the auntie problem

→ you two should meet

Love used to be someone else’s job.

It is possible to be happy and healthy alone. It is also more common than not to want someone to share a life with. This is a small, sincere attempt to help the people who give theirs to good work.

Quietly raise a hand Read the letter

a letter, front and centre

The Auntie Problem

Dear Mateo,

You told me, in the nicest possible way, that you do not have time for this. You run a campaign that will spare more animals this year than most people help in a lifetime, you get home at nine, and the thought of putting on a shirt to sit across from a stranger who will probably not text back makes you tired in your teeth. I heard all of it. You are right about every part except the conclusion.

Here is the part you have wrong. You think love is something you go and find, alone, with your thumb, after work. It never used to be. For most of the time there have been people, love was a thing other people did for you. Someone’s mother knew someone’s daughter. The village had an auntie whose whole quiet job was holding a map of who was kind and who was lonely and who would suit whom, and she would put two names beside each other and simply say, you two should meet. She was not a joke. She was infrastructure.

We took her away and gave you an app, and the app is a slot machine that pays out once in twenty pulls, and you, being a sensible person with a full life, correctly stopped pulling the lever. That is not a flaw in you. That is a market someone broke.

So I am the auntie now. I have run hiring for a decade, and I will tell you the thing that made me start doing this instead. I have watched a single job open and draw a thousand applications, a thousand good people, all wanting the same small number of chairs. And I would think: there are that many of them, right there, wanting to be chosen, and half of them go home to nobody, and I have all their names. It is the easiest arithmetic in the world and nobody was doing it.

I am not going to sell you to anyone. I am going to introduce you to Emma, who builds databases for a hospital, who thinks what you do is the most serious thing a person can do, and who has quietly wanted, for a while, to be near someone whose life means something. She can cook. You cannot. She would like to take some weight off a good person and has the room in her life to do it. You would light up her ordinary Tuesdays. That is all this is.

You do not have to answer today. Finish the campaign. But when it is done and the flat is quiet, remember that the quiet is not proof of anything except that the auntie retired and no one replaced her.

I did. Coffee is on us.

With warmth,
Morgan

how we used to do this

Meeting someone was a job the whole village did

For almost all of human time, you did not find your person by yourself. Other people found them for you. Your mother knew someone’s daughter. The church had its socials, work threw you together for forty hours a week, and the village had its auntie. Meeting a partner was something a community handled on your behalf, quietly, in the background, the way it kept the roads.

Then, in about one generation, that changed. Researchers who tracked how American couples met found that meeting online overtook meeting through friends around 2013, and by 2017 it had become the single most common way couples got together, close to two in five.1 The auntie did not fail. She was quietly replaced by an app.

And the app, for a lot of people, is worse. In a large national survey, people who had recently used a dating site or app were more likely to come away frustrated than hopeful, and most younger women reported unwanted contact.2 The lever is heavy and it mostly pays out nothing, so sensible, busy people stop pulling it. That is not a flaw in them. It is a market that broke, and a broken market is a thing a person in the middle can fix.

the quiet argument

Behind a lot of good work is someone who took the weight

The people we build this for give more of themselves than most jobs would ever ask. Pay in the movement, especially at smaller organisations, tends to run below what comparable fields offer, the hours are long, and the emotional weight of the work is real.3 A person like that does not need saving. But like anyone, they tend to do better, and last longer, with someone beside them who can carry a little of the ordinary load and who thinks the work matters.

There is a gentler point underneath this one, and we want to make it carefully, because it is the part most easily said wrong. When two people find each other, their generosity often grows together. Studies of couples find that people frequently give more once there is a we, and that most couples decide their giving side by side.4 Women in particular tend to give more than similarly situated men, at nearly every income level.5

We read all of this as good news about love, not as a strategy. We are not in the business of acquiring caring people to improve anyone’s numbers, and we would rather close than become that. We just notice, happily, that when you put two good people beside each other, the world tends to get a little more out of both of them than it did when they were alone. Let that be a side effect. The point is the two people.

the team

We are the aunties now

We spent years in recruitment, hiring for tech companies and for animal charities. If you have ever posted a job, you know the strange, sad arithmetic of it: a single opening can draw four hundred good people, sometimes more than a thousand, all of them wanting to be chosen, and most of them going home to no one. We had all their names. It was the easiest arithmetic in the world, and nobody was doing it, so we started.

We are not an algorithm and we are not a funnel. We are people who happen to be good at holding a map of who is kind, who is lonely, and who would suit whom, which is exactly the job the aunties of the last generation did before someone handed everyone an app instead.

Morgan

recruiter, turned auntie

Ran hiring for a decade. Writes the letters. Believes love is infrastructure, not luck, and gets a little stubborn about it.

