Would you let your friends do a presentation to a room of strangers to find you a date?
Hosts of Date My Mate Claire McGowran & Alana Rush at Date my Mate at The Fumbally, Dublin
There is a HBO drama called The Leftovers. The premise is that in a split second, 2% of the earth’s population disappears and those remaining have to adjust to this painful shift in society. If most of your friends are married or pregnant or have fallen off the grid, this is what dating in your 30s is like.
Pre-apps and pre-covid, dating was a team sport. Friends cheered each other on from the sidelines of a dancefloor or smoking area but that group enthusiasm is harder to muster these days. Enter, Date My Mate. A concept found in bars and cafes in New York, London, and Barcelona, where people deliver powerpoint pitches on their single friends to a room of single people of all ages, genders, and sexual orientation, the Dublin leg is courtesy of romantics Claire McGowran (married) and Alana Rush (single).
They met last year working on Catherine Connolly’s successful presidential campaign and became fast best friends. Part of the team responsible for the keepy-uppy video, Claire and Alana know what people are drawn to, making them the perfect duo to orchestrate a matchmaking night. “I know lots of amazing single women, incredible women who would make an excellent potential partner and yet I don’t have a counterpart to set them up with,” says Claire. “So I was like, ‘surely other people have counterparts, what if we all brought them together’?”
With every dating format tried and tested, Alana knows the value of a spark, and how difficult it can be to ignite on the apps. “I love the idea of creating a space where people are invited to be curious, to spark conversations, and to get off their phones and into the world in a way that allows them to meaningfully connect with people.”
The inaugural event of Dublin’s Date My Mate took place in the Fumbally Cafe in April. I pitched my friend Ellen, and she pitched me to the room. Pitching Ellen was easy; she’s a kind and talented cutie pie. When I shill out self-deprecating jokes in my dating bios or on dates, her positive pitch portrayed me as a fully rounded person instead of the cynical old crone that I turn into behind a screen. Sometimes you have to import some self-belief.
Along with the eight other presentations, subtlety went out the window as our looks and personalities were shamelessly documented using bulletpoints, pie charts, photos, and fun facts. The presentations are done with good humour and the flirting intermissions allow people in the audience to give the presentees and other hotties in the room their number or Instagram details on a “flirt card” that includes ice breaker opening lines like: “Kiss, Marry, Kill; Tea, Wine, Water?”
What surprised me about the night was how young the masses were. What I thought was a millennial conundrum is one that Gen Z faces, maybe even more so as they’ve never experienced dating without apps. Mohammad (single), Nabeel (seeing someone) and Ade (single) are all tech workers in their early 20s and they took turns presenting each other in a charming, ramshackle way. Sick of using the apps, Mohammed wants to meet the right person and, strategically thinking, Date My Mate “improves those chances”. Ade, the youngest of the group and the newest to dating, relies on his hype men to show him the ropes. “They’re getting me into it,” he says.
As an introvert, he praises the directness of this event for giving him the confidence to flex his flirting muscles. “It breaks the ice a lot, making it easier to talk to people.”
The idea of putting myself out there so blatantly was daunting, so much that I hid behind the assignment of this article rather than batting my eyelashes, but Alana is keen to remind people that dating should be fun.
“People having fun are really attractive and they attract other people who are really fun,” she says.
Friend support in dating is a huge thing, says Nabeel who pitched Mohammed, but he believes in the overall psychological benefits of dating. “Isolation is one of the biggest social issues, not just for men but for people our age, because there’s no places to meet naturally,” he says, suggesting that his peers need extra encouragement to socialise.
A recurring obstacle is the lack of spaces to go and meet people, demoting the role that pubs and nightclubs once had for singletons. Late night venues in Ireland are struggling, and that is certainly a factor, but attitudes towards drinking have changed, meaning that people are less eager to go to bars to search for The One, too. This doesn’t mean that they’re not drinking — the bemused Fumbally staff were busy serving wine and IPAs — but getting scuttered is no longer a prerequisite for dating.
Hangovers also don’t mesh well with active hobbies like hiking and sea swimming that appear in almost every dating profile.
One eligible bachelorette on the programme was Gina. Busy training for a triathlon, her best friend and housemate Amy says that Gina is never home and credits her as the perfect woman thanks to her smile and baking skills. A proactive pair, these gals were once so flustered by the dating pool that they went on Liveline to deride men in their 30s who lie about what they want from women. They signed up to Date My Mate because the apps aren’t delivering.
“Trying to get men involved in the dating process is like shouting into the abyss,” says Gina, highlighting the gender inequality in dating admin. “We have to do the opening message on the apps, because the men don’t do it anymore and we have to arrange the date. We have to step into our masculine side way more than we’d want to because the men won’t step up.”
During a flirting intermission, the stark ratio of men to women was evident and it was a largely straight affair. Of the 60 people in attendance, approximately 12 of those people were men. Our Gen Z reps exchanged Instagram handles with potential suitors, and Jonny, a tall, dark and handsome millennial, who was described as a Disney prince by his best friend Jane (taken) in her presentation, had a queue of four women at any given time waiting to speak to him. Mathematically, it’s hard out there for a straight gal.
As the male contingent was approximately 15 years younger than me, I left with no phone numbers, but with an emboldened friendship with Ellen. This is by no means a failure, according to Alana. “A best mate is not one person, but it’s a tier where many people can reside,” she says.
The aim of Date My Mate is to celebrate the brilliance of our friends so that others can see it too. Claire argues that having a romantic partner isn’t a necessity. “I don’t think everyone needs a partner and I don’t think that your life can’t be extremely magical and full and wonderful without a partner,” she says, adding that it can be quite nice. “I love candles, dancing, wooing, all that. I think that it is a very special facet of life that we should all dip our toes into once in a while.”
The morning after the night before, Alana and Claire received so many messages from attendees and presentees. Some claimed that Date My Mate restored their faith in dating and others asked if their numbers could be passed onto crushes. Some pals were so inspired by the format that they pitched each other in their kitchens, and others declared that it should be a weekly event.
Lucky for them, Date My Mate will be a quarterly event, with the second event to be announced in July. With attendees promising to bring more men, the pool is set to diversify and expand. So instead of viewing your dating life as a dystopian drama full of ghosts, turn it into a romcom. All you need is a little help from your friends.
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