If there are single guys in New Zealand worth $6000, where are they hiding?

After five years on and off the dating apps, Bianca Zander views the launch of Compatico, Theresa Gattung’s new matchmaking service for the over-40s, with eyes wide open.

As someone who has reluctantly spent years of my 40s on dating apps (and recently deleted the whole lot), I welcomed the news of Compatico’s launch – until I saw the price tag.

A Gold membership which enables entry to Compatico's exclusive events, and allows you to be "discoverable" by fully paid-up members, is a mere $695 per annum. But the cost of a bespoke love match, or Platinum membership, is $5995 a year.

Call me shallow, but for $6k, I’d want to meet someone with a Pulitzer.

“If you’re looking for a trophy partner,” reads the fine print on the Compatico site. “You’ll find that other dating services are better suited to your needs.”

The warm, fuzzy language, and the inclusion of makeovers and psychologists, brings to mind a charming episode of Queer Eye. Their team is going to uncover the authentic you and support you on your relationship journey. However, any comparison with the Fab Five ends there. Compatico has assembled what looks like the Remuera Avengers – a powerhouse of business and marketing and therapy professionals, all gorgeously photographed for the website in Country Road chic.

If Compatico is really all about love and connection, shouldn’t it have a more inclusive vibe?

But the real question I have for Compatico’s matchmaking squad is: Where are you going to find all these juicy single men?

Because although I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, after five long years on the apps, I simply don’t believe there’s a Mariana Trench out there of undiscovered single dudes who aren’t already on Tinder. And the guys who are on Tinder – at least the ones who could easily afford the services of Compatico – well, they’re not exactly crying into their iPhones at night because they can’t find anyone to match with.

I once stumbled across a prominent barrister cruising under a pseudonym on Tinder. Lovely guy, an upstanding citizen, doted on his kids, but only in the market for a reliable booty call. There are CEOs and surgeons and well-known radio hosts on there, and I have noticed that the higher the status of the guy, the less effort he will put into the chat, but honestly, it’s helpful when someone shows their hand early because it wastes less of everyone’s time. It’s hard to imagine any of these chaps rushing to sign up to Compatico, which begs the question, who will?

“We ran a soft launch in the build up to Compatico where we signed up a healthy base number of men through friends and family,” says Jen Cheyne, Compatico's managing partner/brand and operations. “Once we launched, women were quicker off the mark and we are now seeing a lot more male applications and we are happy with the sign-up rates after just ten days.”

Once you get over the initial feelings of terror and exposure that you’re even on a dating app in the first place, it doesn’t take long to realise that you’re just one of millions of people in the world who are all longing for the same thing: to form a deep connection with another human being. This shared vulnerability among strangers is the beautiful and humbling and awe-inspiring side of Tinder and Bumble and Hinge and it isn’t talked about enough. For every rich, cavalier jerk out there bedding dozens of women, there are ten kind, sweet, decent men who are genuinely looking for love, and very often not finding it.

I worry that some of these men, and women of course, will hand over their life savings to Compatico in the desperate hope of finding true love, only to be disappointed to the tune of $6000. You can do all the matchmaking wizardry you like, but you can’t guarantee results.

“It’s hard to keep customer satisfaction high when you are in the business of love,” says Angela Meyer, co-founder and director of Project Gender who once co-founded a dating agency in Wellington, the now defunct ManBank. “However, there is such a need for this service because we still don’t have a proper dating culture.” If anyone can pull it off, she says, it’s Gattung.

Some of the challenges Meyer encountered were around clients not knowing what they really wanted – at least, not deep down, where it counts. “There is a big disconnect between what people say they want and what they actually want. Each asked for something different but along the lines of ‘hot, smart and cashed up,’ with specific physical attributes, such as blond hair, and when we sent them on a date with a person that ticked every single box, they would come back and say, ‘I can’t believe you sent me on a date with this person (ALL THE TICKS), they are not who I wanted’. We would point out that they were indeed what they said they wanted and then they would get very confused. Turns out, as people we are not as self-reflective as we think we are.”

