Abstract: This paper analyses the TV reality show Married at First Sight and the dating agency it used in Bulgaria to provide an expert matchmaking service for complete strangers. Based on empirical material from the Bulgarian context, it shows how modern matchmakers are different from the traditional ones and what is happening today with the idea of love at first sight. Matchmaking and the reality show in particular are interpreted as a stage for attracting attention, coordinating types of love behaviour, and creating ritual forms of love communication.
Keywords: Married at First Sight, matchmaking, rituality, love at first sight, reality love, life coaching
In 2016, yet another seminar devoted to the search for the perfect mate was held in the suburbs of Sofia. It was conducted by one of the best known organizations in Bulgaria involved in life coaching. It must be noted that despite the cold weather and the remote location, the hall was packed. Around 300 people, seated and standing, many of them with a notebook and pen in hand, had come to hear the guidance that the expert guru would give them. He drew his “wisdom” from three main sources: from personal experiences with his two now ex-wives, presented in the form of anecdotes and in the popular rhetoric of gender differences in worldview; from some general popular scientific speculations about the right and left sides of the brain and their emotional and intellectual functions; and from more general techniques of self-knowledge and self-esteem which the organization preaches and to which its seminars, on other subjects and with other titles, are devoted. All this was interpreted in the logic of love by the expert guru through several basic precepts, namely: (1) since the right side of the brain develops first, while the left side develops only after the age of two, we learn to be in a relationship before we can speak; (2) while we seek to learn about everything in life, no one teaches us about relationships; (3) many people in the world suffer because of their inability to form healthy natural relationships, and it is precisely in this way that one hurts and underestimates oneself the most; (4) people fall in love with an idea/fantasy, not with a person, but such love quickly “fades away” – first, because you have deceived the other from the outset by behaving as if you were “for sale”, and then, because people want to be with someone like themselves, but don’t actually know themselves; (5) it should be clear from the very beginning that you don’t enter into a relationship with a person but with their values, which are their purpose in life, and hence, the person themselves; (6) there are “real” and “social” (imposed) values of the type, “I must…”, “It is necessary…”, but it is disastrous to follow only the “social” values, because they are ultimately the values of others; and finally, (7) no one wants to live with an unhappy person, only happy people get what they dream of.
It is no coincidence that such a line of reasoning ended with a practice supporting the theoretical model: visualization. Everyone was invited to close their eyes and, to the sound of gentle music, to imagine their perfect mate, to understand them, to see their values, to mentally show them their own values, and to accept themselves and the other as they are.
As Eva Illouz (2012) concludes when she asks herself in her book why today love “hurts” more than ever, it seems that the sense of self-worth depends on self-realization in love, linked to the other’s evaluation, but also that such self-realization can be “learned”. And since the quest for autonomy in contemporary individualism is fundamentally at odds with the erotic desire for a relationship, love both “hurts” and remains within the discourse solely of “self-discovery” and “self-gratification”. In this sense, it turned out that some of the people already had a mate but were attending the seminar in Sofia because of the part devoted to “the perfect” mate. Or as a woman aged 32 told me, she was married with a child but hoped that such advice could solve a couple’s problems because it helped you to discover yourself.
Obviously, from the vast palette of concepts of love as hormone-driven attraction, fate, chance, a matter of the covert sociological principle of homogamy, compensatory complementarity of the partners based on different attributes of their “social attractiveness”, calculation of erotic or economic benefits, or quest for a particular embodiment of the image of God’s love and ideal of the essence of humans, the logic of the seminar remained in the field of the love market: people were represented as interchangeable, the point being that we can substitute someone for another if they don’t give us the pleasure and satisfaction we expect. Viewed from a detached economic perspective, romantic desire apparently can also be regulated by the laws of the market, that is, by demand and supply, risk assessment, scarcity or oversupply.
What, then, is in demand according to the life-coaching advice? A person who knows and loves themselves, who has clearly defined their purpose and who cares about their values. What is on offer? People who want to “engage the other with their own purpose”. What is the risk assessment? If I get to know and love myself, if I have a purpose and values of my own – that is, in the most general sense, if I know exactly what I want – I will be able to visualize and get it because, as was already mentioned, no one wants to live with an unhappy person and only happy people get everything.
But what does this hunger for expertise in love tell us? Apart from rediscovering ourselves in order to hold on to love, are there experts who can teach us how to find love in the first place? Or in other words, who are the modern matchmakers? What should be done by those who have forfeited the pretence of having perfect vision, who don’t know what to visualize and don’t have an exact idea of the “perfect” mate that will resolve their love anguish? Whom can they rely on in a world that has invalidated the religious idea of providence which transcends such a vision, and hence, the responsibility for the couple’s perfection? In a world that has marginalized as explanatory models also the traditional notions of matchmaking: a social institution, a compensatory mechanism and tribute to the ancestral tradition?
