Sunoo CEO James Lee

This is the seventh in a series of columns by James Lee, CEO of the matchmaking firm Sunoo (www.couple.net), about various aspects of marriage based on his 20 years in the business ― ED.

By James Lee

Riddle me this: there's a man, he's 39 years old, graduated from a prestigious American university and works at a rather high-profile company. Physically, he's tall, attractive, and to top it off, he's already got a swank apartment lined up for married life, a 60 pyeong (200 square meters) place in Gangnam. Oh, one more thing: his parents are educated and nice. On paper he's got everything it takes to make perfect marriage material by Korean standards.

Even though this guy fits the profile of the cream of the crop, he's still single. Has some other woman already stolen his heart? He's already had the chance to do so as he's met plenty of women. What could be the reason? Are his standards too high? Is there a first, unrequited love he has yet to forget? Or is he just set on staying single forever?

The answer is actually quite simple, but unexpected. By looking at his manner of dating and the kind of woman who strikes his fancy, it's more likely that he's been unable to get married rather than chosen not to. His ideal woman seems easy enough: she has to be clever, give a great impression, as well as have a great education.

As he's a man of confidence, he's looking for a woman whom he believes meets his rigid standards. To put it plainly: he's picky.

Actually, he's had a few opportunities to meet women who have met his high standards, but when he asks them about marriage flat out, he gets rejected.

For a guy like him, being set up is easy, but having something come out of a first meeting is difficult. The women he's met all have one thing to say about him: he has bad manners.

If you ask him after his dates, he'll tell you he was kind to his partners, treated them well. Strange, right?

He'll say he gave them his best, while the women say that that wasn't the case. So what could be the problem?

The problem is that he believes he treats women well based on his standards. It's a classic "big fish" syndrome. When he goes on a date, if he thinks he did a good job, if he had a good time, he believes the feeling must be mutual. Without taking into consideration that his date might have felt differently; he simply thinks that if he thought the meeting was a success, it must have been. The reaction of the other person has no effect on his opinion.

In his defense, it's not that he actually has bad manners, per se, but rather that he still lacks the finesse required to achieve that mutual understand that's necessary in relations between a man and a woman. In all honesty, it could simply be that the onset of the 21st Century has been, in part, his downfall.

If this man were looking for a partner in the 1970's or 1980's, the idea of him being rejected would be unthinkable. At the time, if a woman at marrying age were to meet a man who met her basic criteria for a husband, she would most likely have overlooked flaws such as arrogance or selfishness. Of course, nowadays meeting a woman like that would be unimaginable. No matter how good things may look on paper, even just plain blas? behavior can leave a man in the reject bin. When you're interested in someone, you can't simply go after them in whatever way you think someone should like to be pursued.

Once we got into the 2000's it became more than easy to write off guys who think they're god's gift to women, leaving them to stay bachelors past their primes. At Sunoo, our couple's managers meet with countless members, and end up with the same conclusions about people's habits: that people having trouble finding appropriate marriage partners have similar issues.

The stauncher one's criteria for finding a spouse are, the narrower the possibility of finding a suitable match becomes. Also, women who are straightforward about their dislike of someone's actions are hard to come by, and it's frequently the case that if a date is slightly less than spectacular, they simply give up on that person. Under these kinds of conditions, it becomes more and more difficult to match high-profile couples.

In order to solve this problem, we need to work to tame our big fish syndromes, boast of humility and humanness rather than just, well … boast. We need to take the time to not just think about our own feelings about a relationship, but about our partner's as well. This is the secret of success for a true big fish.

Marriage for the man in our example is ever delaying and, in all honesty, even I'm beginning to have my doubts about whether it's going to happen at all. But maybe that feeling is just inevitable when the task ahead of you is as seemingly impossible as this one.

The Real Deal in Dating The Korean Marriage Culture Research Institute at Sunoo conducted a survey among 50 of its top matchmakers (each with at least three years of experience on the job) and came up with the following tips for people who may have "big fish" syndrome. The survey was labeled "Ways in which people who marry easily differ from those who do not." These were the common traits that were noted. 1. It's important for people to try their best to treat the person they are meeting as well as possible, rather than wait for that elusive "someone better" to come along. 2. When people exhibit a strong sense of concern for the person they are with, that's what really counts in winning rave reviews. 3. By trying to look at one's life objectively, one should try to rid oneself of unnecessary desires. 4. People who are less stubborn and more open-minded are relatively more successful in finding appropriate partners for marriage. 5. People who take their partners for who they are and are less fastidious in their choices are more likely to get married. Other responses that were seen as keys to successful marital partner searches included having humility, an ability to look at potential partners' positive aspects first, rather than their negative aspects, as well as an ability to convey a sense of sincerity in regard to one's feelings.