Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and for some people, it can be a blunt reminder of their single-ness. It is without a doubt a corporate holiday but Valentine’s day still brings about pressure to find love, to be in love, and to have someone to buy chocolates and flowers for.
You would think that with all this pressure to find “the one” online dating sites and match-making services would see a rise in business, but owner of Love Alchemy Inc, Gloria MacDonald says, there is a lull around this holiday. “There’s so much pressure around Valentine’s day that people aren’t usually looking to meet someone new right around [this time] because there is too much meaning, or potential meaning”
MacDonald runs a match-making service that interviews clients, and goes out to find them a perfect match. Her services are not online, but face-to-face. So when does she see the most new clients signing -up?
“Spring, with spring fever and a little bit in January with everyone getting back after Christmas holidays, but really, it is very steady all year long.”
How does MacDonald’s team determine compatibility? “The first thing we look at are things that I call ‘the facts’. So for example, if someone wants to have a child, we are obviously only going to introduce them to someone else who wants to have a child. If someone has a particular racial or religious preference, we are going to take that into account, and we are also going to look at age-range.”
Although her services are not online-profile sharing, MacDonald sees the benefits of online dating, “I think online dating is a great tool. It is one of many, many tools. The beauty of online dating is that it is either free or very inexpensive. The downside of online dating is that because it is free or inexpensive there are literally millions and millions of singles online and so you have to spend a lot of time and wade through tons and tons of profiles.”
MacDonald tells her new clients to throw their lists of qualities they need in a partner out the window because you never know who you are going to fall in love with. “I always tell people to put their picky lists aside because we truly, truly don’t know who we are going to fall in love with. Scientists have proven that we fall in love based on things that are going on at the sub-conscious level and the problem with all those picky lists is that you sat down and thought about them and so they came from the conscious level.”
I took to the halls of Fanshawe College and asked students if they would ever consider online dating. The majority of people said no because they would be scared that the person would be completely different than their profiles, but there was one success story among the haters.
