Natural Dating vs. Matchmaking Brief: basic methods for men & women – advantages and disadvantages in a SWOT list

Ironically, matchmaking is the oldest way to marriage. Sage women or parents have done it since the dawn of humanity. Deliberate choice of life partner has grown into “Western” and “Russian” custom in c. XX, and still relies on social proof. Pondering on current divorce rates and the tragic vibe of known love stories, does third party assistance make sense? Let’s rationally weigh all pro’s and con’s (pun unintended…)

• Spontaneous encounter – it’s like lottery
• Clubs and social networking – it’s like swapping on occasion
• Free online dating – it’s like “flea market” of artworks and fakes
• Marriage agencies & brokers – commodity exchange, or bespoke investment?

Way 1. Spontaneous encounter

Strengths:

• Reciprocal attractiveness is tested immediately, by all the human senses.
• The element of “chance” adds romantic value to a relationship.

Opportunities:

• If both mates have broad brackets of acceptance.
• If neither feels awkward of “picking up” in a given social context.
• Unless too busy to look around at all, or to meet people this very time.

Weaknesses:

• The scope of possible contacts is limited and erratic.
• You barely ever know if this person is available, compatible with you by character and values, open to contact, capable of commitment.
• First impression captures not an entire personality, but its part in the current role, state of energy or mood, plus outer effects (like perfume, sun in hair or dirt on shoes).
• Little information available may suggest a wrong manner of approach.
• A refusal is taken more personally in real pursuit, than online.
• Social culture discourages intrusive questions and revealing answers before romance,.. as well as “prosaic” vital details when in romance.

Threats:

• Physical chemistry can drive far where you won’t go “if you knew better”.
• Chance grabbed in fear of no other, follows a life of control, conflict, remodeling, stooping, exchange in recesses, while further away a win-win match is missing you.

Way 2. Clubs and social networking

Strengths:

• Common interests add sparks, explain being around, prompt contacting, provide material for communication, and promise shared attitudes.
• Longer joint activities let learn more about the mate’s behavior, albeit determined by the context.

Opportunities:

• If there are places, occupations and events hosting enough “target audience”.
• If you have spare time, – you’d be spending it the way you like.
• Fellows or fellows’ fellows can help with introductions and background checks.

Weaknesses:

• Etiquette makes it more difficult to cut off unwanted acquaintances.
• Personal perceptions, complicated with relations between shared acquaintances, make the expected social proof closer to gossip.
• Condensed competition, collective dating, intensive entertainments distract from exploring one another, and interfere with rapport.
• Events “for singles” have reputation “for desperate and curious” or “for quick sex”, which leads to more unpleasant impressions.
• Some venues are unaffordable or doubtfully appropriate to “good guys (girls)”… yet not to “baddies”, with their due charm.
• Dating blind – “on recommendation”, “take-your-single-friend”, or “look-who-joins-us-today”, evoke resilience to the offer, as well as a sense of confusion and prickiness toward the vis-a-vis: “Am I in such tank that I need to have friends and relatives take care of my private life, and get this news leak among my folks?”

Threats:

• Conflict of interests inside a network is not always resolved to your benefit.
• Community increases the sense of “accountability to witnesses”, therefore more grounds to shame, remorse, and vengeance if things don’t work out.
• Word of mouth may yield unpredictable influence on reputation, friendships, or working environment if concerned.
• “The first whiplash – to the advisor”, a Russian proverb says.

Way 3. Free online dating
(personals sites, instant messenger systems)

Strengths:

• Internet brings the world to your choice, omitting operations irrelevant to task.
• You can narrow this choice to likely matches, with more or less exclusive fine-tuning.
• Hence it is appropriate to declare what you are and what you seek.
• You can learn in advance if you should ever meet this or that person, and start with richer mutual understanding when you do meet.

Opportunities:

• To people properly equipped for boundless competition. After all, choice from several men or women interested in the chooser has been an oldest plot in human culture, so why wince?
• A good questionnaire covers issues one might have not pondered, cared or dared to concern. Though the proper level of elaboration is more likely to find at paid services.
• Relationship by correspondence is pre-existent. In person, there still would be distances to pass, efforts to contribute, and cases when attraction won’t develop.