When it comes to dating, everyone has an agenda that’s hidden—very often even from ourselves. No doubt you’ve heard some version of the maxim that everyone says they want one thing but is secretly looking for their mother.

Chemistry is mysterious and love is just not that easy to find. The women I know who have met their life partners on a dating app have really put in the mahi. They’ve kissed frogs and endured heartache, but they’ve persevered, sometimes for years, getting clearer about what they want and don’t want, until eventually they find it (And, crucially, it finds them too). Not everyone goes about things with quite such a clear goal in mind.

I’ve noticed that dating apps enable people to cycle through relationships at a speed that is possibly faster than the human heart. They get into things quickly and then move on to the next thing almost immediately, without any processing time in between. It’s common to chat to people who are two or three weeks out of a longish relationship, and already out there looking for the next one. In the old days, we might have said they were on the rebound, or a love addict, but our appetites now are used to being instantly gratified, so why not also binge romance on demand?

I read in a self-help book once that when you get into a relationship with someone you also take on a set of problems, and none of us is exempt. Emotional compatibility is the El Dorado of the dating world, and this does seem like one area where Compatico, with their army of beautiful psychologists, could add value.

“Our wraparound matchmaking service has the support and services of a team of relationship experts who evaluate each person with a personality test and a face-to-face interview,” says Cheyne. “Our matchmaking process involves five people and in-depth profiling. It is not a quick process.”

There is a lot of unprocessed trauma out there on the apps. I’ve gone on more than one coffee date where the guy has, over the course of an hour, unburdened himself of a lifetime’s worth of childhood and relationship trauma, complete with narcissistic parents, abusive exes, and yes, it’s a raging red flag. For this sudden fluency in trauma speak, I blame YouTube and Instagram therapists such as the Holistic Psychologist and the Crappy Childhood Fairy, who do both a service and a disservice in the way they make everyone think "the work" is done after ingesting a few memes and videos.

Over the last five years, I’ve been thoroughly schooled in attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant) – my own and other people’s –and experience would confirm the adage about how the apps are riddled with anxious and avoidant types who are ceaselessly and miserably drawn to one another. It’s also true, however, that every relationship has a pursuer and an avoider and that, intriguingly, you don’t always play the same role. If you’ve been married to the same person for a hundred years, this flexibility might come as quite a shock.

Attachment issues are workable in a relationship but some character traits are not, and I’d be fascinated to learn how the Compatico crew are going to deal with a potential candidate who presents with full-blown narcissism, or an active addiction to sex, drugs or alcohol. After all, this isn’t an episode of Married at First Sight where the sport is to match one drama queen with another and wait for the ratings to explode. Will they turn away narcissists and sociopaths? “If our professional team believe the applicant has some work to do on themselves before they are ready to be matched we will make that recommendation,” says Cheyne. “If we believe an applicant does not have genuine relationship intentions, we reserve the right to decline any application.”

Will they insist every, um, member has a full sexual health check? Just because someone drives a Tesla, doesn’t mean they’ve got a clean whistle. “We don’t ask for an independent sexual health check, that’s something for the couples to discuss.”

A few weeks ago, I deleted all my dating app accounts. After five years, on and off, app fatigue sets in. You see all the same faces in the stack, and let’s be honest, your own mug is one of them. Two experiences sealed my decision: one that ended in heartache for me and another where someone else got hurt. Unless you’re made of stone, dating apps can feel like a blood sport, and that just doesn’t sit well with my Buddhist inclinations.

The promise of Compatico is that it will be a kinder, more fulfilling experience for all concerned, and maybe that’s worth every cent of the $6k price tag. Coincidentally, I do have exactly that amount in my savings account, but it’s earmarked for travel. Last year, I fell in love with Japan, and in May we’ve got another rendezvous. I haven’t given up on finding the other sort of love, but these things happen on their own schedule, and in the meantime, there is so much life to be lived.

Bianca Zander is a writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau.