WHERE MATCHMAKER MARIA WOULD LOOK FOR LOVE
Good morning everyone,
It’s Libra season, and coincidentally, today’s newsletter is all about relationships. I don’t typically align my newsletters to astrology (maybe I should?), but this tracks because Libra, ruled by Venus, is the sign of partnership, representing balance, harmony, beauty, and connection (romantic or otherwise). It’s also no surprise that this time of year marks the unofficial start of “cuffing season,” as the kids say—that instinct to find someone to hibernate with through the winter. And truly, there’s no one I love talking about relationships with more than my friend, mentor, and go-to relationship guru, Maria Avgitidis, aka Matchmaker Maria.
With her first book, Ask a Matchmaker: Matchmaker’s No-Nonsense Guide to Finding Love, that debuted this spring, the 4th-generation matchmaker encourages people to get really honest about what they’re looking for in a partner, communicate their wants and needs directly, and stop wasting time on people who are inconsistent, unclear, or, as she calls them, “time thieves.” She delivers the kind of tough love that few people—outside of maybe a good therapist—are willing to give.
Her theories aren’t vapid trends like “black cat/golden retriever” or “high value man/high value woman.” Instead, she offers her longtime guiding principles, such as the green theory (based on color theory, which suggests that wearing green increases your success rate on a first date) or the Stanley Tucci theory (that men who like Stanley Tucci are more likely to be secure, sex-positive, and generous in bed). But perhaps her most impactful philosophy is the 12-date rule. Maria advises that, when dating with the intention of marriage, women should wait until 12 dates before sleeping with someone. It's important to note that she counts any in-person meet-up or phone call of at least 20 minutes up to 3 hours as one date (and says you can have a maximum of two dates in one day if you went on a marathon date). The idea is to give yourself space to actually focus on long-term compatibility and getting to know a person—without letting sexual chemistry cloud your judgment.
Every day, Maria receives messages from women all over who say that the 12-date rule has helped them enter their healthiest relationship and has also led to engagements—and what’s a better endorsement than that?
Personally, she’s helped me become a lot more discerning, something that had historically been a struggle for me. Maria is adamant that it should only take about three months (or less) for a serious man to commit. In my twenties, I wasted far too much time waiting for guys to decide if they wanted to be with me, believing that if I just held on long enough, things would somehow work out in my favor. Learning to choose myself and walk away from inconsistency has been the ultimate practice in rebuilding my self-worth.
I hope to one day complete the 12-date rule challenge. Until then, Maria and I chat about where she’d look for a partner if she were single right now (hint: it’s not a dating app), the bad dating advice that’s frustrating her and is making the dating landscape more challenging, and the vital question to ask if you want to be a good partner.
Welcome back to FWD JOY, Maria. I was referring back to the first time I interviewed you, which I think was in 2021 or 2022. I wrote in the introduction that I adore your advice because it's no-nonsense. And I was like, Oh, that became the tagline of the book, Ask a Matchmaker, Maria's No Nonsense Guide to Finding Love. Not saying that you got it from me, but I just can't think of a better word to describe you.
Maria: Honestly. You might be one of the first few. I'm not even kidding because I didn't come up with a subtitle. My publisher asked me, What do people that you trust call your advice? And I'm like, no nonsense. I remember thinking of you, because we are also friends, but we didn't meet as friends. We met professionally first. You were a journalist, you'd come into my office. I think you kind of read me. You see me in the way I hope I am seen, and saying to someone, no nonsense is a lot nicer than she's a bitch. I've been told some pretty hurtful things about my approach, but you were one of the first people to be like, No, Maria is just no nonsense. She knows what she's talking about. She doesn't want to waste your time. She's just going to give it to you the way you need to hear it, quickly, so we can move on.
You say the things that a friend isn't really going to tell you.
Maria: And I don't think friends are supposed to tell you that stuff, right? That's why you're supposed to have a therapist. That's why you're supposed to have a mentor. That's why you're supposed to have a community that is not just made up of all your best friends. Your friend is supposed to advocate for you and be your friend, listen to you, but that's not their job to correct you.
Actually, I feel like that has kind of been a source of painful moments between friends, and I, whether it's me giving advice or them giving advice to me, it feels really sensitive.
Maria: What I really appreciate about you, Chrissy, is that even in your newsletter, you're very open about using a therapist. I personally do not have a therapist. However, I have a mentor. I have three mentors. You have to find the tool that works best for what's clogging you up in life.
