 

I honestly do not remember what low I hit where I decided that I was going to try it out.  I’m not trying to disparage the idea.  It may totally work for some people.  I’m just saying that for me, it was a jumping off the high board at the swimming pool kind of decision.  I called the number and a very nice lady with a voice like a warmly enthusiastic travel agent scheduled me for an appointment.

 

I dressed nicely but not going-on-a-date nicely.  Just somewhere between hanging out with friends and job interview nicely.  I had no clue as to how this was done.  Did you dress to impress the matchmaker like you were showing off the wares?  Should I show her how I wanted to be seen by a prospective date?  And was that how I was personally or how attractive I could be if I wanted to?  Ugh, I was confused and wound tight as a drum.

 Shopping for a partner broker style.

I arrived and was asked to wait in a reassuringly normal waiting room.  Very like the kind you’d wait in for a chiropractor, lots of soft beige and muted greens with potted succulent plants of various sizes on the receptionist desk and near the windows.  I didn’t wait long before I was ushered into the matchmaker’s office, a smallish room with shelves full of wide labeled binders, walls decorated with soothing watercolor prints and a framed inspirational quote about love that escapes me now.

 

The matchmaker, a slender woman in business skirt and blouse, came around her desk to shake my hand.  She had long neatly styled hair and professionally trim, glossy nails.  Yeah, she intimidated me before she even opened her mouth—colored with the perfect shade of pretty but non-threating lipstick.

 

“Hey,” she said. And it was warm and natural. “Thanks for coming in.  I know it’s a big step.”

 

The adrenalin that had been simmering somewhere in my toes so far, suddenly shot up to my scalp.  Game on.  “Yeah, I’ve uh, never done this kind of thing before.”  After a quick handshake I stuck my sweaty vibrating hands in the pockets of my slacks.

 

She smiled.  “You’re not alone.  Most, I would say 98% of the people I see are just like you.  Have a seat.  Would you like something to drink? Water, coffee?”

 

She got me one of those cute but weird mini bottled waters you only see at appointments and in airplanes.  I could have downed six of them to lube my dried-up mouth and throat and soothe my crackling nerves.  But I took baby sips from the tiny bottle instead.

 

Then we got down to business.  She asked a lot of questions.  A lot. Of. Questions.  Obvious stuff like, what were my hobbies? And what did I do for a living?  But also things about what kind of relationship I was looking for, intense with an outlook towards marriage?  Casual for going places and doing things together?  And finally, what was I looking for in a partner?  Like, should he be college educated? Athletic? Laid back?

 

I tried to be extremely honest but I kind of felt like I was trying out for something too.  Like I was trying to impress with my answers about myself even as I was trying to be clear about what I wanted.  Mostly I remember being intensely wired through the whole thing, every muscle drawn tight as a bow, every nerve ending humming.  I was so ridiculously relieved when it was over.

 

And the dates.  How did it turn out you ask?  I went on 2.

 Date 1, dinner and a movie.

The first was horrendous.  It was not his fault.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.  He took me out to a fairly expensive dinner where we attempted to learn about each other.  It was a dinner/musical show thing which made it loud (my fave’).  OK so he gets one mark against.  We shouted at each other over the table as I explained what I did for a living which, in all fairness was pretty straightforward—I was an animator at the time I drew pictures for movies.  He did something in business technology some combination of IT and actual desk work that I could not understand at all.  And I gave it my all I swear.  I asked questions from every angle, hopefully so it seemed like I was interested rather than I had no idea what he was talking about.  We went around in conversation circles as dread congealed in my stomach with the rest of my dinner.  At least the noise allowed for long pauses.

 

After dinner he asked what I’d like to do.  Um, run home screaming.  I suggested a movie—nice side by side no conversation required.  We went to the nearest multiplex and bought tickets to, of all things “Muriel’s Wedding”.  I had no idea what it was about just—comedy, starting in 10 minutes.  And then I got amazingly lucky.  One of my friends from work bumped into us.  Life preserver!  We sat next to her until the lights went down and shared mutually uncomfortable small talk.

 

If you haven’t seen “Muriel’sWedding”, look it up, watch it.  Briefly—not so young anymore woman idolizes the concept of romantic relationships and marriage and pushes her way into one only to discover that she’d already found her best-self on the way to becoming married.  She leaves sexy husband to live happily ever after, single, with best platonic girlfriend.  Yeah.  Prophetic much?

 He drove me home and we both lied to each other saying we’d be much better as friends.  Yeah, that kind of friend you have from high school that you’ve forgotten the name of and wouldn’t have the first clue how to get in touch with.  I’m pretty sure we both breathed a sigh of relief when it was all over.

 Date 2, why?

I went on one other arranged date.  I can’t remember it as well as the first. This was more than 20 years ago OK so cut me a little slack.  But it must not have been quite as spectacularly awful as the first if I can’t remember it so clearly.  What I do remember was that it ended the same way.  Exactly. The. Same. Way.  Let’s be friends instead. The kind that never ever see or talk to each other ever again.

 Ghosting your matchmaker

And then I started declining the dates the matchmaker service set up.  I’d make up reasons I couldn’t go.  I was doing overtime on the current movie at the studio.  I was going out of town for a few weeks.  I had come down with the flu.  It was kind of hilarious and sad.  I had paid a not exactly insignificant amount of money for these people to do what I was avoiding like the plague.

 I have issues with confrontation, worse then than now.  But I still squirm inside when I have to tell someone I don’t want something I’ve asked for or the way they’ve done it or just that I don’t like what they’re doing. Finally, I sucked it up and told them I needed to close my account.  Of course, they tried to talk me off the ledge.  No business wants to lose a paying customer. 

 

What could they change about my matches to improve my experience?  What was bothering me about the process that I wanted to leave so soon?  Didn’t I want to give it a little longer, try a little harder to find the right match?  I made up the most lame excuse ever saying I just didn’t have as much time as I had thought I would to date seriously. Um yeah, It’s me not you.  I felt like I was breaking up with them.  Weird.

 The aftermath.

To be fair, I really didn’t give it a chance.  I bolted like horse with its mane on fire racing from a burning barn.  If I had stuck with it for a full month, gone on more than 2 dates, would my experience have been different?  Like the 1982 Tootsie Pops commercial “The world will never know.”  I certainly won’t.  It was my one and only foray into the exotic world of actual physical matchmakers.  My experience is my own, no feel-good rom-com material but I’m as much to blame as the institution.

 Matchmakers in the machine?

Partners come together in so many different ways now.  But an overwhelming number of these avenues seem to be social media centered.  Cell phones and computers dominate the dating world in ways that astonish me at times even though I lived through the early days of Match.com.  Are programming algorithms our new matchmakers? 

 

Who we see when we look for partners online are chosen by a set of questions we answer or types we swipe, sometimes multitudes, sometimes less depending on whether you’re using an app like Tinder or Bumble or a service like Match.com or E-harmony.

 

So, digital matchmakers?  And is that at all disturbing?  I’m not sure.  I met my husband through E-harmony.  But that’s another post.