Do dating coaches make shidduchim — or break them?

These days, there’s a societal trend to hire a “dating mentor” during the shidduch process. Some opine that they’re indispensable to healthy dating and long overdue in the field. Others say they’re a crutch (an expensive one) who cripple your intuition and complicate matters unnecessarily. A look at the new player on the shidduch scene

Tevye & Golda are floating. Yente the matchmaker just called — she has a shidduch suggestion for their daughter, Tzeitel. A good boy, a smart boy, a rich boy. Their restrained cries of joy are interrupted by loud knocking on the front door.

“Mazel tov! I heard the good news!” It’s the nosy neighbor next door. “Such a fine boy for your sweet Tzeitel, but of course. So, nu, which ‘dating mentor’ are you going to hire?”

Wait, whaaat? A dating mentor??

Since days of old, the shadchan has been the main player in shidduchim. But these days, more and more singles — and their parents — are bringing another party into the picture: a dating mentor (or dating coach).

Is Yente no longer enough?

For the uninitiated, a dating mentor is someone who’s hired to counsel the single (or his/her parents, or both) through the highs, lows, and question marks of the dating stage. It’s an objective mentor the girl or boy is checking in with either after each date, or on an as-needed basis, as issues crop up.

Shadchanim often do plenty of coaching along the way. So why hire a separate mentor when you can have two roles for the price of one, and without overcomplicating things? Is this phenomenon really necessary, or is it another trendy bauble for our generation of excess?

Mrs. Rochel Goldbaum, a renowned educator from Denver, Colorado, who trains kallah teachers and serves as a dating and marriage mentor, believes coaches are necessary. “I’ve been a kallah teacher for the last twenty-five years. About fifteen years ago, I began to notice that girls were coming into kallah classes with scenarios and questions that should’ve been dealt with during the dating process. For some, that would have affected their choice to get engaged in the first place. For others, their relationship had potential, but they had skipped crucial steps in the dating process and needed to ‘re-date’ their chassan to feel relaxed and excited to move into marriage. What used to be a natural progression got stuck, and singles needed help moving forward. That’s when I realized that we needed to develop concrete tools to help singles along. When we date correctly, everything we need to know will come to light.”