by senior contributor Brendan Kownacki
Photo credit: Courtesy of Three Day Rule
Dating in DC is difficult – just ask around. Forget waiting for the “You’ve Got Mail” fairytale days of the past. Forget the catch all solutions to finding a partner……there are just too many options for how to meet people and none of them are quite making the cut……..not even a date for the weekend, let alone marriage material. Enter the Three Day Rule.
“People have dating ADD or dating overload,” says Talia Goldstein, founder of the Three Day Rule, a matchmaking website that tries to counter the white noise of the bar scene or the instability of dating apps and provide a deliberate, hands-on approach to putting people together with their match.
Goldstein, a former television producer, says that it started out as an instinct. She would set up colleagues and before long, people were requesting her help and she knew this was her calling. The website just launched its DC footprint along with services in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago and hopes to attract folks who have been ‘too busy’ or ‘too distracted’ to find ‘the one.’
Goldstein credits meeting her own husband to a friend at a party that paired them off and it lends a solid metaphor to the site; Three Day Rule hopes to be that mutual friend who can jumpstart the romance. “Essentially, we’re going on first dates for clients and only sending them the best dates,” she says of the process.
Each of the cities boasts a team of matchmakers who sit down with each client and all potential matches to really take the selection off the page and into the mind of a person looking to create harmony. Goldstein says it’s not about a common love or orange lifesavers or even the same music, sometimes people think they want one type of person when it’s the opposite that’s needed.
Before you jump at the chance though, the process can take a healthy investment of time….and money too. As Washingtonian put it, “Find your soul mate for $5000”…which is the standard cost of the 6 month agreement with the service. Goldstein admits that sometimes it can take months but says that many clients hit it off with their first match once the Three Day Rule team is on the case. Enthusiasts can also sign up for the free service of the site to be considered as a date to paying clients.
So what is finding love worth if you find the one? $5000 apparently, which means roughly 625 vodka sodas, which on their own could be a match making tool as well.
Hollywood on the Potomac sat down with Talia Goldstein to discuss the process of match-making:
