If it wasn’t for love, I’d be out of business.  Whether through disappointment, pain, betrayal, abandonment or the ongoing struggle to keep it alive, LOVE fuels every text, email, and phone call to my mailbox.

You might imagine that such a job, exposed daily to the devastated landscape of our broken dreams, would turn a person to cynicism or agonising thoughts.  Instead my client’s anguishes offer me comfort: access to the intimate detail of other’s lives consistently proves that our greatest motivator what we’re consumed by down the decades, isn’t money, success, power or even plain survival, but finding a safe place where we feel protected by the embrace of those we love.

Now I am not exposed much to the glorious beginnings of any relationship, the days full of giddy excitement, heart palpitations and the hope.  My business is at the back end of that story, digging about in its wake; failed love and all the many ways that love betrays our optimism.

In love’s aftermath that you witness the immense fragility – whether a bereaved parent or a broken-hearted lover – and understand that we are shaped and formed, built and broken by our desire to be connected to each other in meaningful ways.

Personally, I’ve always been as confused about love as anyone – probably more so.  I know matchmaking clients for 16 years has in some ways caught me up to where some peoples understanding was already!  And I’m only partly joking about that.  Overall, the stories have made me feel grateful about what I have and make me want to aspire to do better.

Jane Carstens