Harpers

Dates with Destiny

What a difference an internet makes: in only a few years, dating services – once reserved for people lacking social skills – have become the preferred way for frantic financiers and time-poor property developers to benefit from an updated version of the arranged marriage. VICTORIA COHEN marvels at the modern matchmakers playing the oldest game around.

A few years back, we all fell in love with dating. It can probably be traced (like many things) to Sex and the City. What fun it looked: dressing up in gorgeous dresses, with shoes so expensive that no man could ever appreciate them, to flit between gallery openings and fashionable restaurants with a series of sexy writers, politicians and jazz musicians who would never make husband material but might provide hot nights out. Dating became a hobby; we forgot about the long-term goal, and embraced the short-term entertainment.

But Sex and the City is over, and something in the air has changed. What on earth have we been doing for the past five years? Hanging around in £600 heels, conversing over squid-ink pasta with men we aren’t going to marry? Enough already. Time for the new phase.

The new phase is about Taking It Seriously. It’s about choosing men more discriminately, talking more deeply, thinking further ahead. And thinking further ahead in romance – just as in finance – sometimes involves consulting a professional expert.

We are entering the age of the Personal Dating Agent. We are bored of smooching around in taxis and working out the details later. We’re ready to try it the other way round: starting with compatibility, and getting to the sex bit afterwards. Speed dating and internet dating have torn the stigma away from ‘being fixed up’ and have put matchmaking back on the public agenda. But, even with these methods, you’re stuck with trusting your own judgement and taking your chances alone. The people who are really Taking It Seriously are paying top dollar to put the whole business in the hands of an experienced and canny caretaker.

The matchmakers all agree on one thing: you have to be honest about what you want and need, and this is something they can help you to be. Sarah, a partner in a busy recruitment agency, signed up with the high-end introduction agency Berkeley Sweetingham seven months ago because, at 34, she wanted to settle down and have a family. ‘It’s not that I couldn’t meet people, but wanted to meet a public school-educated guy with similar values’.

The thought of signing up with a dating agency was ‘terrifying’, she says. After looking at several websites, she was attracted by Berkeley Sweetingham’s discreet approach – it doesn’t ask for photos or CVs. Sarah met seven men before hitting the jackpot. ‘They were all nice professional guys, but obviously whether you fancy them or not is a physical thing’. She is now head-over-heels in love with a London-based property developer who, at age 35, is mad about children. After three months they are talking about ‘a future together’, but if it doesn’t work out, she can go back to the agency and try again.

And if, being truly honest with yourself, you want a dash of international glamour in your man, Berkeley Sweetingham has just opened a Continental branch: Contact International, ‘a niche service for select individuals looking for a partner on the French Riviera’, based on the Croisette in Cannes. If you want a Prince Charming in Gucci loafers with a yellow Lamborghini, then this is the agency for you. Assuming you have the £5000 joining fee to hand.

‘We are very personal and very tailored’, explains client director, Mairead Molloy. ‘We like to match people who are the same calibre. I will fly to London, Milan, wherever you are, to find out what you want and need. We can marry you – and if you should get divorced, come back to us and we’ll remarry you’.

International matchmaking is not new, either: in the 1920s and 1930s, with a drop in eligible men following the Great War, marriage bureaux sprang up all over the country to pair single British girls with appropriate ex-pats. Mairead Molloy sees no problem with long-distance love – even is she has to engage in a little manipulation to persuade the parties concerned.

‘There was a lovely man’, she says ‘who lived in the Emirates and wanted to meet people there. But I knew the right girl for him, and she was living in Brussels. She was a cool, beautiful girl, I said, “My dear, I will find you a husband!”, and I found him. I didn’t tell him where she lived at first – he’d have thought I was mad. But, of course, eventually he flew to Brussels to meet her. Now she has moved to the Emirates’.

A good matchmaker is never off-duty. Mairead attends exclusive events, charity functions, private members’ bars – and she’s always ready. ‘I went to a banking ball and saw this guy across the room and I just knew he’d marry this girl – a lovely girl who worked in cancer research. I rushed across the room and said, “Can I ask you a question? Are you married?” They’re living together now’.

Nevertheless, sometimes a potential client is simply ruled out as unmatchable. The 21st-centuary question is not ‘Are the lonely-hearts good enough for me?’, but ‘Am I good enough for them?’ I half wonder whether the reason I agreed to go on dates myself was just because I was so relieved to be ruled in.

Then again, I have always been a hopeful romantic. Tonight, I’m having drinks with a novelist – another Kate Kennedy special. His e-mails are great, and we are both going to carry the Evening Standard. What the hell? You never know. It may be old-fashioned – but even corsets are cool again.

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