The idea of substitutes replacing roles in everyday life is not yet widely established in Germany. However, there is a need for it, so this is about to change.

The answer to this question is clear: Yes, there is a need for substitutes in everyday roles!

It may not immediately seem easy to let a previously unknown person immerse into one’s own life, even in intimate roles such as that of a parent or good friend. Normally, these are the people with whom you have built up a stable basis of trust over many years and the associated ups and downs. The legitimate question arises whether this can be imitated from nowhere and without a shared history.

However, the psychology behind the scheme is clear: Substitutes in certain roles can contribute significantly to personal development and unfolding (Ruppert, 2007). More and more people are opening up to this idea, even though we are far from the situation in Japan, the birthplace of rental services for family, friends and business partners. Nevertheless, it is, among other things, the same structural social characteristics of modernity that explain the need for such services: Stereotypical gender roles as well as discrimination against women in everyday life and at work, fast pace and superficiality as well as complex living conditions with dense schedules and little capacity for fundamental relationship management.

“More than half of all single parents have no new partner at least until the child reaches the age of majority. The mere presence of a partner would help them find a new home. If you can’t organize a guy who walks around nodding in rooms during the inspection, in the worst case (which is very often) you end up in social hotspots. Again and again the man. He helps, even if only by standing next to you silently.” (Michèle Lötzner: Single, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine)

Support according to individual needs in agency form is a solution that is already being specifically sought. People want to realize their life and themselves, to enliven their everyday life through inspiring personalities and thus reinvent themselves.

“If I were faced with the shards of my marriage again, I would hire someone to shout out to me all day long what a lovable person I am.” (translation from Jan Fleischhauer: Alles ist besser als noch ein Tag mit dir. Über die Liebe, ihr Ende und das Leben danach.)

There is therefore a need for substitutes in everyday roles. The Changemate Agency works on a professional basis and believes in the realisation of the individual through collective support.

Get in touch with us and stop asking yourself the question of what-if! Book your ideal mother, an attentive friend or a serious companion for your new start today!

Sources:
Ruppert, F. (2007). Seelische Spaltung und innere Heilung: traumatische Erfahrungen integrieren. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Michèle Lötzner: Allein stehend, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Issue 28/2020, 09.7.2020
Fleischhauer, J. (2017). Alles ist besser als noch ein Tag mit dir: Über die Liebe, ihr Ende und das Leben danach. München: Albrecht Knaus Verlag.