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Dear Miriam,
Are there any excellent and not too expensive match-making services for middle-aged women in the TC? The dating apps are terrible, I work from home, and Minnesotans are not that open to making new friends. It’s hard to find quality “nice Jewish guys” to date.
Signed,
Ready to Date
Dear Ready,
For many years (many years ago), I was a matchmaker, specifically for graduate students and young professionals in Philadelphia, so your question is near and dear to my heart, and I’m sure it will resonate with many readers. But you are asking for a recommendation, and what I have to offer is advice. So while I will tell you up front that I’m not going to pull the perfect service out of a hat for you by the end of this column, I hope I’ll offer you – and other readers – some suggestions for dating in general, and working with a matchmaker specifically, that may get at what is underlying your question.
If you hate the apps and you’re not meeting people in your day-to-day life, the first thing you need to do is change some of your day-to-day life to make it possible for you to meet people organically. Go to networking events, happy hours, and community Shabbat dinners. Join a gym or community center, a hiking club, or a sports league, or a “friends of” group for an organization you respect. Volunteer, attend Shabbat services, get involved in civic life.
Going to these places and meeting more people isn’t (only) about expanding your chances of meeting a potential partner. The more people you know, the more people you can tell that you’re looking to date, and the more people that those people can connect you to. Asking for recommendations is actually a great way to meet people, so telling people you’re looking for a matchmaker may inspire them to think about potential singles who they know and also the super-connectors in their own lives who may be able to introduce you to potential dates.
This kind of vague “love yourself first” dating advice is cliched and oft-repeated because it’s true: If you are happier and having more fun and more involved in your community, you are both more likely to find people to date and also more likely not to care if you’re not dating because you’re engaged in other activities that are interesting and fulfilling and speak to who you are. When you do go on dates, having other things in your life that you care about will also make you a more interesting person to date and give you more to talk about with strangers.
If you’ve read this far and haven’t given up on me yet for not just naming a matchmaking service already, I’ll oblige and provide a few specific recommendations. There are many online matchmaking services, serving Jews as well as other demographic niches. I am most familiar with JRetroMatch, which looks like an app but has actual live matchmakers involved. For older folks – presumably much older than you are – TC Jewfolk actually offers a 65+ matchmaking service. Even if this is decades off, you can pay it forward by recommending this to any seniors you may know, and hope they can offer their own recommendations in return.
Finally, I will offer this closing advice: Working with a matchmaker is only effective if you are truly open to options of people you wouldn’t have otherwise encountered in your life. If you have a cookie cutter image in your mind of your perfect match, or you think that because you’re working with a professional, they’ll be able to find someone who fits every ideal you’ve imagined, you’re going to be just as disappointed as you have been with every other form of dating. Someone’s height does not indicate how well you’ll get along. Someone’s profession or education level does not determine whether you’ll have fun together. Of course standards and deal breakers are important, and you should be clear on what those are for you. But the more open you can be, the more successful a matchmaker can be in offering potential dates to you, and the more likely you are to have a positive experience.
Be well,
Miriam
