“There are not enough good men (women) out there.” “I’m so tired of the dating scene.” “The good ones are all taken.” “I just can’t find the right one. I never have any luck.”

Clients tell us such things all the time. Even in Southern California! Where 23.8 million people are crowded together, in one of the world’s most overpopulated and socially dynamic areas!  Where Greater Los Angeles alone is home to over 17.5 million people within driving distance! Even if we take out those who are happily coupled up, as well as all those we might consider “ineligible” for whatever legitimate reason we could possibly cook up, there’d still be hundreds of thousands of potential matches for everyone looking! (Or, for the super-picky: tens of thousands).

“No one” out there? Not true!

Here’s the problem:

A negative outlook on “what’s available” is self-defeatist in the highest order. It’s a form of self-sabotage! Paradoxically, singles who are convinced that what they are looking for doesn’t exist (or is at least as rare as a pink unicorn with purple wings) will often make this claim: “I’ve been searching very hard for years. I’ve tried everything.” (Perhaps that’s true.  But they were not looking in the places where unicorns tend to congregate, and they didn’t make themselves visible, alluring and irresistible to said unicorns).

Unsurprisingly, people who approach dating this way often end up discouraged, chronically single and perpetually looking – often for decades. In which case it becomes my first hurdle to implore them: “Don’t believe everything you think is true!” 

How do self-limiting preconceptions become ingrained into the otherwise reasonable and rational minds of eligible, and often very attractive singles? Why is it so difficult to break free from negative thinking?

Many singles can’t kick this conditioning because it’s based on years of their own life and dating  experiences – as well at their (you might guess it) single friends. These can become, and then reinforce, a self-defeatist feedback loop. 

Katie Chen, Owner Catch Matchmaking

Just like birds of a feather flock together, like-minded singles tend to hang out together and take comfort in each others’ misery.

Almost masochistically, singles tend to seek out happy couples who will nonchalantly tell them: “You’re such a good catch, I can’t believe you’re not snatched up yet!” (Another affirmation of the belief that the problem is the lack of available matches).

We all observe friends, colleagues or family members who are now with lovely significant others, happily married, and with kids. (And we ask: Why am I not one of them?)

As more and more of our friends are coupled up, the pool of singles we are exposed to gets smaller and smaller. Worse yet, it is now limited to a few chance encounters at office parties, baby showers, birthday parties, social occasions and so on. But increasingly, we find these types of occasions dominated by couples. Also eliminated from this pool are singles who do not engage in the specific type of social engagement. The remaining rest isn’t necessarily at the event to find a partner, is of mixed ages, diverse values, and various looks and styles. Any such “mixed crowd” setting drastically lowers our odds of finding a match. It’s nothing but a perpetual game of chance, in which the odds seem to be getting progressively smaller and smaller. 

People generally remember the bad dates. Negative experiences stand out and again confirm the belief that the good ones only happen to others.

Holding on to the “no one is out there for me” mantra functions as a form of affirmative self-defense and stress reliever. It’s comforting. It can become a powerful mechanism to avoid having to let go of illusions. It ultimately becomes a welcome and addictive excuse for not consistently doing the hard things, such as making self-improvements and productive changes. Even those which would greatly improve our chances of finding (and keeping) a partner, and happiness. 

Let’s reflect on this:

“Every human being’s essential nature is perfect and faultless, but after years of immersion in the world we easily forget our roots and take on a counterfeit nature”

– Lao-tzu

Tired Of Being Single? Manifest These 5 Mind-Shifts!

Love begins with you. And let’s be frank: Half of it is about you. Nobody can create your happiness for you. Only you can.

Finding love or the right partner is not just a question of sheer “luck” or “fate”.

Work on your beliefs, your attitudes, your fears, your manners, your hopes, your looks, your behaviors. Begin by understanding your personal triggers. Examine and accept how past relationships and conditioning may influence your current beliefs and behavioral patterns – and try to never repeat something you clearly know was a mistake. 

Become clear and firm about your vision, your goals and must-haves for a partner and a relationship. Focus on these without fail, but let go of the less essential.

Accept, manifest and affirm that is within your own power to maximize attracting, meeting, and engaging with your preferred type of partner. 

Also important: Don’t fall into the trap of paying too much credence to the opinions and advice of your single friends. Friends will naturally gravitate to tell you what you want to hear. Friends don’t enjoy criticizing one another, but prefer to validate each other. And, just like any other shared misery, the shared “misfortune” of being single is a strong and addictive bonding experience. 

