How the Directory Works

Once you have subscribed and completed and submitted a profile, we design an entry for you from the information that you have supplied.  This is then added to our database.  Note: the Directory is fully invigilated and because this involves a skilled and experienced person working on your behalf, it may take a week or two before your membership is active.  However, as soon as your membership is live, you will be advised by either email or post.

Note: nothing is published in the Directory that could identify you.  Members are by default described as “John from London” or “Mary from Dublin” or similar.  We also have the facility for members to be known by a name other than their real name if they prefer.  This is seldom truly necessary, except on those rare occasion when people have very unusual ethnic names that may possible identify them.

Once your membership is up and running, you will have access to a directory of all those members of the opposite gender to you who are seeking a person of your age.  If you are a postal member this will be sent to you by post, otherwise you will access it online using your user name and password.

Note that in many cases this database may be very extensive containing several hundred names.  This means that you must devote some quality time going through your directory and short listing those members who from their description appear to be the sort of person with whom there was a potential for a friendship.

You then need to write to them.  Obviously, if they publish their email address, you can email them.  However, the majority of members still prefer to receive communications by traditional mail.  You will not normally have a postal address for the member to whom you are writing, so, having written your letter, you place it in an envelope, write the recipients reference number and Christian name in the centre of the envelope where the address would normally go, affix the correct postage, and then forwarded it to us inside another envelope.  We do not open people’s correspondence; we merely place a label bearing the address of your intended recipient over the reference number and forward the letter on your behalf.  Note: if you are writing to more than one member at once, there is no need to place them in separate outer envelopes - they can all go in the one outer envelope addressed to us.

Correspondence can of course go both ways, and people correspond in this fashion until they feel comfortable enough to take it a step further.  What that step is, is entirely up to the two people involved.  However, experience suggests that they either exchange telephone numbers and have a chat on the telephone or they meet up for a pub lunch or something similar