Bienvenue at the love café

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Some singles are getting a little tired of Internet dating sites, where people are not always as they present themselves. In France, many are looking for new ways to meet that special person – in person! One of them is to attend a Café de l’Amour, or “Love café”. They’re get-togethers in French cities where people go to hear a speaker talk about love and maybe meet that special someone. Reporter Genevieve Oger attended one.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, from the country that brought you l’amour there’s a new alternative to Internet dating.  It’s called Cafe de L’amour or Love Cafes.  These are weekly get togethers in France where people get to talk about love and maybe meet that special someone.  Reporter Genevieve Oger went to a Love Cafe in Paris, and sent this story.

GENEVIEVE OGER: About 300 people have turned up for this week’s Love Cafe in Paris.  The topic tonight is how feminine qualities in both men and women can affect love.  These Love Cafes are the brainchild of Benedicte Ann, the psychologist and self described relationship advisor.  She says she came up with the idea around Valentine’s Day six years ago when she was unhappy with her own love life.

BENEDICTE ANN: I decided that it was a time for love and I didn’t know what love was exactly and I thought that it was a way to find it.

GENEVIEVE: At first the Love Cafes drew about a dozen people.  Now one hundred to two hundred attend every week.  And the concept has spread to other French cities and to Belgium.  She attributes the success to the fact the get-togethers involve small group discussions that allow people to go beyond the small talk of first dates: things like where do you live and what do you like to do.  She says people want more meaningful exchanges in the age of Internet dating.

BENEDICTE: Internet for me is a wonderful way to meet someone and an awful invention.  Because it’s like a factory and people are choosing like I want the same in blue with freckles.  Or I want a taller guy and for the same price I want more clever and more money.  After that it’s like a computer game you know with, where’s the person?  [FRENCH]

GENEVIEVE: Tonight’s speakers include a broadcaster with a show on spirituality, and an author who describes herself as a philosopher of relationships.  The discussion moves into a talk about the male and female in everyone.  Looking around the room there are more women than men at tonight’s event.  But that’s not always the case.  Benedicte Ann says she always gets more men than women when the talk is about ways to be more physically in touch with your partner.  Christophe, a musician, says he’s attending the Love Cafe for the first time.  He tried Internet dating for a while, but now prefers to meet people in person, even if it means there’ll be a much smaller pool to choose from.

CHRISTOPHE: [FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: I wanted to come to the Love Cafe.  Not exactly to meet someone, but to get some answers to some of my questions I have about love and about why I’m not meeting the person I’d like to meet.

GENEVIEVE: But this isn’t a singles only event.  Some couples are here as well.  And Arouna Lipschitz, one of the authors speaking tonight, some advice relating to what happens after love has found you.

AROUNA LIPSCHITZ: There was one thing I think people should reflect on is the confusion between love and loving.  Love is a state that falls on you.  But again loving is not being in love.  Loving is work.

[FRENCH]

GENEVIEVE: The enthusiasm of the question and answer session afterwards suggests the crowd is glad to have a forum to talk about things like this.  In our busy world it doesn’t happen that often.  But at the Love Cafe in Paris, it’s every week.  For The World, I’m Genevieve Oger in Paris.

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