Page 10 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

There was something unsettling about the ordinariness of taking a seat in the conference room for the Monday-morning intake meeting.

No one knew what had happened with Noah and Molly.

All anyone saw was what I wanted them to see on social media—a smiling woman dressed for a night out with the love of her life.

I took two doughnuts with heart-shaped sprinkles from the box in the middle of the table. It was still January, but in the field of matchmaking, every day was a kind of Valentine’s Day.

“How was your birthday?” Oliver asked, sliding into the seat next to me.

“It was great,” I told him as I took a bite of the first doughnut. “Noah got reservations at a fancy restaurant. I went out afterward, drank too much—you know.”

Had I been in any other profession, I might’ve told my coworkers what had happened.

As it was, it felt like a dentist opening her mouth to reveal teeth full of cavities.

In the workplace, my successful relationship gave me a certain legitimacy that I had no desire to destroy.

Besides, I figured that Noah and I would get back together in no time at all.

I didn’t want him to feel embarrassed at our wedding when all of my coworkers made faces at him like I know what you did , which Oliver, fan of gossip that he was, most certainly would.

Nicole came in next. She wore a giant red bow in her hair. I’d once heard Oliver describe her aesthetic as “love vomit.”

“Did Noah get you something nice?” she asked. She was obsessed with my relationship. I assumed that was because she was bored with her loaf of a husband.

“He got me exactly what I wanted,” I replied.

Nicole and I started working at Better Love at the same time.

In my final interview, Serena had described the work environment as being “like a family,” which appealed to me, as I had none—or at least none who were legally allowed to reside outside a correctional facility.

Nicole, apparently, hadn’t gotten the message, because she hated me immediately.

She questioned the matches I made, the dates that I planned, and the clothes that I wore for meetings.

“Should we even be helping these people at all?” she’d asked once, wrinkling her nose at the results of the intake questionnaire for one of my new clients.

It should be noted that Nicole’s disdain wasn’t reserved for the people on my list. She disliked anyone who fell outside her notion of “normal,” which included those who were socially awkward, not conventionally good-looking, or anything she identified as being “different.”

Nicole had been a cheerleader, and she’d married her high school sweetheart, Ethan, the week after she’d graduated from college.

She was the kind of girl who had made my life miserable during my teenage years.

The only difference was that the girls I’d gone to school with knew about my parents, and therefore felt justified in their taunts, whereas Nicole hated me just because she could.

I did my best to get my revenge through excellence, matching clients to spite Nicole, in addition to satisfying my desire to facilitate love.

Sometimes, though, I found myself unable to resist gossiping about her, or taking the last remnants of coffee in the machine right before she went to pour herself some.

I wasn’t an angel, but I tried hard to be good enough, regardless of how the people around me were behaving.

The sweetness of the doughnut was startling. The shock of what Noah had done had knocked my senses off-kilter, a kind of emotional concussion. Everything took on an artificial quality, like I was moving through a film set.

The other matchmakers filled the remaining chairs, and Serena came in last, taking her place at the head of the table.

She wore a pink power suit that she was somehow able to pull off.

Her long nails clicked along the side of her coffee mug, and the scent of her trademark perfume wafted through the air.

She had my favorite quality that a person could have, which was that when she entered a room, everyone turned to look.

The process at Better Love worked like this:

Clients found us from our advertisements, which lined billboards and the sides of buses, and flashed across social media as they scrolled.

That was one of the things that Serena had been really smart about when she started the business.

Algorithms weren’t great at making people fall in love, but they could be a tool in bringing clients to us.

Increasingly, we heard from people who said that their friend, cousin, whatever, had found their partner after years of hopeless dating. Get me what they have, they said.

Once they enrolled, they took the intake questionnaire, which helped pair them with the appropriate matchmaker, and helped said matchmaker figure out the type of person they might be most suited for.

During the intake meeting, we received the new client’s profile, which included their picture, the results of their intake questionnaire, and basic biographical information.

After that, we set up an in-person meeting with the client.

Serena always emphasized the importance of that step.

Getting the facts about someone was different from really getting to know them.

She wanted us to inhabit the same air, really get a vibe.

That was something that apps couldn’t do.

They had no sense of vibes. All they could do was rely on the information that a user provided, and people were notoriously bad at assessing themselves.

From there, we began the matching process.

Each client was given one option at a time, which they could either accept or reject.

If they rejected, they were given new options as available until they found someone they liked.

Typically, we encouraged them to give everyone a chance.

Remember, you’re here because your own judgment wasn’t serving you.

If they accepted, we arranged the first date.

Clients didn’t have to worry about where to go, what to do, or setting boundaries, because we did all that for them.

Their only responsibility was getting to know the other person.

After each date, they had a check-in with their matchmaker, which sometimes occurred over the phone and sometimes in person.

We weren’t therapists, but we weren’t entirely dissimilar.

I spent a lot of time unpacking clients’ fears around dedicating themselves to other people.

I think I might love him, but is it possible to love someone after only two weeks?

When things didn’t work out after a date, we gave clients new matches until they did.

We didn’t have a 100 percent success rate, of course.

There were people who were unwilling to engage fully, or found their matches lacking regardless of whom we presented them with.

However, our percentage for long-term coupling was significantly higher than any dating app could claim.

After a couple of months, clients graduated from the program with a request that they inform us if they got engaged or married.

We didn’t need to know about breakups unless they wanted us to match them again.

That was a kindness to us both. No one wanted to make a phone call and say I couldn’t make it work.

I got a professional matchmaker, and it still wasn’t enough , and we didn’t need to hear about every circumstance in which we might’ve failed.

“Alexandra, you have someone new,” Serena said, sliding a headshot and profile over to me.

She disliked nicknames and insisted upon calling me by my given name, which I found slightly unsettling, since the sole people to do that previously had been my parents.

When I changed my name, at eighteen, I’d altered only my last name.

“Alexandra,” I figured, was common enough that no one would make the connection to who I used to be.

“Great,” I said. I was excited to have something to distract me from the situation with Noah and Molly.

The woman in the picture in front of me looked perfectly ordinary.

Rebecca Newsom, read the text above the image.

She wore a crop top that revealed a slice of her stomach above yoga pants.

Like me, she had brown hair and eyes, traits that might’ve been banal on another woman if she didn’t have a prettier-than-average face.

Her profile said that she worked for a luxury car dealership.

She listed her hobbies as driving fast cars , exercising , and most notably, watching trashy reality television .

She hadn’t yet found a husband because none of the men she’d met lived up to her expectations, which she described as being high, though not unreasonable .

She was looking for someone employed in a reputable profession, and she articulated that, though she didn’t want to sound shallow, she had expensive tastes.

She confessed that in the past she’d cheated on a partner because she was bored with their relationship.

They no longer had sex or did any of the activities that she enjoyed.

She suspected that he was cheating on her as well, though she’d never gotten any proof.

She regretted her infidelity, if only because of how it made her look in the eyes of others, and she assured us that she would never commit adultery if she were with someone she was truly committed to.

There was nothing in her profile that explicitly screamed psychopath , though I saw some subtle telltale signs.

Driving fast cars, her inability to commit to a long-term relationship, cheating on partners.

Her hotness. Sometimes I wondered if good-looking people were more likely to be psychopaths, or if it was their appearance that made them turn.

It was sweet, I thought, how much potential she still thought she had to love someone.