If you feel that dating is too hard, there is some truth to it. It’s common these days to set the bar very high. Technology has expanded the pool of available choice as well, meaning that you need to spend a lot more time looking through profiles and listings.
Past these obvious challenges, however, the reason why dating has become exhausting is that people often do not have the skills they need to make a success of their personal relationships. They tend to be a perfectionist, to expect instant, movie-like connections on dates, or to labor under the burden of a range of other problems and misconceptions.
Bringing a dating coach or a matchmaker on board
Not many hire professional guidance for help with their love life, but it’s a growing trend. When the outcome of an effort can directly determine the direction your life takes, many see the need to bring in professional smarts. The dating services industry offers a choice: the matchmaker and the dating coach, professionals whose expertise lies very different areas.
How does a matchmaker help?
The average person looking for dating success signs up to a dating site or two, looks through dozens of profiles, puzzles over whom to pick, and then goes on dates to try to size up potential. The process involves exhausting work. When you hire a matchmaker, however, it’s as if they go on dates for you.
They interview you to learn as much as they can about you, and then look through their database to find profiles that make for the closest possible matches. They don’t just send you those matches and leave the rest to you, however. Instead, they call those people up and talk to them to find as much information about them as possible.
The process can take months, and can cost from $10,000 on up. It is a dating experience that is more or less effortless. You don’t need to endlessly flip through pictures and profiles and put up with disappointing dates. “With a professional doing all the preliminary screening for you, you are more or less assured that you’ll avoid the disappointing experiences that usually go with online dating.” Says Amber Kelleher, CEO of Kelleher International Matchmaking.
A dating coach offers a completely different approach
To many people, much of the trouble that they have with their dating can be traced to peculiarities of their personality, qualities that make it harder for them to find success in their relationships. This is the problem that dating coaches help with — they are a kind of love therapist. Whatever problems you may experience finding dates and taking those relationships forward, coaches help you identify them, and find solutions. With their help, you grow as a person, and become more successful at dating, love and relationships.
The best way to find a great dating coach is to talk to them. It’s no different than the process you would go through to find a good therapist. It can help to talk to different dating coaches about the problems that you’ve faced in dates and relationships in the past, and see how they help you with those. They could help you identify weak areas such as poor profile writing or listening skills, or go much deeper, and tell you that you may suffer from personality quirks like excessive focus on money, a tendency to criticize, or an inability to open up and be vulnerable. Working with a dating coach can help you train your way out of problems that hold you back.
There’s a lot more that a dating coach can do. They can be there for you when you experience a rough patch in a relationship or a date, for example. With a quick call, you could have your dating coach and other professionals to talk to at a moment’s notice. You may either find that you’ve been unreasonable, or find that you’ve been completely right. It can be invaluable to have access to a knowledgeable and sensitive person.
Dating coaches can be very affordable or very expensive, depending on the level of service that you need. If all you want is answers to a couple of questions, you could get by with a quick $100 session. If you want someone who takes up your case and helps you each day, it could cost $1,000 a month or more.
Should you hire someone then?
While matchmakers and dating coaches both work to help you find success in relationships, they address completely different parts of the challenge. One helps narrow the field for you, and the other helps you be better prepared to make a success of every date.
Ideally, you would hire both. If doing so seems unconventional,it should hardly matter. Finding a therapist used to be unheard of only a few decades ago. Then, people began to discover that bringing a professional into their lives could help them see their lives more clearly. It’s no different with dating professionals. If you believe that finding the right relationships can change your life, it can’t be a difficult choice to determine that you need to do the best that you can.
