The History of Sex: Geneva -- Weeding Out the Weirdos -- (Chap. V, Pt. 13)

As for Rousseau, his love-hate relationship with his hometown is reciprocated to this day.

A little island in the middle of the Rhone is named after him, but the even tinier Espace Rousseau museum is chronically underfunded, consisting of just two small rooms.

And as scientists increasingly question whether we have souls ('Is the Genome the Secular Equivalent of the Soul?,' asks a boffin at the University of Geneva), the notion of the soulmate still haunts the popular psyche like a ghost in the machine, summoned up in countless personal ads—even if some modern lonely hearts, like this twenty-nine-year-old in Geneva, come across as anti-soulmates: 

'Just a man searching for attachments-free good sex. Why? Well, i don't believe in love anymore, so i am looking to enjoy life until the end, and that's all.' 

Notably, this guy's online photo, obviously snapped in an internet dive, reveals him to be bug-eyed, eggheaded and bushy-browed.

Online, though, he's 'OrigPussyLicker:' aka 'Don Juan de Marco.'

'More like Don Juan de Weirdo,' Lena observes.

To help weed out the weirdos, a Dutchwoman in Geneva has launched an upscale dating agency that marries atavistic Calvinism with modern materialism.

Trea Tijmens is a former corporate headhunter who charges 4,000 francs—around £2,000 (upwards of $4,000)—to introduce professionals to potential merger candidates, or 'life partners,' as she tells me in a local café: 'I think everyone hopes that their life partner will be their soulmate.'

The full-service SuccessMatch membership fee lasts for eighteen months, with each arranged date costing a further 250 francs.

It includes professional headshots, an in-depth interview and a Myers-Briggs personality test, with clients signing a contract and non-disclosure agreement swearing that they've told the truth.

'THE ONLY THING I DON'T TALK ABOUT'

So having NDAed them and Myers-Briggsed them, I ask, 'What about sex? Do you ask them what they're looking for in a relationship?'

Trea starts to laugh nervously, as if I've mentioned something unmentionable.

'Sex?'

Well, yeah, I shrug. I'm shocked that she's so shocked. She's even blushing.

'You're Dutch for God's sake!' I tease her.

'That's the only thing I don't talk about. We speak about money. We speak about religion. We speak about past relationships. We speak about their whole childhood—what type of family they had and where they grew up. I know them better than their own friends and relatives. The only thing I don't speak about is'— She can't even bring herself to say the word again.

'Why is that?'

'Well, probably because I wouldn't be comfortable speaking about it. Because I'm very Calvinist. That's how I was raised. Very prudish. So I probably wouldn't be comfortable speaking about that.'

A cultural Calvinist to the core, Trea also urges her clientele to be pragmatic about love.

'Some clients have this idea that once they meet the right person, they'll sweep them off their feet and live happily ever after,' she laughs. 'I don't want to scare them off, but it isn't easy to make a relationship work. It's a lot of hard work.'

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