Have you ever given someone advice, and in hindsight, you were like, That was just not good advice?
Maria: No. You know what? I have thought about this a lot. On TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, you can see your memories, the things that you posted way back when. Of course, there's growth as new information comes out, I'll tweak how some of that approach comes out, or how some of that solution or strategy will come out to people. The advice is still the same, which goes back to, How are your conflict resolution skills? How are yours together with this person that you're dating? Are you being honest with what you actually want or what you think people think you should have?
Something I didn't ask you in our first interview, that I have come to ask all my guests, is what were you like as a kid?
Maria: Bossy. Very passionate. Every time I had a concern or curiosity, I would write letters to editors, I would write letters to the mayor, I would write letters to the president.
I was also looking at your natal chart before we did this interview. I think your birth chart is such a great reflection of who you are. Even you talking about being bossy and just very passionate is such a nod to your Sagittarius sun. I love that you're a Cancer rising. It's the only water that you have in your chart, you are very sensitive, but you pretend that you're not. You're very self-protective, which is inherent to Cancer because it's the crab. So it's like you have the hard shell, but soft on the inside. You also have a Taurus moon, which is where you get that very grounded, practical, sometimes stubborn quality about you. I also love that you have your moon and you have your north node, which represents destiny in the 11th house, which is the house of community and friendship. So you are destined to build community.
Maria: I love hearing you right now. My brain is tingling just listening to you. Back to the crab thing, yes, that could be my mascot for my own personal well-being. I am a very sensitive person. As hard as I seem and as strong as I seem, this is actually something I'm really working on. I take things so personally, even when it has nothing to do with me, that person's not thinking of me, and I don't think of it as an attack on me. I just take it personally. And that's two very distinct feelings.
Let's talk a bit about your book that came out earlier this year. Does it just feel so good that it's out in the world and people are reading it and loving it, aside from the conservatives?
Maria: Actually, you know what? There are actually more conservatives who love it than those who don’t. It's just the ones that will go and give that one-star review, which is mind-boggling. Why put in the effort? All I said was you have to date in the same reality. I don't think some people like that sort of messaging. They think I should be able to break bread with anyone. And it's like, well, no, you can't. That's how tribes work. That's how communities work. Some communities may not be welcoming to you. I certainly don't belong to a lot of communities, and you have to be self-aware of when you're hurting other communities. With that said, to go back to your original question of how does it feel, it feels, when it came out in May, I felt really overwhelmed. I felt like this crescendo of I have to meet this mark and this mark and this mark, all these little things that have to come with launching a book.
Now I need to start a second leg of the tour. I need to create the stage where I can have the people who follow this philosophy meet each other. Also, I feel immense gratitude because now that it's been three months since the book came out, I'm now getting people who have gotten into relationships using the book already. I usually have about two messages in my inbox right now. I'm sure it's only going to grow. Whenever I look at my inbox, I feel very grateful.
Your book is the new Calling in the One.
Maria: From your mouth to God's ears. That's a great book. It's got really good strategy sessions.
I haven't made it past chapter one. Actually, it's funny, I went on a trip with my ex last weekend, or the weekend before last, and a friend of mine had texted me, being like, did you ever finish this book? And I took a photo of my ex and sent it back to her, and I was like, clearly not.
Maria: I'm so happy you said that because that's actually the first thing I thought about when I started writing my book. I have a lot of dating books on my bookshelf, and it is really hard to go past the first few chapters of any dating book. So going into it, I remember even telling my editor, This book is meant to be finished. I don't ever want to hear someone telling me they only got to chapter one. And I used the tool of storytelling. It made me think of Dave Chappelle. I forget where he said it, but he said something about how there was a certain name for storytellers in certain tribes in Africa, and this is pre-history, right? Before the written word goes down, how we pass on stories. It feels very similar in my culture. For me, it’s Greek mythology. Greek mythology predates the written word. These are the stories that we tell each other. And eventually Homer sat down and wrote them to paper, but that was an element I really wanted to bring in the storytelling. I kick it off by talking about Zeus from the beginning of the book as the OG Matchmaker, but that was the element that I used to bring the reader forward. So, for anyone interested in buying this book, I feel like it's not your regular dating book.
It's also part memoir. You get to share your own story, which is important because, for part of the time that you've been a matchmaker, you were single, and so I'm sure you got all the time. What do you know about matchmaking? You're single.
