Theirs is a unique story of teaching from the dept of experience. Having travelled rough parts as youths before finally finding love, both Chiddie and Ben Anyasodo took the bold step to venture into matchmaking to help others going through same rough paths find love. They share their stories with Yetunde Oladeinde.
If you have travelled emotional corridor of broken hearts, then you must know that rejection really hurts. It is worse when it is a tale of multiple rejections. That, interestingly, captures the world of Chiddie and Ben Anyasodo. Just when they both thought it was time for the emotional goalkeeper to blow his final whistle, cupid’s arrow landed in their direction and ever since it has been a never ending story of love.
Apart from healing their personal wounds and scars, both have acquired love skills in doses, which they now dole out to abandoned and rejected hearts through a matchmaking platform known as Chotayah.
Tracing her journey into matchmaking as a vocation, Chiddie said, “I saw my mom find wives for my uncles and I found it fascinating. I also set up friends and family for fun”.
Growing up in Owerri as the first child and only daughter in the family was awesome. “I have three younger brothers. I have always been very independent, ambitious and strong-willed since I was a child. I was also a voracious reader. I was called a tomboy. I grew up shielded by my parents”.
And then she went off to university to studied Electrical Engineering.
“What really prepared me for this was when I was in my early 20’s when I started dating. I had so many bad experiences and I had no one to really guide me. Such topics were a taboo in my house. My mom was very prim and proper and you couldn’t discuss boys and love. If a man admired you, he was expected to come and meet my parents and ask for my hand in marriage. The times I tried to tell her I was in a relationship, she got very upset, told me it was disgraceful and sinful”.
The irony, she recalls, was that the same mom who didn’t think she should be in the same room with a man, was the one who went to church and prayer houses, sowing seeds and praying for her to get married.
Rejection, she says, was a phase she passed through with lessons learnt. But she was not alone! The heart that was going to melt into hers had also been battered a number of times.
“Both hubby and I had challenges finding the right person. There were so many myths about love and relationships which we practised then separately but which were all wrong. On my side, my dating experience was quite sad and filled with heartbreaks after heartbreaks. My genotype was an issue. And for some people, the fact that my mom died of cancer scared them away. I got rejected many times with excuses like – you earn too much – a woman shouldn’t earn more than a man. You are too boyish, too ambitious. Your job exposes you and makes you travel too much and you won’t make a good wife. A successful woman will never respect a man”.
Finding love
At a point, Chiddie recalled being told by some pastors and relatives that she had a spiritual problem. “You can imagine. After praying so much and the cycle kept
repeating, I decided to try alternative methods. First I tried to use some Western dating sites like E-harmony and Match.com; but they always rejected my application as I was Nigerian. I also tried to hire a matchmaker in the USA but she didn’t work with people outside the USA. So I decided to go on my own. That experience made me start reading and exploring what makes relationships work. I also got a
relationship coach, started studying serial men and women who always seemed to have lots of attention from their love interests. I took everything I learnt and crafted my own strategy to find my man. It took me about 8 to 9 months to find my man and no more heart breaks.”
It was a wonderful turning point and all her emotional dreams and desires fell in the right paths. “My friends who knew about all my negative experiences started using the same formula and it worked for them. And every day, I see so many people like me going through the same challenges that I went through. Successful, high flying people who have succeeded everywhere else but seem unable to succeed in the love department”.
Chiddie was therefore inspired to perfect her skills in the art of matchmaking. She went to study Matchmaking in UK and later Relationship Coaching in New York.
“My husband is a Behavioural Change Expert and Therapist. We decided to join our passion and expertise to give birth to Chotayah”.
Though an Engineer, Entrepreneurship runs in her family. She links her entrepreneurial skills to her grandfather, who was a successful businessman. “He sold palm oil to the Portuguese and imported canons, tea sets and textiles. My grand ma was a textile wholesaler in Onitsha. She also came from a family of business men and women. My dad is a doctor who owns his own hospital. I grew up seeing all these and hearing their stories; I guess that influenced me. I started my first business in SS1 (at 14yr) selling earrings to my classmates in the boarding house. I just did it for fun to see my money multiply”.
