*This is a paid collaboration*
While half the country is gripped by Love Island and most of my time is spent swiping through all the dating apps on my phone, I’m thinking a lot about finding your match, and all of the ways we try to search for our soul mates. Being single can be so much fun, but if you decide you’d quite like a partner/big spoon/someone to bring you a takeaway on a Friday night – how do you find them?! Whether you choose to search for a prospective Netflix partner in a bar or nightclub, in the baked bean aisle in Tesco, in a posh villa full of TV cameras in front of the nation or on one of the many dating apps or dating sites UK – it can be a rough ride. It makes the idea of going to a professional match maker pretty appealing doesn’t it. Imagine cutting out all of the crap. You simply fill someone in on all your personality traits, your likes and dislikes and everything you’re looking for, and they hand you your dream date (and his/her number) on a plate. Sorted!
Well, WeLoveDates recently got in touch, and asked me to imagine I had become a new match maker. What kind of match maker would I be? How would I set myself apart from the other professional matchers out there? Here’s what I came up with.
Brutal Honesty
The first thing I would promise to offer my clients would be brutal honesty. If someone came to me with completely ridiculous and unfair expectations; if they came with trash personality traits, pink or red flags or some heavy stuff that they needed to work on before finding a partner then I’d send them back off to therapy straight away. I truly, truly believe that before you can have a successful relationship with anyone else you need to be comfortable with yourself, so my customers would have to be in the right place for a relationship before I even got started with my magic match making.
Know Your Worth
Along with brutal honesty, I would also offer sessions on self love and how to know your own self worth. So many people settle in relationships – they stay with people who treat them badly, or show them little respect simply because they think it’s all they deserve. I would ensure all my clients knew their self worth, and knew that they absolutely deserved the moon on a plate, and then I wouldn’t rest until I found them someone who’d go get them it. I want everyone who is currently single or dating to know how much they have to offer another human. How incredibly amazing they are, and how they deserve to find someone who loves, adores and appreciates every inch of them.
Photo by Diego Rezende on Unsplash
DATING ROAD TEST
Even the greatest match on paper can be a train wreck if you don’t get along in real life. It is essential to test your dating compatibility by getting out there and giving things a go.
You can show your date how much you care by preparing a fun activity. Someone who likes you should not be put off even if the weather is less than optimal. Here are some cute things to do on a rainy day for adults if you are looking for a fun date idea on a cold, rainy day.
Sexual Compatibility
As well as being compatible in terms of interests and hobbies, it’s so important that there is a physical connection and sexual chemistry as well as compatibility. I’d carry out some in depth research when taking on new clients, to make sure when matching people I’d do the best job possible. It’s no good matching two people who both enjoy golf and French films, but are completely opposite ends of the spectrum once they get into the bedroom. If a client likes to be spanked, I’d make sure whoever they are matched with enjoys doing the spanking!
Be Your Own Pro Match Maker
Realistically most of us will never have access to a professional match maker, but we can all do the above things for ourselves, or surround ourselves with friends that will help do that job for us. Be brutally honest with yourself – face up to your downfalls and look for things you can work on within yourself. Are you ready to be with someone else? Are you comfortable being alone, or are there a few things you need to work through before you can enter a serious relationship? Do you know your own self worth, how can you improve your self confidence and learn to never settle for less than you deserve. Have you explored different sides of yourself, and do you know what to look for in a prospective partner in order to find someone who will make you truly happy in all areas of your life?
It’s not easy to find your match, it takes an awful lot of frog kissing sometimes as the old saying goes, and the process should be part of the fun. Going on different dates (great ones and ones that are terrible) and getting to know different kinds of people helps you to understand exactly what you’re looking for, or if you’re actually looking for anything at all right now. Think of it this way, each date, no matter how it went, could be another step towards finding the situation of your dreams – whatever that may look like.