No wonder then that your single friends will want you to join their never ending chorus, their singing:

Sadly the good one’s are all taken,

but only we are cruelly forsaken.

For others love may flourish and bloom,

only for us it’s all doom and gloom.

At Catch we believe that nobody should have to be alone. And that nobody should ever stop dating.

That’s why our newsletter is about making and keeping all romantic relationships exciting. It’s no longer just for singles, but also for couples. If you found this edition helpful or entertaining, subscribe for tips on dating and relationships, entertainment and events, dating spots and ideas, and the latest news and advice from the love experts at Catch.

The post “All The Good Ones Are Taken” (And Other Nonsense Singles Believe) appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

If you are less than enthusiastic about Valentine’s Day, you are not alone. There are plenty of people around the world who are either skeptical about the occasion, or who loathe, despise and reject it with abandon. The UK edition of Cosmopolitan magazine even postulated:

“Let’s start with the obvious. It’s a grotesque consumerist holiday designed to make people feel awful. Whether you’re dating someone or you’re not.”

(Cosmopolitan Magazine, UK)

Of course, the irony here is that lifestyle magazines like Cosmopolitan capitalize on perpetuating the myth of the perfect life, the perfect relationship, the perfect everything. If your life circumstances aren’t what you see in these magazines, if you don’t look and dress like the models and featured celebrities, you are supposed to feel less than adequate. Because the implied message is that buying what you see in the ads will make you look better, lose weight, be healthier, be more attractive, feel better and be better. In a way, this is an industry and a marketing machine built on making people feel bad about themselves, then offering them a way out: pay up. In order to feel closer to the glorified and idealized image, you must fork over money.

And Valentine’s Day is part of this clever scheme. In the UK, £1.3 billion is spent yearly on cards, flowers, chocolates, and other gifts. But the spending champion is the U.S.A. (who else), where Valentine’s Day expenses reached a whopping $23.9 billion in 2022, or over $175 per person. 

Every celebratory day needs a good origin story to seem authentic. But Valentine’s Day? It’s contrived – a figment of fiction. One folk story holds that it goes back to the imprisonment of Saint Valentine of Rome for ministering to Christians persecuted under the Roman Empire in the 3rd Century AD.

But it gets confusing quickly. All we know for sure was that a “Feast of Saint Valentine” was established by Pope Gelasius 496 AD, to be celebrated on February 14 – more than 200 years after Saint Valentine of Rome supposedly died in 269 AD. Of course, Valentine (or rather, “Valentinus”, derived from valens – worthy, strong, powerful) was a rather common name, and there were many other prominent Christian martyrs by that name. For instance, Valentine of Terni, who became bishop of Interamna (now Terni, in central Italy) and is said to have been martyred during the persecution under Emperor Aurelian in 273.

All in all, about eleven other saints having the name Valentine are commemorated in the Roman Catholic Church. Some Eastern Churches of the Western rite may provide still other different lists of Saint Valentines.

The same confusion and lack of evidence goes for the often claimed origins of Valentine’s Day in a number of Greco-Roman festivals celebrating love and fertility, such as the Roman Lupercalia festival. Which, by the way, must have been fun:

“And many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.”

(Plutarch: Life of Cesar) 

Authentic historical records are scarce and fragmented, if they exist at all. To make it short: we really know nothing of substance about how and where Valentine’s Day originated, and how it became associated with romantic love (one of several types of love delineated by the Greeks and Romans). 

The first recorded association of Valentine’s Day with romantic love is believed to be in the Parliament of Fowls (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer, a dream vision portraying a parliament for birds to choose their mates. But it isn’t clear whom Chaucer meant by “Volantynys day”. Maybe St. Valentine of Genoa, an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD 307, and whose dedicated day was May 3?

Whoever it was, Chaucer touched off the oldest known Valentine’s Day tradition: writing poetry. From Charles, Duke of Orléans, to John Donne, to William Shakespeare, to these lines:

She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowers, that in the forrest grew.

(Edmund Spenser, from: The Faerie Queene, 1590)

In Victorian England, exchanging poetry was as popular as posting on social media is today. Nearly everyone either wrote, read, learned or recited poems. While the expression of personal feelings in public life was frowned upon, writing verses to or about a love interest, or perhaps just a friend, was not only perfectly acceptable, but also eagerly practiced. Poems were shared by personal recitals or (by those who could both read and write) in handwritten notes. These often came accompanied by embellishments and handiwork consisting of decorative lace, ribbons, drawings and paintings.