Maria: Yeah, I was single the first four or five years before I met my husband. But I did get that question a lot. Looking back now, the people who were hiring me then were over 40, and I was 23, 24. Now that I am 40, I can think back to those specific clients and say, Oh, I was not your problem. The kind of person who paid me when I was very young, and the price that they paid me, they weren't paying necessarily for a matchmaker to do the job. At the time, I was the most affordable matchmaker in the industry because I was new. I didn't even know how to price myself. And I think they were just hiring a person to tell their friends, see, even a matchmaker can't do it. That sort of hopelessness was really hard to match. Luckily, I don't have that happen anymore, but I do feel it sometimes.
I was re-listening to a part of your book today. It's been a while now since I listened to it for the first time, and I was listening to the part about creating a manifest, which is a big part of your philosophy of how you also manifested your husband. And sometimes you can come back to something and you're like, Oh, this is sticking with me in a different way because I never considered once I write this, I should actually keep it close to me and refer to it and use that as the guideline. Not to say that it needs to be this strict checklist.
Maria: It's a compass, and it's like if you know that you need to go north and your compass is showing northeast or northwest, at least you're still going north. But I think a lot of people are going south, or they're like southeast, and then I'll veer 90 degrees and we'll start going north. And I'm like, no, if you're below this quadrant, you're heading in the wrong direction.
This is something that I struggle with. I am a true romantic through and through. I always think of Logan Yuri's How to Not Die Alone philosophy because she divides people into certain categories, and one is a “romantic” who's like, it'll happen when it happens. And I am very much a believer of that, but I'm still an active participant in trying to make that happen. Sometimes I think, wow, people must be like, why can't Chrissy manifest a person, because I've been single and talking about this for so long.
Maria: I've never thought that about you. I just need you to know that. When you said that out loud, my eyebrows went, I just realized I need Botox. I'm like, whoa, whoa. You're talking about my friend there. I've never thought that about you. I think you're actually dating a lot healthier than most people are, despite you, right?
No, it's obviously just what I'm thinking about myself. But yeah, I also think it's part of the journey. We are not owed love or owed love in the way that we think that we should have it or we deserve it. And I do feel like so much of my life and also my life's purpose is about being in pursuit of love, but at the same time, that pursuit has actually just brought me closer to myself…
Maria: Let me ask you a question. Do you feel like you love yourself more than you did five years ago?
Yes.
Maria: That's a success. That's first of all, that's grace, but that's also growth. I think we are socialized to believe that it can only be experienced with someone loving us, but the truth is that loving ourselves is actually a really hard thing to do, especially when our parents might not have loved themselves. We're not taught this.
I've actually been on a break from the apps since the middle of the summer. I was just exhausted by the very dry conversations. You talk about this all the time, but people are not using it correctly. I want to use the app to connect. We send a few messages back and forth, and then we just make plans to meet because you're never going to know that person, no matter how long you talk to them on the app, you're never really going to know them until you meet them in person.
Maria: If I were single right now, my strategy would not include online dating at all. If I did, it would be like Tinder or a very niche dating app. I'm Greek Orthodox Christian, that's really important to me, so maybe it would be something where it would gather people who are of my faith.
The next thing I would do is I would call up the Greek consulate and ask, Where's your event schedule? I want to go to all of your events. So, let's pretend for a second, one of your listeners is Nigerian, right? The Nigerian American Chamber of Commerce has events across the country. The Nigerian consulate and the Nigerian ambassador also speak at different events, and you can get a list of all those events. I would make it my life's mission if I were someone who wanted to meet other Nigerian people, to go to all of these events. You're just there to meet new people, but you are there to mingle. You're not there to sit in the corner nursing a wine. In the beginning, I'd probably go to two or three events the first month, so that people can see the repeat face. But then, after that, once a month. If a woman is listening, swap out Nigerian with any other sub-community you might want to be a part of. If you went to three events in one month, you would meet other people so quickly, and then those people you would meet, let's say in September, those people are going to have such a profound impact in who you meet in the next six months.
The person who introduced me to my husband, I met her at an event. She just happened to be there to network to find jobs. If you're looking for a job, what I just said is also a perfect strategy too. I met her, and I really liked her. We kept hanging out. I ended up hiring her, but because I also became friends with her and her partner, three months later, I met the rest of her friend group. So, the impact of meeting her in July of 2012 and then becoming friends with her in September, by December, I had met my partner. So if I were single right now, my strategy would be hitting the pavement. It would not be hiding behind an app, getting people to know me, getting more comfortable, dressing up a little bit. This is the way. When people hear this advice, they think Maria is saying to go make friends. I'm not saying that. You need to go out and expand your social network.
