The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder and for many of us the dating apps are ... exactly the same as always.
Cuffing season is upon us, the time when daters bunk down for the winter with a special someone, and the endless scrolling on dating apps for that perfect hot chocolate date can be tiresome.
Enter: the matchmaker. Mairead Loughman, a matchmaker at lovehq.ie, joined the Jennifer Zamparelli show to talk about pairing people up across the country and at the Ploughing Championships this week. Listen back above.
With close to 8,000 people paired up across Ireland, "of all ages, of all walks of life and all with only one thing in common: looking for love", Loughman is an expert at finding the right fit when it comes to romance.
Despite having worked as a financial advisor for years previously, Loughman made the move to matchmaking when she "realised how difficult it was to find love".
She said she had been matchmaking "organically for years", and also launched dating events called Tables for Six where she would match three single men and three single women on a group dinner. "Within three weeks of launching that, I had 8,000 people on my waiting list."
As for why matchmaking has endured as a service, she noted that online dating has only sprung up as we know it in the last decade, with Tinder recently celebrating its 10th anniversary.
"Really, people are exhausted by [online dating]. It's not a natural way to meet people. Now I'm not saying get off the apps. Any way you can find love is a good way to find love."
She added that many of her clients are those who appreciate the confidential aspect of matchmaking, particularly those who are recently bereaved or business owners who don't want to be swiping on their staff's profiles.
"I've been to weddings of people I've matched and they've said, oh, we met through our friend, Mairead!"
Mairead starts the matchmaking process by getting to know the people themselves and what kind of person they'd like to meet. "There are some deal-breaking questions. Whether or not somebody smokes, that's going to be a definite yes or a definite no for people if they want to meet someone like that. If they have children, if they want to have children."
"Lifestyle compatibility" factors too, such as whether you're extremely active and give a lot of time to that, or if you prefer cosy nights spent on the couch.
She pays special attention to age and location, finding matches that are "within and hour or max, an hour and a half" away from each other, though some people are more than willing to look further afield for love. Because of this, Mairead spends much of her time travelling all around the country doing consultations for hopeful daters.
Has she ever had awkward conversations, such as with a 60 year-old looking for a 20 year-old date?
"I have had to have that conversation. I listen to every single person and then I'm realistic. So I work off the basis of probability. Having met 7,000 single people all over Ireland from all walks of life, I know what works and what doesn't work.
"I'm not saying that that doesn't work, but I'm saying the probability of me perhaps finding that for them might be limited."
She said that she tries to bring that realistic mindset to some of her hopeful daters, with some wanting a homely man who gets home at 5pm every evening, but also one that's career driven and ambitious – finding a way to meet in the middle is important.
With equal amounts of men as women seeking out her matchmaking services, Mairead said that this is the busiest times for men to look into dating, with golfing season coming to an end, animals in for the winter on farms and darker evenings creeping in and inviting us to couple up.
Speaking of farming, Mairead is on hand at the Ploughing this week to speak to farmers who are looking for love.
For the "farmer curious" among us, to use Jen's phrase, Mairead shared her tips for nabbing one.
"I think time keeping, is one", she laughed. "The unpredictability of it. It's the same as when women are having babies but they have 200 cows that have to be calved. I think that's really important to remember. Silage season is a little bit busy. I even say to farmers, if you're dating a lady you need to make sure you put into play a little bit of pre-warning as to your unpredictability in certain seasons.
"But then I get a surge of farmers coming to me then after silage season or after calving or lambing season like, okay I have this window of a couple of months to date."