Before 1810, the majority of Valentine’s cards were still hand made by the giver, but advances in printing methods and the booming market soon created a new industry: the commercially printed card.

By 1835, 60,000 Valentine’s cards were mailed in the United Kingdom, even though postage was quite expensive. Today, the U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately 190 million Valentine’s cards are sent each year in the United States.

So there you have it. If you want to celebrate Valentine’s Day in the traditional way, write some poetry on nicely decorated paper. If you can’t write, the book The Young Man’s Valentine Writer (published in Britain in 1797) might help you out.

But whatever you do – don’t feel pressured into spending money on something that makes no one happy. And don’t feel inadequate or “missing something” if you choose not to participate at all. You’ll live, and the sun will still rise tomorrow.

Reinhard Kargl is a journalist and media professional. He usually writes about science and technology.

The post Love & Loathing On Valentine’s Day appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

A lot, actually! Dating and sales both require the same fundamental skills and techniques to be successful! The difference is just that sales, you are trying to convince the other person that they need the product or service you are selling. While in dating, you aim to convince the other person that what they need is you!

Tina Gray and Janelle Holden are the founders of DeFY Sales – business coaches, and sales experts. For their podcast, Juicy Closers, they talked with Katie Chen, the owner of Catch Matchmaking in Los Angeles about what salespeople can learn from daters, and vice versa.

Listen to this 35-minute episode to learn all about it!

For more free resources and tips, sign up for our newsletter, now not just for singles!

The post New Podcast: What Do Dating And Sales Have In Common? appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

Whether you agree or have a different opinion, we’d love to see it. Please click through to the Catch Channel and post your comments!

The post New Video: Thoughts About Valentine’s Day appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

The post About Valentine’s Day appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

As fall is changing the colors of nature outside, let’s invite some hues and scents of ripe fruit indoors for cocktail hour! Who knows – perhaps in between the turkey basting, herb chopping, gravy thickening, pie making, and the antics of pesky relatives over Thanksgiving – maybe you need a drink? Better still when it creates a quiet moment with your sweetheart!

Although the hot summer days perfect for Aperol Spritz may be over, you can still use the zesty orange liquor to whip up a suitable drink matching the season.

Click here for another recipe for two!

The post Bourbon Aperol Fall Cocktails For Two, Served With Mini Baked Potatoes appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

App-based virtual dates may be social distancing compliant, but they come with other risks to your privacy and security. With so many app choices, which one should you pick?

Most likely, you’ll be discussing very private and personal things on a date, which can potentially expose you to embarrassing situations. And let’s face it: sometimes you may meet creepy people, particularly if they weren’t introduced to you by a trusted friend (or a professional matchmaker).

Save yourself heartache and trouble and learn about the pros and cons of the various video chat apps, then pick the one that’s best suited to your needs.

Read my article!

The post Which Video App Is Best For Virtual Dates? appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

As fall is changing the colors of nature outside, let’s invite some hues and scents of ripe fruit indoors for cocktail hour! Who knows – perhaps in between the turkey basting, herb chopping, gravy thickening, pie making, and the antics of pesky relatives over Thanksgiving – maybe you need a drink? Better still when it creates a quiet moment with your sweetheart!

Although the hot summer days perfect for Aperol Spritz may be over, you can still use the zesty orange liquor to whip up a suitable drink matching the season. And, should you make this pairing on Thanksgiving day: we suggest baked mini potatoes. They don’t take long to roast, and you may already have the oven heated up. Or, you can use a mini-oven. Want it really fast? Microwave them first, then finish them in the oven. 

To make things interesting, we are flavoring our appetizer with smoky sweet bacon and hints of caramel bourbon. Should you have guests for Thanksgiving, this fragrant delight is very easy to scale up.

Bourbon Aperol Fall Cocktail For Two

• 3 ounces bourbon

• 1 ounce Aperol

• 1/2 lemon, freshly squeezed

• 4 – 6 ounces club soda or sparkling mineral water

• 1 cup ice cubes

• 2 strips of lemon peel, for garnish

Instructions:

Place the peels into two old fashioned glasses, and press with a pestle or wooden stick to release the oils. Divide ice cubes into two old-fashioned glasses. Divide Aperol between the glasses. Add 1 1/2 oz bourbon to each glass, then very gently top each glass with club soda or sparkling water. Serve with a stirring stick. (Sip without stirring, if you prefer a layering of flavors, give it a gentle stir if you prefer your drink to taste consistent throughout).