Bailey

recruiter, keeper of the map

Hired across tech and rescue. Remembers who you said you were on a good day and on a bad one, and takes both seriously.

A proof of concept, so the faces are drawn, not photographed, and the names are still settling. The care is not a placeholder.

what we actually do

The service

High-touch and small on purpose. We take a few people at a time and we take them seriously, because a matchmaker is holding something more fragile than a job offer.

Matchmaking the heart of it

Mostly we introduce someone in the movement to a well-suited partner from outside it. Sometimes, carefully, two advocates. Always by hand.
Couples counselling

For the pairs we make, and the pairs we did not, when they want a steadier hand.
Coaching

On the things that get in the way: intimacy, social anxiety, and the particular fear of dating when your time is already thin.
Wingman services

Someone in your corner for the actual, terrifying evening. You are not walking in alone.
Getting through the hard parts

Breakups, rejection, and the long stretch when nothing is landing. It is normal, and it is easier with company.
Group getaways

Small, unforced, low-stakes ways for good people to be in the same room and see what happens.

How we keep the lights on

The people we match into the movement never pay us. Not once, not ever. The other side of a match, someone with a good income and a full calendar, covers the work, and they choose how.

A flat fee

Agreed up front, and we stay with you until you are actually with someone, not just introduced. As a proof of concept we have floated a figure in the region of twenty thousand dollars, and we would rather talk it through than post a price like a menu.

Or five percent

A commitment to give five percent of what you earn to a cause that helps animals, for as long as we are working together. Different currency, same idea: a good match should leave the world a little better fed.

either is fine by us

The money is the least interesting part of what happens here, and we have tried to price it so it never becomes the point.

a fair question

Do other people need love too?

Almost everything here is aimed at the people carrying hard work on their backs, so it is fair to ask about the person on the other side of a good match. The one who never went into the movement. The engineer, the professor, the quiet builder of steady things. They are not a support beam and they are not a bank account. They are a whole person, and often a wonderful one, and it is worth saying so out loud.

Some of what we love about the people we introduce toward a life of meaning:

They have built something steady, and there is room in it. A person with their evenings and their head in order can hold a great deal for someone whose days are spent holding the line for others.
They are not bored by good work. They are moved by it. Plenty of people who never joined the movement have spent years quietly wishing to be near someone whose life clearly matters. Being that near is its own kind of purpose.
They are good at the ordinary things that keep a life from tipping over. Someone has to know where the passports are and how to make something warm on a Tuesday. This is not a small love. It is most of love.
They tend to give more once there is a “we.” Two people pointed at the same good thing usually do more of it than either did alone, and they do it gladly.
They are, frequently, a delight. Funny, tender, a little nerdy, quietly generous. The stereotype of the buttoned-up engineer badly undersells how much warmth is in there once someone bothers to look.

We are not ranking people, and we would never. We are saying the world is full of lovely, underdated humans who would light up an advocate’s ordinary Tuesdays, and be lit right back.

if any of this is you

Raise a hand

There is no form here. We are not going to keep your heart in a database. If this landed, write us one honest line about yourself and we will write back like a person.

Say hello, quietly

Discretion is the whole job. Nothing goes anywhere you did not send it.

Where these numbers come from

How couples meet. Rosenfeld, M. J., Thomas, R. J., & Hausen, S. (2019). “Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(36). Meeting online overtook meeting through friends around 2013 and reached roughly 39% of couples by 2017. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908630116
Dating-app friction. Pew Research Center (2020). “The Virtues and Downsides of Online Dating.” Among recent users, 45% came away more frustrated than hopeful (28%), and most women aged 18 to 34 reported unwanted contact. pewresearch.org
The movement (worded softly). Polanco, A. & Anderson, J. (2024). “Creating a More Equitable Movement: Compensation in the Farmed Animal Advocacy Sector,” Faunalytics; with Faunalytics community surveys and Gaarder (2011). Pay, especially leadership pay at smaller organisations, runs below comparable advocacy and environmental sectors, and the movement is widely described as majority women (survey estimates commonly around 70%). This one is softer than the others; we have kept the wording modest on purpose. faunalytics.org
Partners and giving (illustrative). Einolf, C. J. & Philbrick, D. (2014). “Generous or Greedy Marriage? A Longitudinal Study of Volunteering and Charitable Giving.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 76(3); with Einolf, Curran & Brown (2018) on couples deciding giving together. Marriage tends to reshape and often expand giving, and most couples decide it jointly. We read this as illustration, not proof. doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12115
Women and giving. Mesch, D. J., et al. (2010). “Women Give 2010,” Women’s Philanthropy Institute, Indiana University. Across most income levels, women are both more likely to give and give more than similarly situated men. philanthropy.indianapolis.iu.edu

We have tried to cite honestly, including where the evidence is thin. Where a claim is softer than we would like, we have said so rather than dress it up.