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Jane
Turney talks to Mary Balfour, agony aunt and owner of three
Kensington dating agencies, about the business of love and romance
>Courtesy of The Hill Magazine |
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ou might think that Mary Balfour, owner of three
Kensington based personal introduction |
“If
you are looking for a new job you do not expect to find it by chance,
you go to a recruitment agency or look in newspaper adverts. It is
the same with finding a partner ...We are a new social service”
“Men” and “Women”. Then there’s Only
Lunch, where staff match you up with compatible, like-minded partners
and set you up on a date, even choosing and booking the restaurant.
All you have to do is turn up and remember the Christian name of the
person you are meeting (not good if you are a control freak!) And the baby in the
business loveandfriends. com, an internet site (like the others, for well-educated
people), already boasts more than 15,000 members even though it’s
only been set up and running for 18 months. |
agencies, might have met her own husband through an agency or
a newspaper ad. But no, she fell in with her next door neighbour...
meeting him up a ladder!
If
only life could be that simple for us. But it’s not, which is
why in increasingly busy and fractured times introduction agencies are such
good business. According to the Association of British Introduction Agencies,
between 200,000 and 250,000 people in the UK are signed agencies at
any one time — and this excludes internet sites!
Certainly
business seems to be booming for Mary, and her clutch of upmarket
agencies for ‘thinking people.’ First there’s Drawing
Down Moon, which was set up in 1984 and currently has 1500 members on
their books. Here clients choose potential partners by perusing handwritten
profiles and photographs in files marked |
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Kensington-based
Mary Balfour is the authority on matchmaking. In the words of The Times Literary
Supplement, Mary
“could match up an Anais Nin or Spike Milligan without
much difficulty”.
For past 18 years she has been the number one name
in the dating world. She bought her first introduction agency, the hugely
successful Drawing Down the Moon, in 1986 and now runs two more, Only Lunch
— for busy professionals — and the internet dating service loveandfriends.com.
Mary has now put her considerable experience onto paper. Smart Dating —
How to Find Your Man is an upbeat, practical guide to finding the perfect
partner and draws on the many case histories she’s experienced.
The
book uses ‘workouts’ in the form of checklists to help readers
recognise their barriers, and then shows how to dismantle them. Throughout
are sprinkled 'lovebytes' AND ‘soundbytes’ -
tips and pertinent quotations about that many-splendoured but often elusive
thing we all seek. |
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Clearly the image of
the introduction as a last resort for ‘sad losers’ is off the mark
these days (the vast majority of Mary’s clients are creative
professionals with degrees), but I wondered why they have become so
popular of late. A recurrent problem is a lack of opportunity to
meet people ..."People think it's their fault but it’s not, it
is the society we are in,” says Mary.
"This
is the first time in history that women have been allowed to buy and
own their own property and have been able to on their own. It has changed the
whole nature of relationships - instead of the economic nexus there is the emotional
nexus. Because the emotional connection is so important, you have
to meet many more people to find the right one.”
Mary, a former head of the Wornington branch of
the (then) Hammersmith and North Kensington Adult Education
Institute, points out. "If you are looking for a new job you do not
expect to find it by chance, you go to a recruitment agency and look
in newspaper adverts. It is the same with finding a partner We are a
new social service.” |
But
what chance do you have of meeting ‘the one’ if you try an agency?
“Everybody
we match up is going to be compatible, because they will have the
right educational and social background, interests in common, attractiveness
and energy levels roughly on a par ...we will have got all that right,
it is just the fine tuning and chemistry — which can take months
to develop.”
Mary says one of her jobs is to make people take a broader look at
potential partners: “You’ve got to be open, adventurous
and flexible. I always say if you get 60% of your shopping list, that
is brilliant — people who want 100% from day one are going to
be disappointed. Our job is to stretch people’s horizons.”
Mary won’t give figures as to how many people
form successful relationships through her agencies (how do you
define this — marriage, or short term but happy relationships, or
even long term friendship?) but says: |
“Joining a dating agency
is the best thing you can do for yourself because
you might not meet the person at the agency, but it does put you in
dating mode. There is nothing nicer than dressing up and going out on another
date with a human being, even if he isn’t the man of your dreams
and you decide not to see each other again, you can still have a good
conversation, food, a good bottle of wine and enjoy yourself. ...It
is about networking, you are increasing the number of possibilities to meet single people.”
So,
if you haven’t got a partner lined up for Valentine’s Day
what are you waiting for? Mel Gibson found his spouse through agency —
so it’s got to be alright for the rest of us!
Drawing Down The Moon
Adam And Eve Mews, 165 Kensington High Street, W8 6SH
020 7937 6263:
www.drawingdownthemoon.co.uk
vvww.loveandfriends.corn
...Thanks to The Hill Magazine |
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