Weaknesses:

• Misrepresentations: deliberate, or in lack of competent guidelines.
• Poor balance of disclosure and confidentiality.
• Best advertisers and easiest writers – like charismatic talkers – are not necessarily best deals.
• One speaks rather to an ideal Alter Ego, than to the real man or woman behind the screen. (At least it enhances self-awareness and expression skills, that would make use in further relationships.)
• Tone and mimics missing, words are easily mistaken for angry, rude, sad, or phony.
• Illusion of familiarity, especially in instant messenging, makes communication shallow and dull.
• Without focus of attention, it’s easy to get jaded. Repetitions, informational and emotional overcharge lead to losing interest in / to other people.

Threats:

• Scammers, keyboard Romeos, research-and-training Juliets, sex tourists, prostitutes, gold-diggers, penny-pinchers, losers, complainers, sociopaths etc. The Web connects all sorts of people that can be met offline, only with more anonymity.
• Hyper-vigilance can prevent lucky matches, yet keeps one victim to guile.
• One can fall in love for one’s love of love, or bear the blame for others’ infatuation.
• The urges of “real life” would outweigh “Tamagochis” in the mailbox, and impede meeting.
• Yet the virtual partner quest – or the dating merry-go-round – can become addictive.

Way 4. Marriage agencies and brokers

Strengths:

• Ideally, fees prove serious intents, and sustain higher quality of introductions.
• An agency can verify data, estimate compatibility, provide pointful cultural and psychological advice, confidential telecommunications, professional translation, traveling logistics, legal support.
• Databases do accord with romance. They facilitate finding unique women and men with higher chances for a “miracle”, matching each other’s valid preferences. This sustains the words, “I’ve chosen you – one in a million”…
• …though the most – namely, the wasteful – part of “pearl diving” and expertise can be delegated. It saves people time of life, energy, feelings, personal histories (and money, in the long run).

Opportunities:

• Depend on the professional personalized “human touch” the agency dedicates to selectivity, matching, feedback, mediation, security and protection.
• Depend on the seekers’ own merits, presentability and consistent efforts in building a relationship. “You can bring horses to water, but you can’t make them drink”.
• Require two-way consideration of man’s and woman’s interests, whoever pays.

Weaknesses:

• Most agencies earn through the lowest common denominator of clientele. (Especially visible by photo reports from “socials”.)
• They regard getting a woman married mainly as loss of an attractive bait generating profit on email translations, forwarding, and contact data sales.
• They encourage – may even pay – women to answer all messages, regardless of one’s actual interest in this very man.
• With contact details sold around, the women get pested by uninvited phone calls at unthinkable time, and fear facing “a psycho at doorstep”. To protect privacy, some have to substitute phone numbers, distort their addresses and even names.
• Background references are left at members’ own discretion.
• Few agencies care what happens after a match is arranged, – save for the first thanks note.
• Big agencies use small feeder agencies, easily interchangeable, that afford unethical work and allow their “queen” plausible deniability.

Threats:

• Malpractice that disgraces the industry and its clients.
• Hard-selling interface – “visit me!” “add Natasha to the basket” – repels gentlemen and ladies, and attracts least wanted types.
• Same events can be marketed as “groom socials” to women, and “Casanova tours” to men. “We use no prostitutes, – you meet teachers, nurses and accountants seeking LOVE!”
• Hence aggressive reactions to defeated expectations of guaranteed bridal acceptance, intimacy on tap, submissiveness and seclusion in family life.
• Human trafficking disguised as marriage service – although pimps find it easier and cheaper to pretend “bridegrooms” with least traces left (real life, free dating sites, instant messengers), or to exploit employment problems (men, women, and firms acting as international hiring agents).
• “Boiler rooms” – introductions and marriage sites, milking men for email forwarding, translations, flowers etc. Not all staff writers are “Fat Yuris” able to mimick a woman, some are attractive women indeed, but the outcome does no better to the client.
• “Empty shells” – personal profiles, bought or stolen from an endless chain of other dating sites and edited down, celebrity photos and evergreen accounts of long-married women in Top Galleries – are used for canned emails, filled with NLP seduction and pathetic stories.
• Promising connections sabotaged, to play bait-and-switch (“this girl is currently unavailable, but we have others”).
• A woman’s opinion is neglected, meanwhile, her credibility is devaluing.

My enterprise with Joseph, Dr. Tamara, Max & Irina won’t cure the market. We are here to serve the better choice. We plan to profit by matching sound couples and supporting their progress.

If love be blind, someone has to be your eyes.
If love be forgiving, someone has to play the “bad cop” to protect your interests.

In progress,

© Comrade Natalia

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