‘Our oldest customer (83) has just found love again’
Image: Nine IJf
Lotte Ditzel (37), has a boyfriend, together they have two sons (2 and 4 years old). Lotte is the owner of matchmaking agency DTNG, later this year she can be seen as a matchmaking expert in a Videoland program.
“When I was thirty, after a broken relationship, I ended up on the dating market. Nice, I thought, handsome men swipe. That swiping was nice, but I found the chats cringe-inducing. “Hey, how are you, how’s your day?” I’d rather meet up to find out if there was a click.
That also turned out not to be ideal, because singles often make their profile more beautiful than reality. By using photos from the past. By omitting information, for example about children. By lying about their height. I discovered the latter when, with my 1.81 meters, I towered over the man who claimed to be 1.90 meters but only reached 1.65 meters.
Also read – ‘Thanks to Tinder I got a completely new life’ >
Matchmaker
I quickly experienced the dating market as tiring. Especially when I discussed my dates with friends and it turned out that they had already dated the same men. It felt interchangeable and hopeless. In New York and London it has been normal for a long time to work with a matchmaker. With my date hell in mind, I thought that there must also be a need for serious relationship mediation in Amsterdam. It did exist, but it had a dusty image. That’s why I founded DTNG, ‘dating’ without vowels, six years ago.
The first time it was hard work to fill the database, but in the meantime it is full of nice singles. We now work nationally and I employ five matchmakers, including my father who supervises the 65+. Our oldest customer is 83 and has just found love again. There are many success stories of relationships and babies. In my oldest class, parents were allowed to talk about their profession. I read a story about frog falling in love and told that I make people fall in love.
Courtesy
A lesson in courtesy is important in my work. It’s my mission to make the Dutch man a little more courteous: pull up a chair with a date, give a compliment, choose the wine and don’t take that half-empty bottle of wine from your fridge as a gift – true happened. See, so there is still work to be done.”
This article is in the Kek Mama Love Special 2022.
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