I’ve recently become obsessed with Bravo’s “Millionaire Matchmaker” — almost entirely due to the show’s host and creator, Patti Stanger. I used to shun the world of reality TV but both The Bachelor and Millionaire have stolen my heart, so to speak. Why do I love Patti? Let me count the ways. She’s fun, she’s direct, she’s confident and she’s no feminista when it comes to dating. The show takes young millionaires looking for love and screens girls interested in them to set them up in matchmaker heaven. Patti believes in women being women and men being men. She demands her guys be perfect gentlemen and assesses each first date with the cruel tsking every clueless dater needs to hear.
I’ve had a recent dating epiphany and so dating shows are fun for me now, where as they used to be painful. My whole life I thought not being married by the age of 25 was the kiss of death. What kind of pathetic, Midwestern girl would I be if I didn’t give birth before 30? In the past six months, I’ve become a new woman and it’s the most freeing thing I’ve ever experienced (aside from skydiving.) No longer do my life’s happiness goals include marriage. Of course I still want to get married but it’s a different desire now.
Thanks to God, and my roommate, who has so enlightened me with her wisdom and wide selection of books, my perspective on dating and marriage has matured. I’m reading “How to Get a Date Worth Keeping” and oh how I wish I would have found this book years ago. I’m so regretting my years of pining for “the one” when I had all the time in the world. I’m begging these young, desperate to find marriage girls, to STOP and have fun with dating! “How to Get a Date Worth Keeping” views dating as a fun way to get to know people, never pressuring you to “know” anything and valuing those you go out with no matter if it’s a match. When you change your perspective on dating and the people you are dating, it’s so much better!
True, my Indiana peeps don’t get it. How can dating be such a big part of life? But for a single girl in the city, it IS. And it’s fun. And now that I’m doing it right, I’m not ready to stop doing it just yet. So hold off, Mr. Perfect, we’ve got the rest of our lives.
Oh and thanks Patti Stanger for entertaining me and telling me how it is.
Patti Stanger for president! "Listen here, Afghanistan, we're going to find you a good match, we've got a room full of Russia, Pakistan, Iran, India, the U.S. and — my wildcard — Indonesia. But you have to be open minded or you'll be alone forever."
Patti Stanger for president! "Listen here, Afghanistan, we're going to find you a good match, we've got a room full of Russia, Pakistan, Iran, India, the U.S. and — my wildcard — Indonesia. But you have to be open minded or you'll be alone forever."