If we assume that, as mentioned above, an individual’s worth is measured by their ability to provoke love in another, then the topic of matchmaking inevitably remains relevant, albeit the motives for that are new: it is less about procreation than about personal success and happiness.
Marriage: From “Blessing” to “Scrapping”?
The word for “marriage” in Bulgarian, brak, can be derived from the Hebrew berakhah or “blessing” (בְּרָכָה, bracha) as well as metaphorically from the now popular play on its much more negative connotation in the word brakuvane (i.e., “scrapping”, “decommissioning” – from the homonym brak meaning “rejects, refuse, waste”).
The yearning for love is often projected against the background of numerous statistics on the drastic decline in the number of people getting married in Bulgaria as well as more generally in Europe, recomposed families, serial monogamy, etc. In today’s hyper-dynamic conditions of global changes, researchers of marriage in Bulgaria (see, e.g., Dinkova, 1997; Spasovska, 2000; Kotseva and Kostova, 2007; Pamporov, 2009; Mitev and Kovacheva, 2014) talk of new conceptions, mindsets, attitudes towards the marriage institution. Shedding some traditional patriarchal characteristics, marriage seems to be becoming more mobile and free, but also more volatile and conflictual. What is specific to Bulgaria is that the problems related to changes in the family were additionally determined by the period of the so-called transition, by the breakdown of some primordial social values and institutions, by poverty, etc. A representative survey conducted by the Open Society Institute – Sofia in early 2008 showed that just 22.6% of Bulgaria’s population thought that marriage is a commitment for life and cannot be terminated, while 73.8% disagreed with this statement (cited in Pamporov, 2009). Moreover, even the presence of children born during a marriage was not regarded as an obstacle to its dissolution. At the same time, despite the crisis of the marriage institution, the family continued to be a value for Bulgarians and was seen as one of the cornerstones of personal happiness. When asked, “How important are the following things in your life?” the respondents answered: family, 98.5%; friends, 90.7%; work, 88.5%; leisure, 81.8%; religion, 51.7%; politics, 31.4%. According to Alexey Pamporov, this apparent contradiction between the high value of the family and the decline in the number of marriages had a social explanation, namely familism or the confinement of trust, loyalty and social capital to the circle of closest relatives. According to him, the lack of trust in institutions and of trust at the interpersonal level in general was one of the main reasons for the emergence of lasting social insecurity, and hence, for the search for security in ontological social structures such as the family. As a continuation of these trends, a survey conducted by Petar-Emil Mitev and Siyka Kovacheva in 2014 (Mitev and Kovacheva, 2014) showed that more than 80% of young Bulgarians wanted to start a family of their own and just 5% saw themselves in the future without a partner and obligations; what had changed, however, was the concept of family: it was not necessarily anchored in the institution of marriage, nor did it necessarily consist of a heterosexual couple with children. People with higher education made up the highest proportion of those who wanted to start a family with marriage (69%); this proportion declined to 60% among young people with secondary education, and to 56% among those with primary education. Comparing the results with previous surveys that found a high level (84%) of acceptance of cohabitation without marriage as “normal and natural” (Mitev, 2005), the authors concluded that young Bulgarians’ plans for the form of their future family were rather open and that they relied mainly on their judgement of the specific life situation in deciding whether to get married and when – before or after they started living together. The advantages of marriage, according to young Bulgarians, were associated more with security in the relationship between the partners and then with security for the children, and considerably less with financial security and social prestige.
Everything said so far is meant to outline the context in which the first season of the reality show Married at First Sight appeared in Bulgaria in early 2015. In addition to being met with enviable viewer interest, it largely popularized the discussion of the old new profession of matchmaking in Bulgaria, as well as the notions of marriage of experts in various fields.
The show began with actual conclusion of marriage between three couples selected by a team of experts from hundreds of applicants. The compatibility of the three couples was judged on the basis of a psychological profile rather than on prior personal meetings between the men and women. In this sense, the marriage was “blind” since the newlyweds saw each other for the first time at the altar and their only choice was whether to say or not to say “I do” to each other (which in this case meant rather whether to say or not to say “I do” to the experiment); at the same time, it wasn’t “blind” insofar as it relied on expert research that arguably promised a high degree of legitimacy and credibility of this same experiment. Unlike most popular romantic movies with a happy ending, which culminate in the wedding, here the wedding was the beginning after which the couples’ most exciting moments together were shown. This also created a surprise effect provoking viewers’ interest: the show began where fairytales end. All of this was in a condensed format full of intense experiences, as key ritual forms – such as the first night of marriage, honeymoon, moving in together, talking about children, etc. – had to be shown in just two months. At the end of the show, the couples had to make a final decision on whether to continue living together or to break up.
Perhaps the question of what the message of the show was – for or against marriage – is simply irrelevant insofar as the format presupposes winning viewers’ attention by simply playing on emotions. In this sense, it is difficult to view it as moralizing. What is moralizing is rather the effect of discussing what happened after the wedding.
