Samantha Daniels’ “Matchbook” and the Search for Perfection
Last Tuesday, we got six packages in the mail, all books. Two packages were for Drew, the rest for me. Clearly, we like—and buy—books. Most of mine were how-to dating and relationship books that are flooding the market. Who knew that so many people knew so much about how to find and keep a Sweetheart?
If you read these books like I do, you’ll find that not too many people do know much at all. A good proportion of the books are pretty bad. I’ve taken on sifting through the piles to find the best to recommend to my readers so that they don’t have to waste their time and money. (See my Top Ten list) They’ll need all the time and money they can squirrel away for their mate search.
One of the books I knew was “just for fun”: “Matchbook—The Diary of a Modern-Day Matchmaker” by Samantha Daniels. It’s a quick and fun read, with a titillating peek into the high priced world of professional matchmaking—Daniels’ fees START at $10,000.
Don’t read this book to find pointers on finding your Ms. or Mr. Right. I usually underline and use Post Its liberally. “Matchbook” only got four markers. But I had a good time, and thoroughly enjoyed my few hours with Daniels.
I did find Daniels (also single) and her clients depressing and irritating. She and the singles she worked with had one common characteristic: turning down candidate after candidate for the most trivial and superficial reasons. These potentials were doctors, lawyers, financiers, business owners, male and female, most at least high salaried, many down right wealthy. All sounded good-looking at least, often model material or even real live models.
Actually, this commonality became the one good learning that I took from the work: The search for perfection is doomed to failure, because no one is perfect.
So here’s my advice: Either read this book for fun, or to see if you see yourself in Daniels or her clients. If you are as picky as the people in these stories, you may need some of Daniels’ advice. Here’s what she writes on page 221: “I also tend to go out with guys who would be good for me but somehow I fixate on the one bad thing about them and fixate and fixate and give them a hard time about it until I ruin things. And then after the fact, I look back and say to myself that maybe that one bad thing wasn’t so bad. I need to work on not sabotaging…”
Sound familiar?
P. S. Here’s another of Daniels’ quotes I bookmarked: “‘So if you don’t hire me, how do you plan on doing things differently so that you have different luck?
