@Marilyn , that’s my kid except he’s “only” almost 29. Younger son has been with the same young woman for five years and we like her very much. So what are they waiting for?!
FWIW, my eldest S was fixed up by a high school classmate (the woman was her cousin) a month before he turned 30 and they were married last September (he’ll be 33 in January)! S2 met his current GF online a month before he turned 30 (pattern here?), and thy’ve been together almost a year. I’m thinking “almost” 30 is a magic time!
My mother was very successful matchmaking for her cousins. One first cousin married the younger brother of my mother’s college boyfriend, and another married one of my father’s college and law school classmates.
I knew exactly whom my mother (and her friends) wanted me to marry. One was the daughter of one of my mother’s best friends growing up. I knew her all my life – which I think studies show is a real impediment to romance. We were perfectly friendly, but there was never any spark or crackle there. (Too bad. My mother’s friend had married very rich!) The other was four years behind me in school, and not in my family’s social circle, so I had to wait pretty long to meet her. My mother made me go out on the only blind date of my life with her older sister just to get me introduced to the family. The older sister, with whom I got along fine, but also no spark or crackle, came out as a lesbian a few years later. That hardly mattered, because it had been made clear to me from the outset that my real target should be the younger sister. Which of course was a little offensive . . . and when I finally met the younger sister for real, a couple of years later, I fell head over heels for her. Some heartbreak ensued; we wanted different-enough things out of life that reconciling them was difficult. We live on opposite sides of the world, both happily married and childrened, but we talk every 10 years or so.
Notwithstanding her pretty good judgment with me, my mother failed utterly matchmaking for my sisters. She tried (at least with the one of them who was open to it). Her failure really haunted her. She also tried to get my daughter to date the son of one of her favorite students, who (the son) was one year ahead of my daughter at the same college. But it turned out that he was a blow-hard, right-wing, frat-boy campus politician, and any one of those elements would have been sufficient to disqualify him as far as my daughter was concerned. He didn’t like her much, either.
Luckily, I never had to deal with trying to find matches for my kids. My son was always a girl-magnet. My daughter, just when I was certain she would never meet anyone on her own, introduced us to the guy she had been seeing for close to a year without telling us. And now they’re about to get married.
One of the most charming movies about matchmaking is “Crossing Delancey.” Although the movie is about a Jewish matchmaking, I really appreciated it and related to it as an Asian-American who got married through a third-party matchmaking.
In my case and countless other Asians, such matchmaking is very common and a well practiced and accepted part of the culture. In fact, the system is almost down to science. As a product of this practice that’s been around for thousands of years, I’ve wholeheartedly embraced the tradition. It’s smart, wise, safe and extremely convenient and quite successful. Especially in the U.S. and other non-Asian countries, it’s very difficult for an Asian to find an Asian spouse prospect. This is where a matchmaker, who knows both parties very well, can play a significant role. It sure is better than looking for a prospect via online dating sites.
I must have gone through about 15-20 such “meetings” that were set up mostly by my aunt and a few by mutual friends. Such practice might not be seen as “romantic” and looked down upon (like I used to when I was young), but in reality it’s very practical and wise. Such practice does not preclude couples from leading romantic lives, in any case. You simply go for a dinner meeting, and if you’re attracted to the person, you ask to meet again. If not, you just part ways with no feelings hurt. If explanation is needed as to why you don’t want to meet again, you give that explanation to the matchmaker, so no pressure and no awkwardness. We all know the “system.”
My H knew a very nice young man, and tried to introduce D to him - he even showed his photo to her, but D was not at all interested. The young man knew nothing about any of this (H would never feel comfortable pushing him on her - just really liked the young man). About six month later, D texted me to say, “You won’t believe this, but that guy dad talked about just hit on me at a bar. He clearly had no idea that I knew who he was, lol.” This is in a huge city, so it’s very weird. H thought it was a lightning bolt from heaven, but D just thought it was funny - has no interest.
Oh gosh; let’s hope so. S is almost 30. He had a few long term relationships in college and shortly afterwards. Since then its just been random dates. He won’t do online dating. He’s in a top notch grad program, bright, and with a great sense of humor. He’s always been attracted to very smart, hard-charging women who can keep up with him intellectually. They also tend to be very independent. I think what he really needs is someone more nurturing. Please tell me that he’ll find her in 2018.
My son has a good friend that would like to date him. She has been infatuated with him for a couple of years and has let him know. He has no interest in dating anyone right now, and is honest with her. She would be the DIL of our dreams! She’s friendly, so easy to talk to, has the nicest parents (I can envision sharing holidays with them, haha) I told DH now I understand arranged marriages…ha! He’s nuts not to like her.
@mansfield, you just described my D (and my DIL). My S2 needed someone more nurturing and it seems he’s found her. He’s a guy who’s always willing to do anything, but hates planning. She plans, he’s happy. I know you said he won’t do online dating, but I must say, that’s where S2 found who I think is his match.