Then I will hear the thing of like, well, I only meet women at these things. That's impossible. There are men at these things. I need you to go talk to them. I need you to become friends with their wives. I need you to go to church, synagogue, temple. I need you not just to go one time. You're going to go three weeks in a row, and you're going to tell the auntie in the front row, Hey, I'm looking for a partner. You ask your girlfriends which of their sons is single. If you were looking for a job, you would do the exact same things. Why wouldn't you invest the same amount of effort to find a fantastic person for you? Are you going to take any of this strategy, Chrissy? I think this would work with you. I'm going to start forwarding you Greek consulate events.
Can I just tap into other foreign entities? Because I already know I'm meant to be with someone foreign.
Maria: I think you would do really well with someone who is Dutch, but I will take Swedish as well for you, or Icelandic. If you think about who you are, I think the kind of demographics that really love smart and strong women are Icelandic, Dutch, Greek, Turkish. I definitely see you with a European, you're just too worldly.
Thank you. Yeah, that's all really great advice though. I've met some men in person over the last year. While they weren't necessarily men whom I was really going to date, I think even just the act of, I met someone in person. I was attracted to them. It's electrifying, and I think it just gives you some hope that it is possible. It's not as dire as we want to make it sound. But yeah, I also spend a lot of time in the house.
Maria: I love that. And I would add one more thing. As someone who also works from home half the week, one more thing I would add to my dating strategies, even though I'm not at all athletic anymore, I would definitely join an intramural co-ed sport that meets every week. That would be my fall strategy for dating.
What are some of your biggest frustrations about dating advice online right now? Let's air it out.
Maria: For me, the frustrating thing about some dating advice, especially as it's targeted to single men, is that the way success is positioned in dating. There are some really bad actors in the dating space who are not necessarily dating influencers, dating coaches, or matchmakers. They're actually just political mouthpieces. But they are impacting dating with pretty nonsense dating advice, like telling women to go to college just to get their Mrs. degree, get married as soon as possible, and have kids.
When we can see that both liberal women and conservative women, they're asking to have emotional stability. They're asking for a career, they're asking for some financial independence to do fun things. And instead, it's not the women who are actually getting this messaging. It's the men who listen to it, too, who are like, he's right.
I'm not disagreeing that we could look for partners in college, but it's not a fail if you didn't. But that is what I think is impacting the catastrophe that is currently modern dating. There is a catastrophe. It's actually quite dire, especially among people under the age of 28. You have an entire demographic that has only known digital dating. They've never really participated in the analog dating of mall culture, learning what rejection is in person. There are certain things that were just never provided for them as an opportunity unless their parents put them in certain co-ed experiences as young kids to build those social skills.
And then you have the major divide in political compass between Gen Z men and Gen Z women. That means going back to chapter three, about not living in the same reality. That's what it is. We have a huge subset of young men living in a different reality than their young women. And it's going to be very hard for those two groups to come together to create long-term partnerships.
And there’s an erosion of social skills. Everyone is scared to talk to people.
Maria: And I feel like the reason why a lot of people are scared to talk to people is that people have learned to weaponize therapy speak. The only way to connect with someone is to be vulnerable. It is really hard to be vulnerable with anyone if they are going to throw it back at you or tell you, oh, look, we're trauma bonding or I'm being love bombed. Anytime I hear the word love bombing, I want to know more because are you being love bombed? You might be, or is this person just being attentive? Are you trauma-bonding, or is this person just telling you a very relatable story of their parent being sick? It's very hard to connect with people when you can't just be vulnerable.
I don't want anyone to think that hope is lost. I don't think hope is lost. I still think that there is still time to course correct how we connect, but that has to do with the single person. That person has to want to increase their capacity to be vulnerable, to increase their opportunities, to meet new people, to have those connections, and to actually be a part of something that doesn't just require them not talking to anybody ever.
I recently saw a video online that was like, there's so much talk about how to get into a relationship, but there's not enough content around how to be in a relationship and be a good partner. Do you agree with that? Also, your book is not just for single people, it is also for people who are in relationships. It’s rare for a dating book.
