I recently came across a study I read years ago titled “Does marriage make people happy, or do happy people get married?”.

The answer is a little bit of both: if you are predisposed to happiness, then there is a higher likelihood you will choose to get married.  When you do get married, your overall life satisfaction will climb, and even when you are not in a state of elevated satisfaction, you will have a “base” that is much higher than your singles days.  Even more interesting, for marriages post-35, the gap in life satisfaction pre- and in-marriage is even greater.  Better to get married at 42 than 22! [the study]

We should celebrate our Mothers everyday, but I am thrilled that this day is set aside for this special purpose.  I have had the great fortune to work side-by-side with the most spectacular woman I have ever met.  She is compassionate, driven, nurturing, brilliant, savvy… I could go on and on…and she has helped me become the woman, and the mother, that I am today.  My Mother, Jill Kelleher, is everything you could hope for in a mom.  Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, I love you!

Today’s the day to match up your list of experts with your real personal priorities.

Sometimes daters have too much fun and lose sight of the goal – to get to know someone, make a connection, and figure out if each other are “The One”.  There is a magical time early in dating when you are learning as much as you can about someone, but once you hit a certain time milestone, if you don’t know something, you assume it’s a “no”.  As you are about to head out on any of your first two or three dates with a new potential amor, ask yourself, “what do I need to learn about them tonight in order to keep moving forward”.

This works both ways.  Since you often attract what you radiate, you may want to ask yourself “what do I want to make sure I share tonight to help them build out the complete picture of me?”

Enter each date with a “goal” and make love happen.

I love to travel, and nothing starts my getaway juices flowing like the annual Condé Nast review of hot new hotels.  I love travel for a number of reasons.  I find travel brings a couple together both when they experience great locations, and later when revisit a magnificent shared experience.  When you look back at the end of any year, travel always stands out in the highlights.

This year my favorite was so breathtaking I almost passed out on the spot.  It is one part Four Seasons chic and two parts Out of Africa.  Some of favorite parts are the “No”s – no wifi, no health center, no bar, no pool, because instead you find yourself in one of four luxury tents looking out on a Zebra preserve in South Luangwa Valley, Zambia.  Every tent is assigned a butler who makes G&Ts appear out of thin air and arrives each morning with clean pressed clothes.  The twice daily walking tours include everything from hippos to zebras, elephants, and buffalo.  The area is known for its birds (more than 400 species) and even the extremely rare Thornycroft giraffe.

Add travel to your life this year, including the Sanctuary Zebra Plains Walking Safari Camp. [see more]

The next time the answer is “no”, I’d like to pose a follow up question – “How about another first date?”

Everyone enters a first date anticipating that at the end of the night they’ll be able to answer a short set of questions…does he have enough ambition, is she hot enough, will he be great with kids, does she want to travel…on and on.  Too many times, after a first date, if there aren’t enough checks in the “YES” column, then no second date is scheduled.  There is a big difference between a lack of “YES” and a bunch of “NO”.  The next time you’re not sure about scheduling a second date, ask yourself, “were they a ‘no’, or just not quite a ‘yes”.  If the latter, give yourself a second shot at that first date screening and finish out your checklist.

Obviously, I’m biased, but in that moment, rather than pitch Kelleher International’s twenty-seven years of experience or our extensive network, I try to turn the question around.

“Are you happy with the current state of love, connection, personal partnership and companionship in your life?”

“What is your confidence that this will change in the next twelve months?”

“Does your business use salespeople?  Does an accountant help you with your taxes?  Do you use a lawyer for specific purposes? Do you believe engaging a professional matchmaker will dramatically change the likelihood that you will meet the person you have been unable to find?”

The objections to engaging a matchmaker we encounter most regularly are pretty straightforward.  It’s almost never about the cost — nothing is more expensive than loneliness or unused compassion.  More often the objections are rooted in a mistaken understanding of our business based on a TV show (those shows have as much similarity to what Kelleher International does as Grey’s Anatomy does to life as a physician or Glee represents life in a typical high school) or some misplaced embarrassment or past bad online dating experience (that is the most common).

Is engaging a match maker right for you?

Ask yourself the questions…

Following a series of unfortunate incidents, this past week the three largest online dating companies signed an agreement with the state of California to run checks on members for the most terrible of crimes.  Essentially, if a member has committed a crime that requires registration with local law enforcement, and they are actually using their real name online, then that person will be kicked off the service.

Years ago Kelleher International made a commitment to the safety of our members and integrity of our service by making identity verification a mandatory part of enrollment in our service.  When we talk about our elite network of singles, we generally focus on their accomplishments in business, entertainment, philanthropy, sports and academics – love blossoms in shared interests, passions and exciting life journeys.  We rarely talk about the “business” of how we do matchmaking, but in twenty-seven years we’ve never had a single complaint of “he’s married”, “she’s not who she says she is”, “he’s never worked where his profile suggests” or “I think they’ve been in serious trouble with the law”.  This is not the exciting part of matchmaking, but it is part of our commitment to a personal, exclusive, and safe experience for clients that we think more of as “family members” than “customers”.

We applaud the efforts of the State of California to make this happen, and for those online services, we wonder “where have you been for ten years” and hope they take the next few steps past this preliminary screening.

That doesn’t mean I don’t watch the show.

The first lesson you can draw from the show is the same lesson from every season: You can’t put love on a timeline.  To “win” on this show, the rate at which two people “fall in love” has to line up perfectly, and it just never happens.  If the main driver of saying “I love you” is that you know four other women have said it and you want to “get that rose”, then the phrase cheapens your feelings.

And while Courtney Robertson, or at least the way she was edited to make the show exciting, seems like a manipulative, mean-spirited woman, she brings a great second lesson from Season 16: Action speaks louder than words, and she was “in it to win it”. While the other women retreated back to the house to gossip and find safety in their shared insecurity, Courtney took the risks to stand out from the crowd and eventually ended up creating a great memory in Costa Rica.  In the final episodes when most women were reading from the same boring script of “I really want to be vulnerable with you”, Courtney stepped it up with a memory scrapbook she made of their time together.  I am sure that Ben flipped through that book many more times than he reminisced over any of his other conversations.

I’m not recommending you watch Season 17 of the Bachelor (every season I swear is my last), but whether you love Courtney or love to hate her, she was a great model for working hard to make a relationship happen.

Now, just four more weeks until The Bachelorette!