Reuven – +1,000 – you seem to have gotten it on the mark!
rebshidduch – somehow meeting someone can be great if you happen to somehow end up meeting someone who makes sense for you (yeah, that was always my dream since I was a teenager (sigh) – I do know several people whom it happened to), but if the guy isn’t right for you – bad idea.
Your posts actually lend support to the reasoning behind going to a shadchan instead of just “meeting someone”. If you go through a shadchan, you are unlikely to fall for a guy who is all wrong for you, since you are unlikely to meet such guys. But if you “just somehow meet someone” the danger is that you end up marrying someone all wrong for you.