Reality Love
Here we should also note the fact that love has become a favourite subject of global reality shows in recent years. I believe this is due to its “universality”, an essential characteristic sought by all global productions for which local cultural specificities are merely obstacles on the way to plot formatting. The list of shows whose subject is most generally relationships at risk is growing exponentially, and many of them can be watched also by Bulgarian viewers on various TV channels (see, for example, 90 Day Fiancé, Farmer Wants a Wife, Undercover Princesses/Princes, etc.).
It seems that the TV notion of relationships is built primarily on the contemporary cultural idea of transparency, which is associated with openness and sharing in love (as if everything in this intimate realm should be discussed and subjected to expert analysis in order to function successfully). This transparency is guaranteed by the closed space, by the cameras and by the well-manipulated situations: thus, Love Prison sends couples who have only communicated online to a remote island to see whether they are really compatible, in Sex Box the island is reduced to a box and shared sexual experience, Neighbors with Benefits focuses on swinger couples in a suburban community, while Adam Looking for Eve as if divides two worlds, of clothing and of nudity, as it matches three naked people in a sort of battle of seduction, the winners of which will be able to continue their relationship in normal life – with clothes on.
If we have to briefly list some of the main features of all these shows that deal, in one way or another, with the subject of love, they are the following: the creation of special moments for the participants in the relationship, representing the distinct stages in real-life dating, such as first date, first time being alone, meeting the parents, etc.; passage from one status to another (for example, becoming a “prince” or “princess”, getting a Green Card upon the dream marriage in the US, acquiring celebrity, etc.). ); “end of fairytale” involving embarrassing media scandals, usually over the revelation of the participants’ true identities – paid models, actors recruited from casting sites, farmers hiding serious relationships who have agreed to participate in order to promote their business on TV, mercenary participants whose dream media career development passes through such shows, etc.; final denouement: the most interesting part of these shows remains the follow-up, which involves additional episodes (three months later, six months later, etc.), and these often show that it is the media appearance itself that leads to finding a mate, rather than the participants in the show themselves remaining together.
In the Bulgarian context, Married at First Sight follows the tradition of similar reality shows, such as (X) Millionaire Wants a Wife – a show that defined itself as “romantic” and aimed to find a wife for some of the country’s richest bachelors. In the two seasons broadcast so far, the protagonists in the role of “the bachelor” were iconic figures in their own right. The first, Hristo Sirakov, was a businessman publicly known for his playboy lifestyle, while the second, Todor Slavkov, was the grandson of former communist leader Todor Zhivkov. Precisely because of this local specificity, the show in Bulgaria turned out to be “humorous” rather than “romantic”. It used mostly power-driven humour, something which was perfectly consistent with the notion of those figures as informal leaders in the country and as personifying the idea of the rich man surrounded by beautiful women. The show itself presupposed a distinct power model: several women fall in love with the male protagonist effortlessly and wholeheartedly as soon as they see him – so much so that they will fight for him and for the prize of being “chosen”. At the same time, both Bulgarian participants in the two seasons of the reality show took a condescendingly cynical stance. And whereas in the first season Hristo Sirakov eventually chose one of the contenders, albeit repeatedly stressing that he wasn’t actually proposing marriage and that he wanted “to see how things would go”, in the second season with Todor Slavkov the end was downright ironic in view of the show’s original claims, as he left with two wives: “When I get my state back, polygamy will be legalized. That’s why the winners are Nancy and Alex…”[1] A third group of participants in the show consisted of the commentators in the studio – a sort of gurus of expertise in love predicting the future of “the family”, people like the notorious pseudoscientific sexologist Natalia Kobilkina, some astrologer, etc.
A kind of mirror image of the rich man whom all women want to conquer was represented by another show, also defined as a “romantic reality show” – Farmer Wants a Wife (also broadcast in two seasons in Bulgaria, in 2011 and in 2015). Here, however, the stakes were much more problematic for the young women participants – not great wealth but “life in the countryside”, which had to be legitimized through another idea of personal happiness, that of an eco-friendly lifestyle.
Arguably, one of the founders of this type of TV approach to the subject of love and marriage in Bulgaria is TV producer and host Vitomir Saraivanov, who in 2007, 2008 and 2009 hosted iconic shows in the genre, which introduced the subject of love on Bulgarian television. The first show was Temptation Island, in which several couples indulging in luxury and pleasures on an exotic island were subjected to a series of temptations in order to test the strength of their relationships. The presumption was that, once they were separated from each other, the man and the woman would be unable to resist the several fashion models and playmates cast in the role of seducers. It is no coincidence that Vitomir Saraivanov was also editor-in-chief of another similar show, Cheaters, which provided a private investigator to confirm a complainant’s suspicions of infidelity, in return demanding a public scandal in front of the cameras and catching the suspect in the act of infidelity. The success of Married at First Sight was predicated also on the long-running show Sea of Love, in which we also saw a televised form of matchmaking in the person of the host, Natalia Simeonova, who used psychological-therapeutic tactics to reunite/reconcile couples.
