By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — As the song goes, birds do it. Bees do it. Even goldfish in the privacy of their bowls do it.
But let's face it, if Charlize Theron is the woman of your dreams, you're not going to be doing much of anything.

The main reason people's love lives are stuck in neutral is that they harbor idealized images of who would make a suitable companion, says professional matchmaker John Holt. They measure beauty with Hollywood yardsticks and hold misguided beliefs in fairytale endings, if not fairytale beginnings. They set the bar too high and refuse to budge.
Bottom line? No huggy, no kissy, and definitely no wedding ring.
“People are their own impediment to falling in love. They're their own worst enemies,” says Holt. “They sabotage themselves daily.”
An amiable bear of a man with an uncanny resemblance to celebrity relationship guru Dr. Phil McGraw, Holt runs Ti-State Dating Service from his home in rural Pascoag. The company tag line sums up his approach to curing the perennially lovelorn: “Realistic Matchmaking.”
If you're trying to draw that special someone into your orbit, says Holt, stop shooting for the stars.
Think seriously about what you bring to the table and be willing to set goals that are more down to earth than you're used to.
Holt, 51, has been a matchmaker for two decades and says a fifth of all his clients eventually tie the knot. He says his biggest challenge is getting people who are a good match to take each other seriously as potential mates. Too many want to walk away too fast.
But Holt, who hosts a weekly talk radio program on WNRI on the subject of romance, is a minority two times over in the matchmaking business. For one thing, he's a man working in a tradition dominated by women. For another, he isn't running a computer dating service.
The only filter who decides who's a potential fit for whom at Ti-State is Holt, not some cookie-cutter software that's sizing up multiple “dimensions of compatibility,” as one popular ad professes.
The resurgence of the personal matchmaker is actually a trend in the business, according to Holt, who says the fascination with computer dating peaked out around 2005. Many singles have learned the hard way that computers make it too easy to convey an inflated image of oneself or conceal an unsavory background to raise one's stock in the love market.
Holt interviews every client in person to get a handle on their likes and dislikes, income level, religious upbringing. A background check is standard operating procedure. The only time they're unwarranted – and this is what makes the personal interview so vital, says Holt – is when there is something so obviously weird about a wannabe client there's no way he or she is getting in the dating pool, with or without the security scan.
Folks who want to play the dating game come in every stripe. Most of his clients are in their 30s and 40s, but he has plenty in their 50s and 60s and even one woman who is 85. Many are rather well-to-do professionals, but some are more middle-class and a few are  blue-collar. The women are overwhelmingly hairdressers, teachers and nurses; the men, solution-oriented, non-nonsense engineers and computer scientists. Practically everyone has been through at least one divorce.
But one thing he's learned from dealing with people on the hunt for a love connection is that his college minor in psychology isn't going to waste.
“Abnormal psychology comes in handy, I hate to say that,” Holt says half-jokingly.

HOLT SAYS some of the reasons men and women have so much trouble hooking up are hard-wired into their biology. A woman may come to the table with myriad positives that make her a great catch, but for many men none is as important as the physical package.
“Slim is in,” says Holt. “In fact, emaciated is in right now. I've never seen anything like it.”
But men haven't cornered the market on shallow. Holt says he's had women tell him flat out they're looking for “a guy like George Clooney. There are people who believe they're going to get that.”
In general,  Holt says women are choosier and more practical than men when it comes to picking a mate, and they're pushovers for sweet talk and courtesy. Citing the case of the most sought-after male in his client pool – he's had 137 dates and two long-term relationships since he's been with Tri-State –  Holt says, “Mr. Charming and Mr. Charisma does it every time.”
Unlike women, men don't necessarily need much prodding to jump in once they see something they like, irrespective of what the future may hold, says Holt. Women, on the other hand, are long-range planners. For them, romance is often tied up with a desire for domestic stability and financial security.
Indeed, Holt blames the recession for shifting the gender mix of his client base, which used to be mostly men. Holt says that “right now there are more women out there than ever before, when the economy became difficult. Women think in practical terms.”
In some ways, Mother Nature seems to have invented the gender dichotomy as a sort of absurd “zero sum game” in which the parties are doomed to eternally mutual exile, says Holt.  Individuals are often incapable of evaluating their prospects for getting along in a committed relationship.
Holt says he succeeds at bringing people together by convincing them that compromise is good and getting them to think rationally about the other's pluses instead of obsessing over the negatives.
“I establish a basis for how to communicate with these people, and they learn from the process,” he says.
Fees range from about $275 to $800 at Tri-State depending on how much of the legwork Holt has to do to find them a match. The lower fee might cover an informal gathering at a restaurant where three men and three women meet for the first time just to feel each other out. Everyone in the group is free to date anyone else as often, or as little, as they like in the future.
But Holt also arranges “speed dating” sessions where clients can rub elbows with five to 10 prospects in a matter of minutes. His costliest fees are set aside for highly individualized missions he likens to the work of corporate headhunters in search of executive talent.
A 1982 alumnus of Bridgewater State University, Holt graduated with a degree in human services and worked for many years with special needs children. He was field director of the Special Olympics in New York, where he and his wife, Karen, a nurse, lived for a time.
But Holt says he long toyed with the idea of starting a matchmaking company because he met his wife through a dating service. He got his chance to give it a whirl in 1990 when Karen  got a new job in surgical robotics in Rhode Island and the couple moved here. Holt says he promised himself he would disband the company if it did not take off after an initial investment of $2,500.
Not only did the company take off, it thrived. Today Holt has nearly 1,200 active clients, as well as former clients who were with him for years before they ended up meeting their other half.
“One guy got married recently and he was with me for six years,” said Holt. “He was very patient. One thing he said he always liked about working with me was I didn't bother him with incompatible matches.”