The journey into the art of matchmaking, she informed, has been very interesting. “It’s been a roller-coaster. Some days are so exciting and beautiful; some days are very challenging. Just like any new business, getting the right process in place can be quite daunting, as we are dealing with people’s lives. It’s not like a dating site where you just turn on your software and let people do their thing. There is a strong element of personal responsibility and involvement that we put into it. This is very consuming. But then, this is why I love matchmaking. I enjoy challenges and Chotayah is giving it to me in full doses”.
Next, she talks about her matchmaking process.
“We use a scientific process: psychology and tech. We always put into consideration traditional African cultures, which is unique to everyone that comes to us. As you know, African culture is rich and diverse. Finally, we use our intuition”.
So when a client contacts them, searching for a partner or spouse; the first step, according to Chiddie, is to have a 1- 2-hour session with him to know his relationship history and background, and come up with the best strategy that will give him result. “It’s also in this session that we figure out if he is a good fit for us. We’re not able to help everyone unfortunately. We do a bit of background checks and if everything comes out fine, we then take him on as a client”.
Their matchmaking, she explained always goes with Relationship Coaching and Behavioural Therapy.
“We first work on him/her as a person, to find out what is stopping them from finding love. Is it just that he is too busy? Not positioned properly? Or is it something from the inside? We remove those blockers and help him develop the unique personal plan for him/her. …And then we go searching. As we search, we do a lot of data analysis, using proven scientific methods combined with emotional intelligence to see if they are a match. We then go through every match with our client till we both agree on ‘The ONE’. We coach them, guide and provide emotional support while dating and sometimes till they get married”.
Some still come back after marriage, and Chiddie says they keep helping them navigate early married life.
“The most important part is the transformative process, which we do in the beginning – the healing, coaching strategies that we deploy to make them the best version of themselves. Usually, after this process, many of our clients start getting proposals without our influence. For some clients, we only offer the Transformative Coaching, Healing Experience, as this is very effective; and for some, it’s just the Holistic Image maker. It all depends on the client’s budget, how busy he or she is and how deeply he wants us to be involved.”
Who needs a matchmaker?
“Matchmaking is not for everyone. The most common being that they are very busy; they are highly selective and have certain criteria they are not able to find ordinarily around them. And then they love their privacy. Many of our clients do not even have a social media account. Some are highly placed people in the society or very busy highflying professionals who want to protect their confidentiality. They come to us because they need an expert to handle their dating life. They are the sort of people who will hire a personal trainer, personal stylist and personal chef. They always want bespoke and personalised services with someone they can trust to deliver excellence while being extremely discrete. Some have tried so many times to find love, gotten disappointed several times and then decided to use us”.
One thing that thrills and amazes Chiddie is the diversity of her clients. “We have people from 28 to 70+ years old.
Love and Infatuation
A major challenge encountered on the job, she says, is trying to find out if a person is being honest and truthful about whom they claim to be.
“My biggest passion, apart from matchmaking, is helping people. I am big on pushing people into opportunities that will improve their lives – as a way of giving back to society. My greatest joy has been helping people who felt their case was hopeless find happiness. I love seeing people transform and become better versions of themselves.
“Do people really understand the meaning of true love? I think many people confuse infatuation with love. Infatuation usually happens earlier on in the relationship, and is driven by strong emotions. That period when you have all those hormones running through your head and colouring everything you see about the other person. You have those intense feelings, the butterflies, you only want to be with them 24/7, neglecting every other thing in your life, and they can do no wrong… The good thing is that infatuation doesn’t last and if you are patient, the hormones will stabilise, and you can then see if you truly love this person and they love you back, which is True Love”.
Chiddie is of the opinion that emotions are not enough to keep a relationship for the long term.
“On the other hand, True Love is more stable, more like deep friendship -where you have seen each other’s negative and positive sides and truly decide to stay together in mutual respect and deep admiration of each other. True love always has good intentions, is trusting, honest, accessible, responsive, loyal, consistent, and always growing.
We have a passion for helping others –Ben
Ben takes over at this point. Like Chiddie, his childhood also prepared him for the choices he made in life.
“As a child, I always wondered what it is that drives people to behave the way they did. My main curiosity was with adults – because many times, I simply saw a child in a big body and it confused me, and intrigued me at the same time.”
Luckily, his mother had education psychology books in the shelf, which he kept flipping through from time to time .