Reality shows of this kind have several key characteristics, which are also found in Married at First Sight: this was a low-budget production which was legitimized as a social experiment and involved the psychological mechanisms of exhibitionism and voyeurism, and was thought of as a democratic format giving access to “expertise in love” to anyone who wanted it. The guiding principles were the principle of TV series (we observed a couple in progress and emotional intensification of certain moments of its experiences) and the principle of competition (throughout the show there was an implicit competition between the couples, whose ability to stay together for a longer time and to overcome the obstacles of family life in a less dramatic way was interpreted by the participants themselves as a stronger personal capacity for love).
Fig. 1. Apologies, pardons, and declarations of love on the show Sea of Love. Source: <http://www.potv.bg/news/p3_4721_0.html> (accessed 7 December 2018).
Matchmaking: The “Informed Choice” of Expertise or the Magic of Romantic Love?
But why and how has this type of “enactment” of the idea of marriage and serious relationships come about today? Regardless of the minor variations in the types of “experts” invited to participate in the originally Danish TV show Married at First Sight (a sexologist, sociologist, psychologist, psychiatrist, priest, spiritual leader, anthropologist), they undoubtedly lend a scientific touch to the adventure because it is their knowledge that promises to deliver the phantasm of “the perfect match”. Dr Logan Levkoff, the sexologist on the US version of Married at First Sight, even declared: “This experiment seeks to determine whether social science can play a role in marital success. If we can offer a new way to find a connection (and a long-lasting one), imagine the possibilities!”[2] Regarding what has been said so far, it should immediately be emphasized that this show is about very young, beautiful and socially accomplished people who are looking for their perfect mate on television. That is, it is not about people with traditional reasons for marginalization, such as ugliness, poverty, illness or old age, who more often than not need external intervention to find their perfect mate.
In this sense, the show actually problematizes rather the figure of the modern matchmakers, who play a key role in the realization of the project. The link between the promotion of the profession of matchmaker and reality formats has already been noticed. Obviously in Bulgaria, too, the first and so far one of the few operating dating agencies made its activity visible precisely through the show Married at First Sight. Here we will try to identify a few main characteristics of matchmaking on the basis of the accounts in the interviews conducted with the two matchmakers who participated in Married at First Sight, who are a married couple themselves.
In the words of the woman, it was no coincidence that the dating agency she and her husband had created had attracted the interest of sociologists and anthropologists, as it was “a specific sample about these movements, about the dynamics in society that are not usually monitored”. According to both interviewed matchmakers, their media appearance was an appropriate basis for building trust, both in the profession and in them in particular, but it was also “the ultimate boundary” they would not cross (both spoke of television participation as a necessary compromise). They found that as a result of the show, the number of women who enrolled in their programme had increased.
Matchmaking in this modern form involving expertise – that is, thought of as excellence in a particular professional field, not as a kind of social game of the family, relatives and friends – was an entirely new service in Bulgaria. This particular agency launched this type of services in 2013. Some 300 to 350 people enroll in it every month, half of them then seek contact fairly quickly, while the other half bide their time or don’t participate at all.
A key question I ask myself is whether matchmaking should be interpreted in the logic of the “informed choice” of expertise, or through the desire for the magic of romantic love, of a predestination that comes from an unexpected and extraordinary context of professional experience. It turns out that being open to love is as important as the person who is loved. Or, to put it in terms of Married at First Sight, the very willingness to be open to the idea of getting married, the readiness to trust the experts, is interpreted as a positive, moral stance. The possible failure of the relationship is perceived as a personal lack of readiness, immaturity, scepticism towards love.
This was clearly evident at the meeting organized during the show between the three couples participating in the experiment. Since one of them had already shown itself to be a “failure”, the other two couples blamed the man and the woman for obviously not trying hard enough. This looked like moral condemnation based on “the scientific principle”, since the latter couldn’t be wrong.
At the same time, however, the whole show was dominated by the idea of a mysterious, even quasi-magical selection in which the key phrase was “love at first sight”, or precisely the belief in predestination associated with fairytales and the sense of recognition of providence.
Fig. 2. The Bulgarian participants in Temptation Island. Source: <https://web.facebook.com/pg/Острова-на-изкушението-130222940296/posts> (accessed 7 December 2018).
