Forget Cupid. Find Archer Valentine

For all of life’s tribulations, there is someone to call. Should something go awry, the Yellow Pages point towards a surplus of doctors, lawyers, plastic surgeons — professionals for every ailment, real or imagined. 

But when the crisis at hand is being ghosted by someone you thought you knew after two weeks, or suspecting your partner of 10 years is engaging in an extramarital affair, there’s no guilt-free hotline. Unless you take a chance on that sketchy number stapled to a lamppost. 

On Quinpool Road, hidden between a yard-sale poster and a rip-away ad for a math tutor, Lover Troubles Got You Down? stares back at me in big blue handwriting. Underneath it, only a phone number, a fake-sounding name and a distinction you don’t typically see advertised. 

“Archer Valentine, private investigator,” it read. Like something straight out of a young adult novel, or a Wattpad username. Who does this guy think he is? The love doctor? 

So naturally, I went PI on the PI. 

It started with text messages that were, if nothing else, meticulous — full sentences, correct commas, speaking of himself in the third person, a signature sign-off that showed up at the bottom of every single message like a tick he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, shake. 

When we eventually moved to second base, the voice on the other end of the phone had a caricatured stoicism quality to it. A deliberately exaggerated impish type. I kept waiting for it to wear off. It didn’t. For 29 minutes, it held.  

Every so often he’d drop a hard “haha” — not a laugh exactly, more like a laugh-shaped object that never landed anywhere near a joke. He took long pauses when answering, the kind that makes you check if your thumb accidentally hit the hang-up button, and then he’d say something so plainly earnest that makes you feel a little ridiculous for ever having doubted him. 

I had my guard up, and rightfully so. He wouldn’t give an age. He wouldn’t confirm whether his business was legally registered.

“I’ve been in the private investigation business for a long time,” he says. When asked how long exactly, he vaguely replied, “since lovers have loved.” I asked why the number traced back to Winnipeg; he said, “I’ve moved around a lot.” 

All points considered, it begged the question: when you can’t trust the people you’re sleeping with, can you even trust the person you’ve hired to investigate them?

I needed to learn more. He explained himself like this: “My passion is for people to find their loves, whether that’s reigniting the flame of an existing one, or finding someone or something new.” 

A science so skillfully mastered, he claims, that even his cats are in love. 

The qualifications for such a profession? A degree in security and investigations (unverified) and a few years in law enforcement (also unverified). Though it shouldn’t be neglected, the most important qualification for the job, he argued, is love — for people and for people making connections.

Of his 60 to 100 clients — split evenly between men and women, university students to retirement-home folks — there are two types that come to him. The first is someone coupled up but unsatisfied with the life they lead; the other is someone single looking for love to fulfill themselves. Within those groups, cases of extramarital affairs, cheating, obsession and abuse are nothing he hasn’t heard before. 

To assess where his skills are required, Valentine conducts a consultation. There, he figures out exactly what his clients want. He describes his methods to them and, after a few weeks of investigation, presents them with a plan. 

Certain details, admittedly, are omitted — he wouldn’t be much of a private investigator if they weren’t. His relationships with his clients last anywhere from days to years. 

“My clients usually know what they’re getting into and work with me very interpersonally,” he says. “They are usually willing to allow me to look into the details of their life that they would otherwise obscure. They know that I’m the person who can see the parts of them that they don’t want others to see and guide them towards the best choices.”

The crux of it all: “My clients don’t know it,” he says, “but they’re the ones being investigated.” 

Valentine strives for the fulfillment he receives from every successful match. 

“It has guided me towards the mission that I pursue,” he says, “Which is not to confirm or deny anxiety, not to indulge lovers in their darkest whims, but to guide them towards their truest loves, towards their passions, towards their ideals, to what nourishes them.”

Marriages — three by his count — have materialized from his rapport-building, sleuthing, coaching and strategic nudging of clients’ attention away from the person they thought they loved and toward someone he suspected they might love more. 

Valentine explains there is no quick ChatGPT answer for matters of the heart. “Things are nuanced. Nothing is black and white.” His foolproof method for finding love, and maintaining it, comes down to the secret formula he packages as “the three G’s.” 

“Gentleness, so as to approach every situation that you’re in with a kind heart. Generosity, so that you can be selfless and see from others’ perspectives, and great manners, so as not to step on each other’s toes,” Valentine says. 

I suddenly felt a strange soft spot grow as Valentine explains the summer drought that has left him with no choice but to take his services to the lampposts. He says the devil is in the dating apps. 

“They show people only what they want to see rather than searching for their passion. It satisfies people’s need for instant gratification.” And so, technology brings us neatly back to the oldest trick in the book: trust. 

When I asked for a client list, things got a little more real. Valentine moved the conversation over to a private messaging app. The hand-off was facilitated by his secretary (yes, apparently he has one of those). Sure enough, there were actual clients on the other end. 

I was lucky enough to speak with one of them, whom, for the purposes of this article, I’ll call Sarah. 

“I was seeing this guy, we went on a date, and it was really good. Then the next day he ghosted me,” she says. “It was pretty rough; we had been talking for a long time.” 

A friend recommended Valentine. Sarah spoke with him later that day and has been meeting with him weekly ever since.

“He makes me feel better about day-to-day problems. It doesn’t have to be about a particular person. He’s kinda like a therapist in a way. He’s good at being objective about love problems …He’s helping me find myself right now. Next, we’ll move on to the love part,” she says. 

I had one last question for him. For someone so skilled in matchmaking, what keeps him single? 

The answer changed my mind. 

“Young people these days don’t understand that relational love isn’t the only kind that one needs to survive,” he says.

It wasn’t the deflection I’d expected. There was no quick line about being married to the job, no wink through the phone. Just a man who spends his life proving people are deserving of love admitting he’d rather sit with the question than rush an answer. 

“Take stock of your life,” he says. “Take a look at where love is coming from and whether it’s harmful or nourishing. Look at every detail. Not just within the relationship with this person but within your relationship to the world around you — to nature, to your home, to your family.”

Whatever Archer Valentine is running — a service, a philosophy, a very committed bit — it isn’t a con. A con man wants your money. Valentine wants your attention, and he’s willing to make you sit through the discomfort of actually paying it —to your relationship, your habits, and your excuses.

“And if you’re truly stuck,” he says, “just ask around for Archer Valentine.”