WARSAW — Psychologist Barbara Strójwąs uses her Instagram account Trudna sztuka (“Difficult art”) to answer, among other things, questions from single people about relationships. With more than 230,000 Instagram followers, Strójwąs is also known for her critical opinions on Tinder and other dating apps.
“The worst thing is that people trusted the creators of these apps. They believed that they would actually meet someone through them, creating a valuable relationship. And they end up with a sense of hopelessness – they click and click and nothing comes of it,” she told the Polish magazine Wysokie Obcasy in February.
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To counteract this hopelessness, Strójwąs created the Dating Agency. The idea is simple: The burden of finding a match does not fall on single people but on experts who, like modern matchmakers, match people based on questionnaires about expectations. Singles disappointed with their match can opt out and wait for the next one, similar to dating app users. Then they have to wait for the next match.
This kind of help, unlike Tinder and other dating applications, is not free. The basic package, which only adds users to the Dating Agency’s singles database for 12 months, costs PLN 500 (about 115 euros). The plus package, thanks to which specialists match users who answer a questionnaire, costs PLN 199 (about 46 euros) per month. The premium package costs PLN 4,500 (about 1,040 euros) for 3 months and provides users with a personalized care plan from Strójwąs herself.
The service has gained a lot of attention because there is no shortage of people frustrated by the search for love in the world of online dating. But over time, there has been more and more criticism of the service, and negative reviews from users of the Dating Agency in Warsaw.
People dissatisfied with the Dating Agency’s services have created a Facebook group, which has nearly 800 members. Not all of them are clients of Strójwąs, but they are the most active members, describing their negative experiences. The main complaints? The lack of matches and offers that don’t meet expectations. As a result, the singles do not even date each other. Some comment that not only were the Dating Agency’s professional matchmakers no better than Tinder, but they actually caused greater disappointment.
Silence and rejection
“I was in a happy relationship for over 20 years. I had two children. Eventually, however, the feelings burned out and we got divorced. And I became single again,” says Małgosia, a lawyer. Nearly 50, she started dating at the age of 42 using Tinder, Bumble and other popular apps.
“It was completely different then, easier. Unfortunately, men look at age. Everyone looks for a younger woman,” she says. She managed to build one relationship, but it fell apart after four years. “Now I’ve been looking since 2021, without stress,” she says, adding that she is actively looking for a partner and goes on dates.
“Unfortunately, the longest I can date one person is a few months, then everything ends. Ghosting, not ready for a relationship and a desire to boost my ego. I could go on like this for a long time,” she says. One day her daughter told her about “this cool lady on the internet.”
“That’s how I found Barbara Strójwąs’s profile on Instagram. Her Dating Agency seemed really promising. Finally something other than a people shop and a heartless algorithm!”
At least with Tinder, I’m going on dates.
Małgosia waited several months to receive the questionnaire. At first she used the basic profile but quickly switched to the most expensive “plus” option. “Nothing happened for a long time. After a few months, I got one match, but I was rejected immediately. I went to his profile: a man who was completely wrong for me,” she recalls.
Annoyed that she had thrown money down the drain, she wrote to Strójwąs on Instagram and also sent an email to the agency asking if they were even looking for her potential partner. There was no answer, but two more matches came, which were again rejected by the men within a dozen or so minutes.
“That’s not how this was advertised. And Barbara started to promote a strange narrative that women are too picky. I don’t want to assume that she had bad intentions. Something just didn’t work out here, and she should admit it,” says Małgosia, who is now back on Tinder, dating again.
“The Dating Agency was supposed to be better, but nothing happened there. At least with Tinder, I’m going on dates. I’m having a nice conversation right now with a guy who writes that he can ride his bike over to my place. I wrote back to tell him to come,” she says.
Reduced to a few criteria
“The question is how it came to this: In the past few years, we started to reduce other people to a few criteria. That worries me,” says Barbara Strójwąs, who suggested a conversation with me after my email to the Dating Agency. She adds that she remembers the times without the internet, when relationships were not as difficult as they are today.
“We are distancing ourselves from each other more and more. Many people are lonely. But at the same time, as if unconsciously, they close themselves off to other people. They do everything to deprive themselves of the chance to get out of this situation. I wouldn’t blame them for it. This is what Tinder, among others, has done to us,” she says. The answer to this, she says, was the Dating Agency, into which she put a lot of heart and savings.
“I worry every time I hear that someone is dissatisfied. But it is completely understandable to me, because I myself have been dissatisfied. We collect constructive feedback and analyze it according to how many people a given change will help and how much programming resources are needed for it,” she says.
As for complaints about the number of matches, she explains that the questionnaire has 55 questions, and people are paired by herself and two other people. They use an original method based on the psychological experience of the originator, and she assures that there is no room for randomness in it.
Very few negative emails
“If I have a man under 50 who is looking for a woman who is barely 30, then he narrows the number of people he could meet. On the other side, are women who usually do not want a partner that much older,” she says as an example. Another example is a woman who wrote that she has a dog and listed specific breeds that her pet accepts.
“I assume that people who come to us want to open up and get to know someone. But if someone stiffens up, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t change that,” she says. Regarding the potential disparities between women and men, she says “That’s why, to avoid such a situation, we are not sending questionnaires to women in the capital at the moment. This is a temporary situation.”
Working with emotions is not the easiest thing.
Strójwąs says that the Dating Agency receives very few negative emails. “For example, recently I received a message from a person who had been dating someone she met via the agency for 1.5 months. But the relationship didn’t work out. So she wrote to me that it was our fault because it didn’t work out. I accept that, because working with emotions is not the easiest thing,” the psychologist says.
Strójwąs plans to continue to develop the Dating Agency, and expand to cities other than Warsaw, Wrocław and Poznań. “I know that this initiative is very much needed by Polish singles, and I am happy with every couple who meets here. If in the future, I’m invited to an ‘Agency’ wedding, it will be a great pleasure for me.”