Elitism
There is definitely an elitist element to matchmaking. First, in comparison with other forms of searching for “the perfect mate”. Such a notion comes from the presence of expertise that “checks” the veracity of the other’s profile and prevents deception. Second, on the basis of the desire “to discover oneself”. Here it is not only a matter of finding the right mate but also of understanding your inner self, of mastering various techniques of adequate social behaviour, of coming to love yourself. Third, because matchmaking involves delegating responsibility to a third party and easily ending the relationship “on the grounds of incompatibility”, blaming the matchmaker. Fourth, because of the reliance on a specific notion of love that has its scientific proof and agents and in this sense is verifiable, manipulable, statistically visible. And fifth, elitism due to scarcity – if fewer and fewer people are getting married, getting married is something that sets you apart and, in this sense, investing in it looks like a good investment for a neoliberal individual seeking to build themselves up. In this sense, matchmaking is presented as a “service”, one of many that most people use today – and, generally, that which is paid for is superior. To put it in economic terms, matchmaking provides added value to internet dating platforms that, by collecting sociodemographic data (height, age, gender, occupation) and psychological data (character traits, cultural tastes), guide actors only in a rational calculation about the relative qualities of others, but do not conduct sophisticated expert analysis of compatibility configurations.
Romantic Love
The big question that more and more online platforms are asking themselves is how, given such rational criteria, can they represent the magic that should characterize love at first sight, so sought after in the social imaginary? According to Marcello Vitali-Rosati (2015), there are two answers to this question: (1) many dating sites are reintroducing the element of chance in their offers. Such are, for example, the blind dates on OkCupid, where the algorithm proposes a date without revealing to the protagonists the profile of the person they will meet; (2) the complexity of the technical dispositive, the very fact that we don’t know the algorithms and how they work creates a magical attitude towards the technological platform.
But what more do matchmakers offer? They seem to continue this trend, providing what we may call an institutionalized predestination. Today the idea of romantic love is very strong and seems to be precisely the opposite of marriage of convenience (in its entire palette of financial benefits, age or physical compensatory mechanisms), which has been rejected ideologically in modern Europe. At the same time, the economics of abundance and oversupply, which can be seen on online dating sites, for example, prevents the necessary “concentration” that will enable us to discover the other and to let ourselves be seduced by them. In this sense, the idea of matchmaking is to find a form that offers the individual a focus on several options, scientific insurance for the choice made, and a magical perfect match. As for the matchmakers interviewed in Bulgaria, they are also a real-life family created precisely as “a second go” after failed marriages for both of them. In this sense, their personal life is mobilized not just as an example but also as a mission.
Extending Emotional Benefits
It turns out that in addition to sought-after matches, matchmaking service users have much broader emotional benefits related to “social support leading to increased feeling of hopefulness and self-esteem in the part of the clients. … [M]atchmakers sometimes provide reassurance, dating tips, and a listening ear for clients’ concerns” (Ahuvia and Adelman, 1992: 458). Thus, the main role of these paid social intermediaries is to reduce the cost of entering into a relationship (the cost of searching for a potential partner – identifying who the potential partners are among a sea of them; the cost of finding a potential partner – obtaining detailed and in-depth information about these potential partners; the cost of interacting with potential partners, which involves only a few investments in love rituals with a limited number of individuals). Usually, the service covers at least three axes: (1) introducing people of similar social and financial status to each other; (2) finding a soulmate for a person who pays an intermediary because they are particularly pretentious, or on the contrary, (3) because they don’t have particularly good qualities and are looking for an intermediary to increase their chances of finding a mate.
Fig. 3. Millionaire Wants a Wife. Hristo Sirakov before choosing on air who will be his wife. Source: <https://www.avtora.com/hristo-sirakov-obiaviava-novata-si-jena-v-ponedelnik-v-milioner-tarsi-sapruga> (accessed 7 December 2018).
A Comprehensive Range of Experiences
Like any service, matchmaking is offering more and more additional options ensuring a comprehensive experience. The analysed Bulgarian dating agency offers three options, which require different levels of involvement. The first is the so-called “dating party”. This is the most informal form of access to love services, in which a specific place and time is provided for singles to meet. The second is “speed dating”. In it, men and women meet in a public place on a rotating basis, for a few minutes at a time, in which each can get to know the person sitting opposite. Each participant then fills in their preferences on a special form and indicates who they would like to meet again. The next day the matchmakers process the results and send a letter to each participant with the contact details of the people with whom there is a match, that is, interest in meeting again. The advantage of this format is the possibility of meeting several people of a similar age at the same time. The disadvantage is that the participants are selected primarily on an age basis. Its success is explained by the fact that it saves time. As an illustration of this, as the Bulgarian dating agency experts said, a large part of speed-dating participants, almost 30%, are IT professionals. Unsurprisingly, meeting strangers is often interpreted as a form of digital detox, that is, a specific tendency of people working in digital technologies to return to live offline contacts, to nature.[3] According to the interviewees, groups of fans were sometimes formed in speed dating, who went to all speed-dating events. That is why certain rules had to be established: even if you had already met just one of the participants, you were not allowed to sign up for their group.