Maria: Thank you. It’s definitely a reminder to date your partner. The last few chapters are dedicated to that. I think in my next book, I will only focus on relationships. In terms of the content that exists out there, it seems like there are three buckets: the first one is how to date/get into a relationship. The next one is couples therapy—like, wow, you're in a shitty relationship, how can we fix it? Is it fixable? So there's this massive gap between I just got into a great relationship and oh my god, we’re divorcing! The third bucket is perimenopause content, that's the new thing. Here's how to date when you have perimenopause. If you're in a relationship, here's what you need to tell your partner when you start having a hormonal imbalance. Who's going to address this gap? I hope that this is my second book. I want to follow my reader into that space, which is like, here's how to make a relationship really great.
One of my mentors is Dr. Terri Orbuch. She's one of the leading clinical psychologists in the field of what makes a good marriage great. She has studied hundreds of couples for over 40 years, and she's followed them through the whole cycle from divorce to remarriage to widows. She can tell you, okay, if these things happen, this is why it works. If this doesn't happen, this is why it doesn't work. The Gottman Institute, as well, has such a plethora of information that I feel like it needs to be pushed out even more about what makes a good relationship. I cannot tell you how much life happens. Recently, someone said marriage is hard. It can be really hard when you're with the wrong person because life can be really hard. If you have a person that you can share in that vulnerability, be honest, see them in their most honest space, it can make those hard moments in life a little easier because you have a partner in coping. I was thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic, how many relationships ended in those first three months? Right?
Don't think for a second that my husband and I did not argue like hell, the first couple of months of lockdown. I was eight months pregnant. My husband was a public health scientist, so he's just having a meltdown of understanding the data in a different way than I can comprehend. And we were suddenly both working from home. I don't know him in that space. So, it was very hard, and it took a few weeks to get back into our rhythm. But the overall thing that we had working with us was that we had pretty strong conflict resolution skills. We knew, okay, if we're fighting, when do we stop fighting? When do we start to compromise? When do we listen to the other person? Is this person being overtly emotional? Can we get to the logical side now? Vice versa. And that is what helped get the relationship through the lockdown.
Obviously, I watch your stories all the time. I'm so locked into Ask a Matchmaker Wednesdays because I'm so fascinated by all the questions that you get. I always appreciate how much you emphasize, you need to be able to communicate with your partner or the person you're dating. And if you're four or five months into this and you can't have a simple conversation about where things are going or needs that you have in the relationship, you need to ask yourself why you feel you can't do that. If you're afraid that you can push someone away by bringing up something important to you, you need to question, well, why is that someone that you want to be with? But I get it. It's hard. I think so many women are dating also from a place of fear in relationships, in a place of fear, I can't do better than this…
Maria: I really struggle with that because that's actually when people say, how do I tell my partner of two years that I want this? I've always tried to be empathetic. I always try to be in someone else's shoes. When I answer those questions, those are the questions that I struggle with the most because I'm kind of like, what do you mean? What do you mean you've been with them for two years? It's really hard for me to picture being in a relationship with someone that long and not being able to say whatever's on my mind. The idea of having to filter anything coming out of my mouth with someone that I am having sex with or see four nights a week, I shouldn't have to do that at that point. I should be able to be myself. I should be able to tell you my truth, and you should feel that comfort too.
I think that when I hear those questions, I've been with someone for a year. I've been someone two years, and how do I tell them this? Recently, one of the questions was, I've been with my partner for a year. How do I explain to him that I need to start taking care of my mother and I need a caregiver, and that while this won't have any financial cost to him, there will be affordable issues on my end. And I'm like, what do you mean? Just tell him everything you just said to me. You have to say to him, but also do not assume that they don't have a financial burden. Whenever you live with someone, if you're caring for another human being, there is a financial burden, or at least an emotional burden.
Physical burden on both parties, you're a part of that. So yeah, talk to them, and if you don't feel like you could talk to them, what are we doing here? This is what I do advocate for couples therapy, because I think couples therapy can certainly be a fantastic tool for people to use that channel of communication to say things that may feel hard to share, and there are things that are hard to share.
What's the most important question we should be asking ourselves about how we show up in relationships?
Maria: What do I need to unlearn? I still play this game every time I have a long drive with my husband. There will always be a list of things you need to unlearn. I think that's a really important question to ask yourself.
What’s bringing you joy right now?
A really good book. I didn't read a lot the last few months because I was writing a book. In June, I started reading again, and I've been really into Anthropology linguistics. I just read this incredible book called Proto. Being able to go to Greece in August with my family so that my children can experience Greece the way I did as a kid.