AZ:
I’m living on a normal planet. Where people get together and talk to each other. And friends set up their friends with others. I tried doing the whole shadchan thing, I still do listen to strangers who come along with a girl (one never knows), but I finally realized a while back that it just DOES NOT WORK. It’s a degrading, broken system. As proof to my case, a lot of people (and especially young singles (18-25) ARE complaining of a shidduch crisis and the process, instead of praising the system.
To tell the truth, I never officially met a professional shadchan, but my cousin is one, and have a few friends who are also considered “professional” and I tell them straight out that I do not believe in them setting me up with complete strangers from their “lists”.
My friends who do go to meet professional shadchanim come back and complain to me each that it was the most degrading 30 minutes – an hour, of their lives. Furthermore, none of them think, coming out of that meeting, that any goods will come from it. And in the end, very little has come from the meetings (can’t say nothing but definitely not worth it in the grand scheme of things).
As I posted in a different thread, I believe that we should shut down the system we have now and go back to the what we had 10 plus years ago. Word of mouth. Friends, family, and neighbors setting up people they KNOW, not COMPLETE STRANGERS. This process will most probably make more shidduchim, with less complications during the dating process and throughout the respective marriage.