Finally, the third service is that of “matchmaking”, which is directly linked to expert intervention, takes into account each participant’s personal characteristics to the greatest extent, and is expected to have the greatest success rate because it involves the elaboration of a detailed psychological profile of the participant by professionals, as well as receiving specific training for a successful relationship.
In the logic of the dating agency itself, these forms are most often combined to provide a complete experience, and it is at the dating parties and speed-dating events that the experts are able to promote their matchmaking services as a “deepening” of the process. As the man from the dating agency said:
Actually, the idea is that these are three different forms of live dating that complement each other. They cover almost all possible variations of live dating. Dating parties are the very first form, they are usually attended by 200 to 300 people. There are no age restrictions, the only condition is being single. These parties last four hours and we hold them once a month. The average age of participants is 34 or 35, whatever we do. The next form are speed-dating events, which we organize two or three times a week. They are strictly profiled by age, taking into account the relevant trends: marriage trends in Bulgaria and singles’ expectations about age difference… Our speed-dating events are attended by ten men and ten women, who are strictly selected by age… The third form, the top of the pyramid, is matchmaking, where the participants are significantly fewer in number, but we deal with each one individually. All three forms, however, make up a whole. We saw that they are one whole and that this is the best way to develop the whole project, and that’s why we decided to combine them.
The agency’s economic bottom line is that, being the leading and one of the few matchmaking agencies in Bulgaria, five years after it was created it is already self-supporting; in a few more years, it should enable the experts who work there to support themselves solely from their job, that is, it should enable their real professionalization.
Fig. 4. X Millionaire Wants a Wife. Todor Slavkov “takes” both finalists. Source: <https://lifestyle.bg/bulgarian/malak-toshko-si-vze-dve-saprugi.html> (accessed 7 December 2018).
Competition from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tinder
Svetoslav Dimov was the first to introduce speed dating in Bulgaria. He himself admits that he wanted to develop it back in 2005–2006, but it was the success of social media that gave him the courage to try it out in 2010 and to pass on his experience and activities to ClubR in 2013, in order to move on to his next project, aimed at already existing couples and encouraging them to have more fun together.
Matchmakers’ great social capital does not come from any magical powers or from their position as authorities on opinion; it comes primarily from the many contacts they have with singles. They are thus engaged in one of the most important issues today, namely that of maintaining social ties. In our case, the television stage of Married at First Sight could be interpreted as a format similar to evening parties or romantic dates, a stage for attracting attention and coordinating the various types of social behaviour. Successful events are those from which we derive a sense of social solidarity. Here we can speak of ritual synchronization of the relationship, involving coordination of both parties (Collins, 2004): goal coordination, the relationship styles that mostly create a sense of connectedness (solo play, symmetrical reciprocal actions, reciprocal asymmetrical actions). In this context, on the one hand, matchmaking seems like a fun game in which the host (in this case, the experts) puts us in a situation that is largely stage-managed by them, in which each of the participants simply has to show themselves as “artistic” and to accept the challenge. In contrast to Facebook and LinkedIn, the initiative for the first move, for the way of presentation and the first contact with the other person is transferred to the experts. In this sense, matchmaking helps to avoid a number of online flirting options that are already subject to strict rules in new media, but which have also acquired negative connotations or have become trivialized to the point of losing their romantic aura. On the other hand, things usually happen as with the dating app Tinder – potential dating partners study each other’s profiles and actually meet only if both want to. This helps to avoid unpleasant feelings such as that of being rejected: you only see people who have said “I do” to you.
Between Romantic Faith and Therapeutic Ethos
In conclusion, we can say that the Bulgarian version of Married at First Sight showed marriage as a principled manifestation of a serious attitude. In this sense, the very step towards getting married was the great beginning, the proof that you look “maturely” at the things in life, that you have felt that the time for this rite of passage has come. The emphasis is on your own growth. According to the interview with one of the matchmakers, “It’s quite normal, there are no universal rules about how to find partners, how to build a relationship. It’s quite normal to have numerous relationships until you find what you’re looking for... You have to find yourself first.”
Subsequently, however, the image of marriage on the reality TV show was desacralized, as it was no longer thought of so much as an institution and its attendant degree of devotion, but was rather calculated as a degree of marital adjustment.[4] Since, as the already cited surveys on marriage in Bulgaria show, young Bulgarians increasingly regard these relationships as a sphere in which to explore, develop and express themselves, the emphasis has shifted from responsibility (psychological – related to commitment, selfless love, etc., and social – related to procreation, economic interdependence, support in life, etc.) to the idea of entitlement (to trial and error, to being what you are and liking yourself). As Zygmunt Bauman (2005) notes, love relationships are precisely the area of human experience in which the “liquefaction” of life is expressed in all its intensity and experienced in the most painful way. On the one hand, he says, in an unstable world full of unpleasant surprises everyone needs a loyal and committed partner. But on the other hand, everyone is terrified at the idea of committing to a relationship, let alone of committing wholeheartedly. Thus the desire to experience true and deep love is coupled with the opposite demand – namely, allowing the possibility of withdrawing this love at some point. In the case of matchmaking, this contradiction seems to become possible insofar as if the relationship is successful, it retains an aura of predestination; if it isn’t, it is thought of as the result of expert error. The mission of the matchmakers is thus extended in time because they become responsible for the possible failure.
