The Heart Beat

The Heart Beat: Antidote to Online Dating

Michele Fields

Does it shock you to learn that an estimated 85% of online dating profiles are inaccurate? If you’ve been dating online, probably not. If you haven’t, it probably makes you wonder – yet again – why so many people trust their love lives to the impersonal, unpredictable algorithms of cyberspace social. If it’s hard to “judge a person by a profile” in the first place, and most people are lying in the profiles or posting 10-year old photos on top of that, then… what’s the point, right?

I don’t know of a single person (pun intended) on a dating site who hasn’t experienced that appallingly awkward moment when they approach their intended date-in-the-flesh for the first time, and realize…

The Heart Beat: In Search Of Mr. (or Mrs.) Darcy

Michele Fields

Bridget Jones met her Mark at a Christmas party. Wearing that hideous “jumper” and all. She was a hot mess, yet he and she found themselves intrigued/compelled and, well… the rest is fictional history. Is this a universal love fantasy? That you’ll meet your one true love over a turkey carcass or passing a platter of latkes?

The Heart Beat: Relationship “Do’s” and Oh, please “Don’ts”

Michele Fields

Do you observe destructive relationship patterns to which your frustrated friends seem oblivious? Or perhaps your friends may have tried calling to your attention some observations that you just weren’t ready to hear? Many of us want healthy, romantic connections that can last the test of time… but we are not all — alas — equally adept in the romantic-relationship-nurturing department…

The Heart Beat: Dating to Marry

Michele Fields

This week, a reporter for a national magazine rung us up to ask how a gal could know if her fella is “marriage material.” They’re looking for specific “signs” that a boyfriend might be a keeper, and wondered how we might advise a client asking this type of question. Our matchmakers, as you can imagine, had plenty of answers for her. But it got me to thinking–because of course nothing is simple when it comes to people’s love lives–that maybe this wasn’t the right question. Or rather, that this simple question stirred up other questions that feel more fundamental and somehow important, like, “why do people date in the first place?” or, asked another way, “is it correct to assume that everyone dating hopes it will lead to marriage?”

What To Tawk About

Michele Fields

Episode II of the What To Tawk About Series. Catch up on Episode 1 here.

So what SHOULD you talk about? Everything else! The best relationships begin with a conversation–a two-way conversation. They unfold naturally, organically, as two people introduce their best selves to one another, discovering along the way, and hopefully developing an appreciation for who that other person actually is. (Which is why the very idea of “choosing” a potential mate from a photograph or basic profile is so wholly ineffective.)

Good date conversation starters can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”, but are open-ended, with the power to spark a conversation that might last for hours. Some examples…

What To (not) Tawk About

Michele Fields

Since we specialize in first dates, our matchmakers are often asked for appropriate date icebreakers.

We curate blind date experiences that we plan and book for our matches.

Suddenly face-to-face with a potential new love interest, new clients struggle a little bit for “safe” topics and tried-and-true conversation starters. What should or shouldn’t they say?…