Mini-baked potatoes

• 6 baby roasting potatoes

• 1 – 2 strips bacon

• 4 – 6 tablespoons sour cream (or Greek yogurt)

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

• dried oregano or herbs de provence, to taste

• salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions:

Preheat mini-oven to 375 degrees. Prep baking sheet with lightly oiled aluminum foil (optional, for easy clean up). Toss potatoes with oil, salt, and pepper.

Bake in the oven for about 25 – 30 minutes, until skin is golden and a fork pokes through easily. (Times varies from oven to oven). Give the potatoes a toss half-way through. While potatoes roast, heat a small skillet to fry bacon strips. When bacon is cooked, soak up excess oil on a paper towel. (This will crisp the bacon faster and avoids burning it). Once cooled, chop cooked bacon into bits and set aside.

Remove roasted potatoes from oven and let cool. Carefully make two cuts on the top of each potato, with the cuts resembling the letter “X”. Give each cut potato a squeeze to create an opening for the sour cream or yogurt. Sprinkle potatoes with salt and pepper to taste. Top about 1/2 to 1 tablespoon sour cream per potato, depending on your preferences. Top sour cream with bacon bits. Sprinkle topped potatoes with dried oregano, herbs de provence, or your favorite dried herb.

Katie Chen (LinkedIn) is the owner of Catch Matchmaking, a boutique dating, relationship consulting, and matchmaking agency is Los Angeles.

The post Bourbon Aperol Fall Cocktails For Two, Served With Mini Baked Potatoes appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

App-based virtual dates may be social distancing compliant, but they come with other risks to your privacy and security. With so many app choices, which one should you pick?

2020 has been the year of Zoom. Although it has become the most talked about, there are many other platforms vying for a piece of the pie. Examples are Adobe Connect, Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Blue Jeans, Webex Meetings, Discord, Whereby or TeamViewer – to name the most well-known. Google Hangouts is being phased out (to be replaced by Google Meet and Google Voice). Granddaddy Skype (now owned by Microsoft) is still a contender. Meanwhile, chat apps and even social media platforms are now including video calling as well. All of these may be used to conduct dates remotely.

But all things considered, FaceTime offers the best package for online dating. Here’s why.

Security

First, let’s talk about cybersecurity. For video chat platforms to work, you must allow the app to access your device’s camera and microphone. Can you be sure that the app doesn’t listen you to when you are not actually using it? Can you be sure that the camera is never activated without your knowledge? You can’t. You have no choice but to rely on the software provider’s security measures.

And speaking of providers: How can you be absolutely certain that the app you just downloaded hasn’t been compromised, or is, in fact, really the latest and most secure version of the app you intended to install?

Here is the first major advantage of Apple’s Facetime. Since it comes with every iPhone, iPad and Mac, you don’t need to install anything. Updates (such as the all-important security updates) can only be done through Apple’s own App Store. This all but rules out that the app itself could become infiltrated and turned into spyware by a malicious hacker.

And, due to the market penetration of the Apple’s iOS platform, which has over 1 billion devices in operation, there’s a high degree of probability that your date already has FaceTime installed as well. If that’s the case, you’re both good to go without anyone needing to install and configure a new app. (The same isn’t true for Android users, where different users may have different third party apps, and you’d first have to negotiate which app to use).

Speaking of third parties, here’s another advantage you’ll enjoy with FaceTime: there’s no need to surrender your contact info, profile pictures, or details about your communications to the third platform operators. Since FaceTime is integrated into Apple’s ecosystem (which also incorporates chat, a calendar, email, your phone’s calling features, your contacts and your photo albums), you share nothing with third parties. Your info stays with Apple, and the company doesn’t want to sell user data to the competition.

The integrity of your communication itself is another advantage of FaceTime. FaceTime calls are protected by end-to-end encryption so that only the sender and receiver can access them. Not even Apple can decrypt the data. (Or so they claim).

One more advantage should be mentioned: You can also use FaceTime for audio calls (without video). This makes it more like a phone call without the need to reveal your cellphone number. More about this privacy feature below.

Privacy

Whenever you are using an app to communicate, you are giving up some privacy. With respect to virtual dates, there are two areas of concern.

In this day and age, you might not want to reveal too much information about yourself to a complete stranger from the get-go. This goes especially if you have met the person online, that is without vetting by a friend, relative or a professional matchmaker, such as Catch Matchmaking.

Since your phone number and email address may be tied to your social media profiles, it is better to avoid using either to make video calls to a complete stranger from the internet. The danger here is that if your unvetted online acquaintance turns out to be some sort of psychopath or jerk, you might receive harassing phone calls or offensive chat messages. Or worse, you might even become a victim of online bullying or cyberstalking.

