It’s a Date!
“A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea,” Honore De Balzac; “As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words,” William Shakespeare.
The poetic love-at-first sight concept which hearkens back to medieval tales of knights in shining armor may be the latest casualty of mankind’s ascent up the ladder of technology. Recent statistics show that “44% of American Adults are single, 40% have tried online dating, and there are more than 120,000 marriages a year that occur as a result of online dating in the U.S.” Online dating is not the only radically new approach which has crept into the mainstream in recent years, however; another more controversial approach to love is that of hiring a “dating coach.”
Wikipedia defines a dating coach thus; “A dating coach directs and trains a client on various aspects of meeting and attracting long-term partners and meeting more compatible prospects. The focus of most programs is on confident and congruent communication.” Dating coaches usually charge on par with other professional coaching services, from $75 - $125 an hour.
It’s hard to be more specific, seeing as there is very little that all dating coaches have in common. There is no professional institution to which dating coaches belong, no annual Dating Coach Summit, and no formally recognized or widely accepted curriculum of study which distinguishes a love coach. There are no Date Coaching for Dummies books in print.
The basic concept, however, that we benefit from coaching to help us get through difficulties or perfect a particular skill, seems to lend itself very easily to the field of dating. In the words of Matchmaking Institutite founder Lisa Clampitt, “We have business coaches, dietitians, accountants, but we don’t have an expert for our love life?” Or, in the words of a prominent Google advertisement, “If whatever you have been doing has not worked, isn’t it time to put your love life in the hands of a professional? If you really want results, Patti can help you!”
The greater range of communication and opportunity we enjoy as a culture, with social networking, cheap flights, and the iPhone 3G, exposes us to more and more media every day. Driven by advertising profit, media subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, tells us that we deserve nothing but the best, going on to define “the best” in largely materialistic terms. This is despite a booming market of dating coaches, some of which charge upwards of $10,000 for a weekend of consulting services. In other words, some of those who have all the BMW, Prada and Ducati they can stomach are still looking for that extra something, that extra something which modern television, cinema and iTunes don’t have and don’t mention. This however undermines the self-esteem of the other 96% of us, who ardently believe that we don’t have girls because we don’t have gold.
Is the fix to this problem a dating coach? There are no studies out, and no one has taken judicial notice just yet. Chances are that if someone suffers from a lack of self-esteem, and blames it on the fact they can’t buy a Porsche, they won’t be able to afford a dating coach and find out. Personally, I believe the society’s constant professionalism-oriented approach leads us into a frame of mind where “coaching” and “training” are the only means to success – and where there’s a need, someone will fulfill it. In the end, it could just be that hiring a dating coach is simply a modern way of convincing ourselves it’s gonna be right as rain after all. All the world’s just a stage, after all – no?