For its part, what is reality TV doing – is it helping or hurting the reputation of matchmaking? In Bulgaria, it definitely turned matchmaking into a visible and much-discussed profession. But on the other hand, it presented some atypical, sensational clients who ultimately created a rather negative image of what we may call “marriage of expertise”. And although it was broadcasting moral messages all along, this game had a bad ending for all couples. It seems that expertise did not beget love.
What is the difference between this expertise and that of traditional matchmakers? In the former, the selection is no longer tied in any way to the questions of family, kin and property; it is tied solely to personal characteristics. This is also confirmed by Alexey Pamporov’s observations on the crisis of the marriage institution and the new family forms in Bulgaria (Pamporov, 2009), according to which both identity characteristics (religion, social background, political views) and status characteristics (good housing, satisfactory income) were regarded as less important than the emotional characteristics of a relationship (fidelity, willingness to discuss the problems that arise between the spouses, and a good sex life). The same findings were pointed out by Petar-Emil Mitev and Siyka Kovacheva (2014). The four most important factors in choosing a marriage partner, according to the respondents in their survey, were love, personality, common interests, and physical appearance (ibid.: 93–94). In real-life practices of looking for a partner, the interviewed matchmakers also said, visibly disappointed, that factors related to physical appearance remained the leading ones: weight, height, and age.
What has ultimately happened to the idea of love at first sight? Providence, destiny, the romance of an unexpectedly good match have been replaced by expertise. The authority that makes the decision and that will “visualize” instead of us has been displaced from heaven to earth. This has made their decision much easier to contest. At the same time, as we have seen, this trivialization, this vulgarization of love is compensated for by matchmaking through the creation of new ritual forms of love communication, through a new stage on which love is played out and which tries in its own way to “re-enchant” love.
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Fig. 5. “Love at first sight.” One of the couples at their wedding at the start of Married at First Sight. Source: <https://www.vesti.bg/razvlechenia/lyubopitno/kakvo-se-sluchi-s-dvojkite-sled-zheneni-ot-pryv-pogled-6036964> (accessed 7 December 2014). |
Fig. 6. The same couple immediately after the show. Love is gone. Source: <https://www.vesti.bg/razvlechenia/lyubopitno/kakvo-se-sluchi-s-dvojkite-sled-zheneni-ot-pryv-pogled-6036964> (accessed 7 December 2014). |
Eva Illouz (1997: 159–160) claims that the
legitimation of sex for its own sake has demystified the cultural narrative of “love at first sight,” precisely on the ground that it is “just” sexual attraction. Whereas in the Romantic tradition sexual arousal was sublimated – and therefore made legitimate – into the scenario of “love at first sight,” today love at first sight is suspected of being a pretense for what can now be openly acknowledged, namely, sexual desire. Because sex is now an acceptable and necessary component of intimacy, even a form of self-expression, its sublimated expression in the cultural ideal of love at first sight is paradoxically jeopardized. This in turn implies that love and sex can now form the bases for separate and parallel life narratives.
In fact, Illouz has pointed out a very strong contradiction, visible both in the show Married at First Sight and in the practices of matchmaking agencies in Bulgaria. The contemporary situation presupposes diversity and freedom of choice, the result not only of a much wider range of available partners but also of the spread of the consumer mentality into romantic practices: the belief that one should commit only after a process of gathering information, something that eliminates two previously central categories – those of “waiting/gradual discovery” and of the “tragic” experience of love. This has ultimately led today to the coexistence of two equally powerful repertoires of love – not only the “organic” one, or the repertoire of love as a strong involvement, which is related rather to the anthropological concept of gift, but also the “contractual” one, or the repertoire of love as work, which is based on the same contract of exchange that underlies capitalist markets.
Traditionally, this contradiction is explained sociologically by linking romantic love, on the one hand, and marriage on the other, to fundamentally different values. The period of romantic love is associated with intensity of experience, idealization of the other, strong emotions. The period of marriage is associated with sharing daily life, coping with a less than perfect other, integrating love with the responsibilities of a family and work, which are regarded as necessary for a successful marriage, etc. (cf. Illouz, 1997: 196).
For her part, Illouz (ibid.: 196–197) argues that
these tensions are the result of a structural contradiction between marriage as an institution of social reproduction and marriage as a unit for the expression of the individual’s emotions.
The family was conceived as an economic unit of production until the eighteenth century, when the economic function of marriage was gradually replaced by a view of marriage as the altar of private life and affectionate sentiments.
