Hi Jewishandworking22,
I don’t know that I gave you advice on “how” to date, but I replied to your query of why isn’t the old way of parents asking around and finding someone suitable good enough for today; I replied that there’s nothing wrong with that route if you don’t want to go the “formal” route of visiting a shadchan etc. If the old route works for you, go for it; many shidduchim are still made that way. If it is not working for you and you see the need to go to a shadchan who is a stranger to you, submit written information because they don’t know you, etc, then why are you asking why this is the current method: you yourself obviously think it is the best way because you are doing it, and have not had successful with the more family oriented method. Of course, you could be seventy years old, married with grandchildren, and asking this as a theoretical question, and I mean my reply as a theoretical too.
So, in summation, it’s only a “business” when you yourself choose to make it by contacting a stranger and formally asking for assistance.
If you want to know “how” to date, I’ve got some really good ideas, and I charge :).
You wrote,
“Why do “professional” shadchanim THINK and EXPECT that they should get paid????
Do I get paid for davening every day? Saying a bracha before and after I eat something? If so, please tell me to whom do I go to, so I can collect? I won’t have to work anymore and I’ll retire.”
Your screen name is “working”. How can you accept a paycheck for your work? Don’t you think you should be doing it for free, solely l’shem mitzvah? If you are someone’s bookkeeper or accountant, don’t you think it’s a big mitzvah to help someone out with their finances; how can you take money? If you are a nurse or a psychologist, how can you take money for something that is so clearly a mitzvah, helping someone get better?! What does your personal brachos that you say to Hashem have to do with getting paid to help someone? Are you a lawyer? A plumber? Don’t you know what a big mitzvah it is to help someone out of trouble? These are all really “chessed” endeavors, that today have become trades and professions, for which you collect a check. Should you? Perhaps not! I could use some of those services myself! (probably a psychologist, after shaking my head so many times from this dialogue :).)
Your real estate analogy was good. The “shadchan” trade is a trade of chessed, just like a nurse, a lawyer, and a plumber. Pay properly, or next time you need a doctor, after he gives you the script for antibiotics and the bill, tell him he should be doing this for a chessed and it’s a chutzpah that society has turned chessed into a paid venture. And when you need your resume redone for your own professional ladder-climbing (of which I’m sure you’re no longer accepting a paycheck, now that you realize how wrong that is), after contacting a talented writer who spends a couple of hours rewriting your resume and tells you the fee, please inform him that helping someone find a job is the highest form of chessed, and you are astounded that he would even think of charging for this noble chessed.