“Later on in my life, I started martial arts, which further reinforced the idea of observing others. This also heightened my interest even more because winning an opponent depended on how much you can read them and how quickly. Growing up was full of adventure – I had interest in many things and my dad would always encourage me with anything I was interested in. I found myself dabbling into all sorts – languages, classical music, arts, martial arts, cooking/baking…. Each school holiday, I always had one new thing I was interested in learning”.
Today, he is a behavioural change life coach and hypno-psychotherapist.
“First, the results I saw in myself when I went through my own change process made me realise how much more of a beautiful world we would have when it is filled with more wholesome people. I have a passion for helping people become better versions of themselves; so this was a no-brainer for me”.
Running the matchmaking platform with his wife gives him great fulfilment and he talks about the inspiration.
“Both my wife and I have a passion for helping people. We also got fed up with some of the myths and wrong ideas people have about relationships. We both believe that relationship is more intentional than incidental. We realise that people haven’t really been taught how to be their authentic selves in a relationship. We have a beautiful marriage and we know that’s not because we are special but because we put the effort first in working on our individual mindsets. We therefore came up with a way of helping people do the same, because we believe everyone deserves the relationship they desire. What magic it is when two wholesome people get together.”
Next you want to know if childhood trauma and emotional imbalance mitigate against a person’s chance of finding true love.
Ben responds: “Definitely! Trauma is defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. In order for someone to be traumatised, they have to fear for their life or the life of someone else. ‘Child trauma’ events often happen between 0-18 years of age. These trauma events can be big events or lots of smaller events. So from witnessing the brutal murder of a loved one, to living in a home where there is constant yelling. In adulthood, it impacts experiences and relationships – usually experienced as feelings of shame, guilt, feeling disconnected, being unable to relate to other people etc. In emotionally healthy, non-stressful situations, our bodies stay in a social engagement state, or a happy, normal, non-freak-out state. In this state, we are capable of a connected interaction with another person. But when stress occurs, there is an initial freeze as the brain prepares to fight or flee. However, when the threatening situation takes over and there is no fighting or fleeing from it, our parasympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive and we shut down”.
This happens because our only goal as a species is to stay alive. “Therefore, your brain/your nervous system is designed and wired to keep you alive, even if it means shutting you down from feeling anything, because our social engagement system has to be sure that it is safe enough for us to engage in any situation, otherwise it stops that engagement. Emotionally, it feels like dissociation, numbness, dizziness, hopelessness, shame, a sense of feeling trapped, out of body, disconnected from the world”.
Many times, people spend time looking for who would fill the void created by trauma. Ben explains some of the side effects for this.
“This is why people end up focusing on how they want to change each other in a relationship, rather than what needs to change in them first. We teach our clients to ask themselves the question, ‘who do I need to become to have the experience I desire in this relationship?’ because change starts inside first.
“Unfortunately, many people haven’t been taught how to manage their own emotions, and so they go into a relationship expecting the other person to change themselves to fit into their own emotional mess. This means, many people self-sabotage in finding true love. Many just settle or go with someone just to impress their parents or friends”.
As a psychotherapist, he goes on to make some recommendations for persons who just got out of a bad relationship or finding it hard to heal and move on: “I would recommend therapy work for them. If they are finding it hard to heal, it means there’s a part of them that is holding onto some beliefs about the entire thing. I would ask them to consider the following question: “what must I be believing about myself for me to feel the way I’m currently feeling?” That’s a starting point that would take them inwards to see what they really are thinking about themselves.
Our marriage, built on authenticity and commitment
Happily, Ben talks about life being married to a super amazing woman like Chiddie, and the secret of their healthy marriage.
” Well I’d say authenticity, commitment and the willingness to look inwards. Prioritise your own inner healing and you’d show up better in your relationship. Also, marriage is about commitment! It is a contract, which means there are terms and conditions i.e. terms of engagement, which both of you must create and commit to. Marriage is also about vulnerability – it should be that place where you can show your vulnerability without the fear of being judged, rejected or criticised. Which means you must be willing to provide the same level of acceptance and safety for your spouse. One shouldn’t have to wear a mask or pretend to be a particular persona in marriage – no! in a healthy marriage, you have no need to be who you are not”.
