Finding Your Love Match through Matchmaking
Matchmaking is any process of introducing people for the purposes of dating. Matchmaking is very common between friends. We have all thought at one time or another that we have found a love match for one of our friends. Many times find your love match through a friend’s matchmaking service is successcful, because who knows you better than your friends right? Matchmaking is an age old ritual that has become a paid service technique and the reason behind many online services. Your love match is out their and chances are your friend can help you find them.
In some cultures, the role of matchmaking was and is quite professionalized. The Ashkenazi Jewish shadchan, or the Hindu astrologer, were often thought to be essential in matchmaking and also helped in finding right spouses or love matches as they had links and a relation of good faith with the families.
In cultures where arranged marriages were the rule, the astrologer often claimed that the stars sanctified love matches that both parents approved of, making it quite difficult for the possibly-hesitant children to easily object. Also making it easy for the astrologer to collect his fee. Tarot divination has also been employed by some matchmaking advisors.
Social dance, especially in frontier North America, the line dance and square dance, has also been employed in matchmaking, usually informally. However, when farming families were widely separated and kept all children on the farm working, marriage-age children could often only meet perspective love matches in church or in such social events. Matchmakers, acting as formal chaperones would attend such events and advise families of any budding love matches. The influence of such people played a larger role in determining if a suitor was acceptable, however it is difficult to determine this for sure. It may be fair to say only that they were able to speed up, or slow down, love matches that were already forming. In this sense they were probably not distinguishable from relatives, rivals, or others with an interest.
Clergy probably played a key role in most Western cultures, as they continue to do in modern ones, especially where they are the most trusted mediators in the society. Matchmaking was certainly one of the secondary functions of the village priest in Medieval Catholic society, As well as a Talmudic duty of rabbis in traditional Jewish communities. There have been communities in The United States with matchmaking practices in as little ago as the 1960s. For a period of time the art of matchmaking was looked down upon because of one’s need to find their own love match without the help or pressure of a friend, family member or local person of importance.
Since online matchmaking services have become popular the idea of finding your love match through the help of an outside source has once again become popular just with a different twist. No matter what the twist it is safe to say that matchmaking is a practice that is here to stay.