In postmodern culture, Illouz (ibid.: 293) explains this contradiction as a contradiction between the forms of “‘romantic faith’ [that] is celebrated throughout the mass media” and, in parallel, its deconstruction by the “therapeutic ethos” that is practised by various experts.
Among such experts are matchmakers. They offer a “parascientific discourse”, that is, a popular version of scientific methods of analysis which, however, is no longer targeted at a community of other experts although it remains laden with the semiotic and institutional markers of symbolic competence.
This is exactly what we saw in the show Married at First Sight – romantic faith and expert-backed disappointment. It was as if both the participants and the experts agreed that we shouldn’t look for the perfect partner so much as for a perfect relationship that is in harmony with the difficult identity work of everyone involved in the experiment. Delicate work on a democracy of relationships enabling communication of needs and expectations, settlement of the love contract, and establishment of compromises.
According to the matchmakers’ impressions as well as according to the “unsuccessful” development of all three couples in the project, such democracy was apparently sought primarily in sexuality, which has become a pole publicly charged with political energy, a personal and social territory in which the fundamental freedom to dispose of one’s own body is played out, but which is making us ever more lonely.
The intensification of these two rhetorics of love, the “destiny rhetoric” and the “expert rhetoric”, and their consistent experience in a several-month-long show did not provide a particularly appealing perspective on the field of love, which has always needed inspiration because it has ultimately required not that the individual be themselves but that they transcend themselves. That they find the wholeness that can come not only from their “other half” (which etymologically implies that the individual isn’t whole), but even better, from their capacity to love. I refuse to believe that the individual’s capacity to love is divisible solely into pre- and post-consumerist practices associated with the romantic utopia.
References
Ahuvia, Aaron C. and Adelman, Mara B. 1992. “Formal Intermediaries in the Marriage Market: A Typology and Review”. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 54 (2): 452–463.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2005. “Vivre dans la «modernité liquide»” (entretien avec Zygmunt Bauman, propos recueillis par Xavier de la Vega). Sciences Humaines, 165.
Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dinkova, Maria. 1997. Brakat kato predstava, tsennost i realnost [Marriage as a notion, value, and reality]. Sofia: ASSA-M.
Illouz, Eva. 1997. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Illouz, Eva. 2012. Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kotseva, Tatyana and Kostova, Dora. 2007. Mladite hora i intimnostta v usloviyata na sotsialna promyana [Young people and intimacy in conditions of social change]. Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo “Prof. Marin Drinov”.
Mitev, Petar-Emil. 2005. Novite mladi: Balgarskata mladezh i evropeyskata perspektiva [The new young: Bulgarian youth and the European prospect]. Sofia: Institut za sotsialni tsennosti i strukturi “Ivan Hadzhiyski”.
Mitev, Petar-Emil and Kovacheva, Siyka. 2014. Young People in European Bulgaria: A Sociological Portrait 2014. Sofia: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
Pamporov, Alexey. 2009. “Krizata na brachnata institutsiya v Balgariya, familizmat i novite semeyni formi” [The crisis of the marriage institution in Bulgaria, familism, and new family forms]. In: Fotev, Georgi (ed.) Evropeyskite tsennosti v dneshnoto balgarsko obshtestvo [The European values in today’s Bulgarian society]. Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. Kliment Ohridski”, 154–171.
Spasovska, Lilyana. 2000. Promenyashtiyat se brak v Balgariya [Changing marriage in Bulgaria]. Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo “Prof. Marin Drinov”.
Vitali-Rozati, Marcello. 2014. “Les algoritmes de l’amour”. MuseMedusa: revue de littérature et d'arts modernes, 2.
Translated by Katerina Popova
[1] “Malak Toshko si vze dve saprugi” [Toshko Jr takes two wives]. Lifestyle.bg, 11 November 2012 (accessed 7 December 2018).
[2] “Can This Sexologist Help Her ‘Married at First Sight’ Clients in Bed?”. G/O Media Studios, 7 July 2014 (accessed 7 December 2018).
[3] See “Pokolenieto Y: Machmeykar – moderniyat svatovnik” [Generation Y: Matchmakers, the modern marriage brokers]. Club Z, 23 December 2015 (accessed 7 December 2018).
[4] To be entirely fair, we should note the presence of a priest on the show. However, his participation was not related to a specific Bulgarian context, it was required by the television format itself. His role as a counsellor remained relatively marginal and relevant only to one of the couples, who claimed religious affiliation. Either way, the presence of a priest cannot be interpreted as sacralizing marriage, but as one of the options available to the couples for getting expert marriage counselling.
Biographical note
Niya Neykova holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne, France, and Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She is Senior Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and lecturer at the Department of History and Theory of Culture at Sofia University. Her main research interests are in the field of social imaginary, media and communications, youth cultures, and anthropology of love.
Email: nia_neykova[at]abv.bg
