No one signs up for a top matchmaking service without expecting to get results. This makes a lot of sense, especially when you look at the size of the investment you have to make to hire a one-on-one professional. But what can you expect?
Well, ‘results’ when it comes to professional matchmaking comes down to three criteria—the quality of the matches you receive, the quantity of the matches, and the speed at which they find these matches for you. Quality will depend on the provider you choose and how good they are at their job. Quantity will depend on the nature of your contract (we cover this in our article on what it’s like working with a matchmaking service). And this leaves the topic of today’s discussion—how long does it take for a matchmaking service to find you a match.
What we’d like to do is give you a general overview on the expected timeframe, talk a little about individual providers (and how they vary), and then discuss the factors that can greatly affect how long it takes for a matchmaking service to find you a match.
A Disclaimer About What a ‘Match’ is
When having this discussion, it’s important that we clarify what a match actually is.
A match is someone your matchmaker finds for you who meets your criteria that you can go on a date with. This has nothing to do with whether or not you click with that person or if it turns into a relationship or even a second date.
If that seems like common sense, you’re in the right place and we’re answering the right question together. If your question is really ‘how long will it take me to find love with a matchmaker?’, that’s not what we’re answering today, mainly because that is nearly impossible to answer.
If we were telling you how long it would take to find a new car to buy or how long it takes to find a house to move into, we could do that. However, we’re talking about finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, something much more impactful. There are so many individual variables that go into this that are outside of the control of your matchmaking team, no matter how good they are.
Professional matchmaking is the epitome of the cliché ‘your mileage may vary.’ Anyone who guarantees that they can find you love in a certain period of time is lying to you.
Thankfully, most companies are good about not doing this. For example, here’s a screenshot from It’s Just Lunch where they talk about what they guarantee. Notice, it just says they guarantee you’ll go on dates.
The only thing that they can even come close to predicting is how long it will take them to find you a match to go on a date with. That will be the question we’re answering today.
The general rule for finding your first match is around 1-2 months after you sign your contract.
Most matchmaking contracts agree to find you one high-quality, curated match per month. Some stick to this to a T, whereas some providers are willing to send you additional matches free of charge if they find you more than one per month (Three Day Rule is the most famous for this).
What this means is that contractually they are required to find you at least one match per month, which puts them on a clock. Once they start giving you matches, this is the time and cadence that you should expect. However, your first match is where you might see some variance. Here’s what we mean.
Most professional matchmakers will find you your first match within one month after you sign a contract. Others might ask for some additional time for the first match as they are still getting to know you. Even in those situations, you can expect your provider to find you your first match within 1-2 months. After that, almost all professional matchmakers adopt a cadence of one new match per month, for as long as your contract term is set for.
Delaying your intro call can delay this
One caveat to this is that we’re operating under the assumption that you’ve completed all of your onboarding tasks on time. Generally, this includes things like an onboarding phone call (where you share details about you and what you’re looking for), possibly sharing photos of people you find attractive, and sometimes filling out questionnaires about you and what you’re looking for.
Here’s a screenshot from Tawkify’s FAQ where they talk about the commitment requirements from you (it’s not a lot, but it’s still something).
This information is what your professional matchmaker uses to curate your matches. If they don’t have this information, they can’t start looking, and the time it takes to find your matches will increase.
Pro Tip: Make sure you provide the information needed by the deadlines they give you. Failure to do so might have an impact on the number of matches you get, as most contracts have a clause about what you’re required to do.
Here’s some wording from Three Day Rule’s Terms of Service where they mention requiring you to do your part to keep the timeline on track.
Factors Affecting How Long it Takes for a Matchmaking Service to Find you a Match
While the 1-2 month rule is pretty sound, there are some caveats that can affect this number. Here are some of the biggest to be aware of and plan around if they apply to you.
The Size Company You’re Working With
The bigger and more established a matchmaking company is, the larger its pool of singles will be and the more resources it will have to search for matches. Generally, this means a faster timeframe.
For example, when you look at a company like Tawkify, they have over 1 million members in their matching pool. No matter what you’re looking for, the chances are pretty high that they’ll at least have a few people who might be great matches for you. And even if not, they have more staff and resources to go out and find matches than, say, a small local company might.
We’re not knocking smaller, local matchmakers because some of them do a great job. But, the smaller the pool, the smaller the team, and the smaller the resources, the longer it’s going to take to get you results.
The Specificity of Your Request
Let’s look at two requests that someone might be looking for.
Request 1
“I’m looking for a nice Catholic girl who loves to have fun but also likes a nice relaxing night in with a glass or two of wine. I want a woman who wants to have kids and start a family and really enjoys laughing.”
Request 2
“I’m looking for a Catholic girl, aged 31-32, 5’7” to 5’10”, who lives within 12 miles of me. She should be blonde with blue eyes, not be allergic to dogs or cats, and be open to relocating out of the country to Spain.”
Is there anything wrong with either of these requests? No. You pay for a professional matchmaker to find what you want. However, you can imagine that finding quality matches for request 1 will be a lot easier than finding matches for request 2. How specific your requests are, how unique your deal breakers are, and how many more needs you have than wants will all have an effect on how long it takes your matchmaker to find you a match.
Your Responsiveness and Involvement
We touched on this earlier when we discussed the onboarding process and how a lack of attention to your matchmakers requests can slow down the process. What we didn’t mention is that this continues throughout the duration of your contract. After each date, your matchmaker will want to know what you liked, what you didn’t like, and how they can improve on the next match (if you aren’t seeing that person again).
If you delay getting this information to them, it may slow down the speed at which they get you matches (or the quality). Additionally, if you’re not fully open about your feelings (being blunt is best), this also may slow down the process.
Yes, you’re paying them to do most of the work, but you still need to do your part to support the success of the process.
The Key is Properly Setting Expectations – Questions to Ask
Here’s what this all comes down to. Before you sign a contract with a professional matchmaking service, you should know exactly how long it’s going to take them to find you a match. To do that, we’d encourage you to ask the following questions and then make sure that anything important to you is included in your contract.
- How long will it take you to find me my first match?
- If you’re struggling to find me someone, will you force a less-than-ideal match or will you contact me about extending the timeframe?
- Have you ever struggled to find a match for someone? What did you do in that situation?
- What are your expectations of me for onboarding and throughout the process?
- What can I do to help make your job easier and my results better?