On many video chat platforms there is no way to keep your online profiles private. This is particularly true for the video chat systems integrated into social media platforms, for example, Facebook Messenger. Others, such as Skype, tie you user account to a discoverable ID. If you are using Skype for business, do you want to use the same Skype ID for online dating?

FaceTime, on the other hand, works differently. It is tied to your Apple ID, which in turn connects all your Apple devices. However, you can choose what identifier you want to use when making and receiving video calls. For example, you could use your Apple ID, or your phone number, or just another email address. You can even set up a unique email address just for dating purposes. This means you can make and receive FaceTime calls without even revealing your cellphone number. This alone doesn’t prevent harassment, but it makes it easier to stop it.

The other privacy issue doesn’t only relate to virtual dating and potential harassment and abuse, but to all uses of video or chat apps: the real purpose for most of these apps is not what you might think it is. There’s an old adage in tech: if you aren’t paying for something, you are the product that’s being sold. Your data, that is.

For instance, if you share your geolocation data with an app, those operating the platform can pinpoint your location precisely. Over time, the log of time stamped location data provides detailed information on your movements and whereabouts. This is a great and valuable marketing tool, and quite bankable.

Think that disallowing your device’s location data to be shared with an app can protect you? Well, it’s better than nothing, but: your location can still be tracked via your IP address, the IP address of the WiFi router you are using, or the wireless cell location data. This may be less accurate, but in combination and in aggregate with other data, the platform can still collect a lot of information about you.

So, for example, if you are using Facebook’s Messenger app, the social network can combine everything it knows about you, your preferences, your location, the posts you pay attention to, the content of your posts, the contents of your text chats, as well as your contact and your Facebook friends’ information to build a dossier about you. Likewise with apps like WeChat, Line, and so on. WhatsApp (owned by Facebook since 2014) offers end-to-end encryption (but users must turn it on) while Facebook Messenger admittedly machine-reads and analyizes all content sent over the network, including pictures. (This was revealed as part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal). 

If you read this far, you now understand why these chat apps have become so immensely valuable and command billions in IPOs. You may think of them of a convenient way to communicate. But the providers think of them as a convenient way to watch you and build a profile on you. A profile that’s marketable, of course. There is no such thing as “free”. Someone always pays.

This is again where Apple’s system shines. Apple makes enough money from what its customers pay for hardware and services. This means Apple doesn’t need to make money from seller information about is customers, which removes the incentive for the company to constantly snoop on you. And during a virtual date, when you might be sharing many personal details, you might want more privacy than when you are simply texting a friend about the weather.

The only downside: FaceTime only works on Apple devices. At some point, Apple tried to make FaceTime available to non-Apple users and devices, but these plans were put on hold due to performance and security reasons. (For you nerds: Apple’s Session Initiation Protocol implementations adds techniques to enhance performance at the cost of breaking interoperability. Examples are: port multiplexing, Session Description Protocol minimization and SDP compression. And if the app was made available outside its ecosystem and AppStore, Apple cannot guarantee its integrity).

Warning: There are apps that claim to make FaceTime available for Windows, Android or other platforms. Although often called “FaceTime” (or similar) these are not provided or sanctioned by Apple, which means you are totally on your own when it comes to security.

But if you and your date are both Apple users, then FaceTime should be your first choice for virtual dates.

And finally there is, as Steve Jobs used to say, “one last thing”. If one-on-one virtual dates seem a little too intimidating, you might consider joining a group video chat. FaceTime implements this functionality for up to 32 participants, and the “look and feel” beats that of the Zoom app, but without the privacy and security issues.

Reinhard Kargl is a journalist covering science and technology. Disclosure: The author is a shareholder of various tech companies, including Apple Inc.

The post Why Apple’s FaceTime Should Be Your Preferred App For Virtual Dates appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.

We are grateful to receive messages of appreciation, like the one below from a happy client!

“Hello Katie. I hope all is well with you. Happy thanksgiving to you and your family. I want you to know that your advice to continue to see both R and L and to let things play out was right on. Over time things have really picked up with R and are going really well. L was awesome and we had a great time together but I think R is a better fit for me. Thank you for the wonderful introductions and hope you have a wonderful holiday season.”

Thank you to all our supporters and fans for entrusting us with your relationship journey! May your Thanksgiving be surrounded by great food, love, and hope.

The post Happy Thanksgiving From Catch! 🦃🍁🍽 appeared first on Catch Matchmaking.