Rescue Dating
For the Perfect Search
by Melinda Maximova

Matchmaker marries client

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San Francisco was ranked the number one best city to be single… If you want to stay single, especially if you are a single mother. A lot of men don’t want a woman with kids, and it doesn’t matter how lovely or adorable your child is. When a guy has a line of twenty-eight year old, never-married, hotties knocking on his door, a single mom can look like a lot of baggage. I was no exception.

Finally, I found a younger man to love. Six years my junior, he looked up to me and respected me and was attracted to my nurturing personality and guidance. We stayed married for six years before he began to stray. When he turned thirty-three, he noticed the evolution of his own power and wanted to explore it. I, on the other hand, was almost forty and no longer interested in going to nightclubs or participating in the singles scene. While my husband was attracting women as young as twenty, his interest in our marriage continually lessened. One night, he didn’t come home and stayed away for five more nights. If I’d had trouble hearing it before, his message was now loud and clear. He wanted out.

Suddenly, I was a divorced mom navigating the dating scene in what was inarguably the most difficult city to find love. I knew that if I wanted to get a good man, I had to get a plan and be proactive. I needed to find the diamonds in the city and create close intimate relationships with the winners. I needed a really great guy with a great attitude who would love me and take me away from the drudgery of dating. I needed…
… To become a matchmaker. What better way to weed out the duds and find the diamonds than starting my own matchmaking company? What better way to get inside the locker room and become one of the guys?

It worked. Men came out of the woodwork. Handsome and successful, they were great catches who were looking for love. I hit the jackpot. I had access to the best of the best, right at my fingertips. Not only was I becoming a friend, date coach, and matchmaker to the most eligible bachelors in the city, but I was also helping them find true love.

One client in particular was very intriguing. He was 47, 6’4”, handsome and sexy, and had many qualities girls desire. But, he could have won a “Razzie” in the dating department and needed a lot of personal date coaching. He wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t filter what came out of his mouth. He literally talked his way out of any chance of closing a deal—with some really great women. I had no problems setting him up with women, but the girls were running for the hills after the first date. He had been married for twenty years and was recently divorced, without a clue how to navigate the dating scene. With his handsome, good looks, he could easily get a girl to go out with him, but inevitably, he would blow it. His list of dating tragedies could have been better categorized as dating disaster bloopers. One girl even jumped out of the car before it stopped moving. These women were chewing him up and spitting him out before he could get a second date, and I was stuck trying to help him through it.

Now granted, he needed a lot of coaching and obviously, he shouldn’t show up for a date with three martinis under his belt, but in my humble opinion, these women had no idea that a really great guy was hiding beneath the gaffes and goofs. They didn’t realize that with a little patience and careful tending, this “Neanderthal” could actually become Mr. Right. I saw a lovable, fun, engaging, sweet, guy who genuinely didn’t know any better. Yes, he was clueless, but he had a great heart and deep inside was still a confused little boy attempting to fumble his way in the scary world of adult dating. I had a keen insider’s view of this man. I was his professional matchmaker, and I could see Mr. Right beneath the Neanderthal exterior.

His lack of success wasn’t entirely his fault: He was dating women who didn’t know how to navigate the Power Shift. He was not the only one making mis-steps; his dates were making mis-steps, too. I knew him in a different context, but his dates didn’t see what I did and dismissed him out of hand. They were women in their late 30s who were behaving like princesses and, ultimately, were missing out on a relationship with a really good man.

“Let’s go younger,” he announced one day. “Let’s try that sweet spot between twenty-eight and thirty-three, when women still have their looks but haven’t become jaded or bitter. Let’s go for fun and for someone who will value me.”

He was already forty-seven, but he still had a tall trim body and a handsome face, and I didn’t have any reason to think that younger women wouldn’t find him attractive. Moreover, I was used to this request. Most of my clients wanted to meet women in this age group. Regardless of my clients’ ages, they all seem to want women in this same “sweet spot,” between twenty-eight and thirty-three.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s give it a try.”

He was able to date much younger women. He took twenty-eight year old Yvonne salsa dancing and shared drinks and intellectual banter with Nicole, a thirty-year-old law student. He had a lot of fun with these young women but in the end reported back to me saying that he felt they were too young.
“She isn’t ready for a relationship. She seems like she still wants to play the field.”

“Well,” I said, “you know, women in this age group are very sought after. They have a stream of guys trying to date them. They have all the power. They see you as just another guy in a long line.”

It’s a common dilemma. My client wanted a woman who was youthful, fun, and exciting. He wanted a woman who valued him and appreciated his power, but he also wanted a woman who had her own power. She should be a woman who was grounded and intelligent and someone with whom he could communicate as a friend. In short, he wanted a woman his age, but who looked and acted much younger.
During the turmoil with my own unraveling marriage, the dynamics of my relationship with this client shifted. Having just gone through a divorce himself, he was now the expert on this subject, and he started coaching me. He helped me through the pain of rejection and distracted me with trips to Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas and we became very close friends… But just friends.

From my perspective, he was funny, sensitive, and engaging. We had tons of chemistry, but I wasn’t attracted to him sexually. He was a little dorky at times, and I tended to go for macho men. I usually went for men like my father, who as a teenager, would get in fistfights for fun, or like my ex-husband, who was a competitive boxer. My client was a great friend, but I couldn’t imagine intimacy with him.

Absent of pressure to take this friendship to a different level, we had fun. Lots of fun! And we also had deep conversations about life and social dynamics. I developed a lot of respect for him. He was competent and obviously successful, owning multiple vacation properties, and he could be a guy’s guy, but he could also engage in pillow talk with me like a girlfriend. As time went on, I began to realize that I was falling. I was falling, slowly, ever so slowly, in love.

However, I knew that I had an uphill battle if I wanted a relationship with this guy. I knew that if I wanted to land this fish, I would have to pull out all the tips, tricks, and skills that I preach every day in my work as a matchmaker. I would have to play my cards right and put my money where my mouth was and forgive him for his missteps and misspoke words. He certainly had no “game” on the dating dance floor, but he was someone who had all the components of a great husband. I knew I needed to be youthful, but grounded, in my own wisdom, and admiring, yet independent. In essence, I had to become the woman that all men seek. I needed to become the wise and powerful woman with a youthful and open attitude they desired. For the first time, I had to test my theories by putting them into practice in my own life.

San Francisco may not be an easy city for single women, but a woman who uses her heart instead of her pride will go a long way in finding her Mr. Right. I turned a Neanderthal into “Cary Grant” and married him. Sometimes, a girl has to be proactive if she wants to get and marry a really great guy. My goal now is to help my other clients morph into the Mr. Right women crave and to help the women they date see the potential “Cary Grant” glimmering within the Neanderthal exterior.

Hear the matchmaker/client interview on KRXA Radio, the Sheila Show

For more information contact Melinda Maximova, matchmaker with Perfect Search melinda@theperfectsearch.com

Send $15. and I will answer any relationship, sexual or dating question. I will spend up to 1/2 hour on the question.