Beyond the Profile: The Fun, the Hard, and the Important Conversations
One thing I see quite often is people putting a lot of pressure on themselves when they are reading profiles. They are trying to figure out: Is this the right person? The right family? The right match?
That is completely understandable. A profile is important. It gives you a glimpse into someone’s life, their values, their hopes, and what brought them to surrogacy in the first place. But one thing I have learned over the years is that a profile is really just the beginning.
The real relationship starts when the conversation starts.
Sometimes people become so focused on asking all the “right” questions that they forget to get to know the actual person sitting on the other side of the screen. Other times, everyone is getting along so well and finding so many things in common that some of the harder conversations get pushed aside.
I think the best match conversations have room for both.
There should absolutely be room for the fun stuff. What do you like to do? What makes you laugh? What does a normal Sunday look like at your house? Are you someone who loves to travel or someone who would happily stay home in your pyjamas all weekend?
Those conversations may not seem nearly as important as some of the bigger surrogacy questions, but I think they matter. A surrogacy relationship is going to include contracts, appointments, medical decisions and a lot of logistics, but there are real people underneath all of that. Getting to know each other as people is part of figuring out whether you actually feel comfortable together.
And then there are the conversations that are a little harder.
Communication expectations. Privacy. How involved everyone hopes to be during the pregnancy. Views around selective reduction and termination. Birth expectations. What everyone imagines the relationship might look like after the baby arrives.
Those are not necessarily the fun things to talk about on a first call, but they are important. Not because everyone needs to have identical answers, but because everyone deserves clarity before deciding to move forward together.
There may also be things that were not covered in the profile that matter to you personally. Those are the things worth bringing into the conversation. A profile can only tell you so much, and nobody should feel as though they need to make a decision based solely on what fits onto a few pages.
One thing I always encourage people to remember is that a match call is not supposed to feel like a job interview.
You do not need to race through a checklist of twenty questions while the other person waits for their turn to answer. Ask the things that matter, absolutely, but let the conversation wander a little too. Ask a follow-up because something they said made you curious. Laugh about something completely unrelated to surrogacy. Tell a story. Let there be an awkward pause if there is one.
You are not trying to pass or fail each other.
You are trying to figure out how it feels to talk to one another.
Do you feel comfortable asking questions? Can you be honest when your opinions are different? Does the conversation feel reasonably easy? Can you imagine having a harder conversation with this person six months from now if you needed to?
Sometimes there is an immediate connection. Sometimes it takes a little longer to warm up. Neither one automatically tells you whether a match will become a wonderful surrogacy relationship.
The profile opens the door.
The conversation is where you start to discover who is actually standing on the other side of it.
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