We ask all of our clients how they like to express and experience romance. Some speak of grand gestures, others of the little things. The common thread is the effort behind the act.
Remembering a detail mentioned weeks ago and planning a surprise around it. Arranging an evening around something we love. Helping to relieve stress without being asked. Making intentions clear and keeping promises. These gestures tell us something profoundly validating: we were worth thinking about.
Yet when it comes to finding love, we often prefer a different approach. We want the encounter to be happenstance, the attraction immediate, and a relationship to simply erupt into being. We want someone who makes an effort for us, while hoping that finding this person will feel effortless.
The perfect love story
Our most enduring love stories have a way of making coincidence feel like destiny. Two people meet against improbable odds, and a chance encounter becomes the beginning of everything. This ideal inspires the films we watch and the art we admire, but we also recognise these stories in the lives of people we know.
Most of us can think of a couple with a meet-cute that begs for awws after each telling. There’s something undeniably charming about the idea that two lives might cross at just the right moment, without either person having planned it.
Maybe part of the appeal lies in the idea that love doesn’t need to be sought out, that somehow, the right person will just fall into our lives. To look for love is to admit that we’re looking. To carefully arrange an introduction is to sideline spontaneity. None of which quite belongs in the romanticised imagination.
The philosopher Alain de Botton has explored how Romanticism has shaped our expectations of love, placing great faith in following our instincts and less in the practical considerations that might guide our choice of partner. We’ve inherited a script in which love feels most authentic when it arrives unbidden, as though taking an active interest in finding it somehow diminishes its magic.
The romance of intention
We admire thoughtfulness, curiosity, and proactivity in relationships. Yet we tend to undervalue these qualities in the stages before a couple even meet.
Perhaps we confuse effort with strain. Nobody wants to force attraction or turn dating into an endless series of assessments. We want chemistry to flow and companionship to feel natural. But being deliberate about meeting someone doesn’t mean deciding in advance how we’ll feel about them. Intention opens the door; it doesn’t tell us what we’ll find on the other side.
We readily take steps towards the life we want in other areas. We put ourselves forward for promotion, nurture our friendships, and pursue opportunities as they arise. We accept that we can’t predict where this initiative will lead, only that it gives us a part to play in shaping what comes next. Why should finding a life partner be any different?
Giving chance a helping hand
Our worlds are often smaller than we realise. We frequent the same spaces, spend time with people who share our routines, and form connections within our existing circles. The difficulty here is that compatibility isn’t confined to the familiar. We may be well suited to
someone whose life looks very different from our own, or who bears little resemblance to the person we imagined ourselves with.
This is where matchmaking offers something more valuable than an introduction. It allows us to look beyond the limits of our everyday lives, bringing us into contact with people who we might never otherwise meet.
There’s something rather romantic about two people arriving at the same place, each having made a conscious decision to be there. Two lives, two separate journeys, and a single hope that belongs to both of them. For a moment, the possibilities of a shared future exist in the space between complete strangers.
We can’t plan a love story into existence. But we can create the chance for one to begin. And sometimes, the first romantic gesture is deciding that love is worth looking for.
Words by Katy Pannocchia