I know the right guy for my D will be someone who can keep up, respects her strength, is confident in his own right, and is as comfortable watching a hockey game as debating a constitutional crisis! Unfortunately, I don’t know any of those young men 
I recognized the jazz band pianist from my D’s HS working at a local store recently; he was 3 grades above her. He’s cute and friendly; and as i was leaving i slipped him her number, telling him how she had some fun music she was working on that he might like.
i was feeling pretty pleased with my boldness. She laughed and laughed at me though; she follows the kid on instagram and he has a boyfriend. I’m not too good at this all i guess.
@bgbg4us - ah, the humbling nature of parenthood. We’ve all been there.
Both of our kids have long term partners (one is engaged). Never tried any match making; believe such efforts would have been ignored at best…
I accidentally discovered the son of a grad school good friend/almost boyfriend was at the same college as D1. I thought, “Hmmm.” Asked if she knew him and it turned out she did- and was completely disinterested.
My future husband was a grad student of my dad’s. I was in the same department but had a different advisor (it should have been Dad, but they didn’t want to pair us, ha). Dad liked DH as soon as he met him and arranged to have a party for grad students just so the two of us could meet! We’d already met and started dating by the time of the party, though. We were engaged within three months. I figured out that YESTERDAY, my middle child was exactly the age I was when DH proposed to me. 
I told DH that, and he said, “Really? What was I thinking??”
Yes and no. Some of the marriages that take place when the people are about 30 involve couples who have been together for years. A few months ago, my 28-year-old daughter married a man who was just short of his 31st birthday . But they had been together for five years. No magic there.
Just curious. This new generation seems to be putting off serious dating well after college years.
What age would you start to get involved in this? Age 25?
My oldest at 29 has some very good friends who happen to be women, and none of them seem willing to cross the scary Friend Zone. He has a gf who broke his heart in college, had a brief relationship after college that also broke his heart. Now he is too scared to even contemplate a date, plus it’s so hard to meet people. I worry for him, but have no illusions that I can find him someone.
I think women underestimate how wary some men are. It would be doing them all a favor if women noticed nice guys, and asked them to something. Not every nice single guy is automatically a loser (I’ve heard my co workers say that – if he’s single at 30, he’s gay or a loser)
You could send them to the matchmaking festival in Ireland. DH and I went just for fun many years ago They have a real professional matchmaker.
@greenbutton , that’s sort of what happened with our D. She was friends with a nice guy for a long time, spent a lot of time in his company with a group of friends, but they never dated. He’s rather shy, as is she, and for a long time it looked as if neither one would take the first step. Finally, one NYE when their group was having a casual party, she decided to kiss him at midnight. She’d figured that if he wasn’t interested, she could shrug off the kiss as just a NYE thing between friends, so no awkwardness later. He was very happily surprised. D was hesitant at first about her NYE plan, but I encouraged her (much to Dh’s chagrin, but he’s now glad since he likes his nice new SiL.)
Green button, I think that’s silly, especially in this generation. My sons grad school male friends all seemed to wait until they finished school.
I probably would have done better with a matchmaker when I was young. I kept picking the wrong men.
Each of my kids, in college, turned out to have a friend – of the opposite sex, no less – whose parents I had known very well in the past. In my son’s case, it was the daughter of a classic “frenemy” – a guy who had beaten me out by one vote for an important leadership position, and then we had had to cooperate closely for a year and a half, working together all the time, and agreeing on a great number of things, but having very different styles and to some extent leading different factions. We were both involved with our future spouses at the time, but he and his first spouse had divorced a while back. Had our children gotten involved, we would not have been doing holiday dinners together!
To @TiggerDad ‘s point: Obviously, matchmaking can and does work. In Asian communities, and non-Asian communities as well. But it can also not work. I know my parents’ choices for me would have reflected what they valued about themselves, not necessarily what I valued about them or what I (or a neutral observer) would recognize as making their relationship work. In 1,000 years, they would never have thought the woman I married was an appropriate choice. They never liked her, and never understood why I did, and they completely failed to appreciate how similar she actually was to my mother, because she wasn’t how my mother saw herself, or how my father saw her.
Of course, the results of matchmaking do have successes and failures as its inherently risky. Of the failures, the one that comes to my mind immediately is one of my older brother’s best friends. He married, via matchmaking, a woman who hid a deep mental illness. They ended up in divorce after a couple of years. Another failure that comes to my mind is this guy who was interested in my younger sister, who was dating someone at the time and therefore unavailable, ended up marrying a woman via matchmaking. They ended up in divorce shortly after when the woman found out that not only he was fooling around but was carrying an HIV virus. In Asian community, such cases are so scandalous that they both disappeared out of thin air never to be seen or heard of again.
But then, such cases can be found in normal human relationships that are born of natural progression of “romance,” all human relationships being risky. In fact, I’d wager that the divorce statistics would bear out, strictly judging by the % of divorces, that non-mediated marriages have a greater rate of failure than those marriages born of matchmaking. Although Erich Fromm’s “The Art of Loving” was published some decades ago, it’s still relevant today in its insightful analysis of these two forms of marriages and its positive and affirmative regard to match-made relationships.