Meat Loaf would do anything for love, and so would Tereza Burki – or, at least, she would spend £12,600 trying to find it.

That’s how much Burki, 47, paid a dating agency in 2013 to introduce her to the man of her dreams. But last week she got her money back, plus £500 as compensation for distress, when a judge ruled that the agency, Seventy Thirty, had misled her by promising to find a partner who would fulfil her requirements – although it had only about 100 candidates. A fishmonger can’t charge you for salmon if they haven’t caught any; now there’s a legal precedent that says a dating agency can’t charge you for a husband if there aren’t actually any fish in their sea.

“Her requirements were not modest,” the judge wrote in his ruling. But nonetheless, the agency did not deliver on its promise. Burki asked to meet a wealthy man who would offer sophistication and an interest in world travel, and who wanted to have children. The agency took her on as a client but didn’t mention how many candidates it had to choose from; 100 was hardly a surfeit when each was to be judged against Burki’s criteria – even before consideration of whether they watched the same things on Netflix.

Some might say that Burki’s disappointment was unjustified, that you can’t always get what you want. But those are probably people who have been in relationships for years.

For those of us who have spent a long time being single – I was, from my early 20s to mid-30s – Burki’s victory is a small, albeit highly privileged, strike on behalf of all of us who have ever been made to feel ashamed because we were looking for love.

While dating agencies such as Seventy Thirty exist to serve an especially rarefied echelon, single people are constantly targeted by businesses that at once remind them of their insecurities and promise to help them find true love. From deodorant sprays to plastic surgery, gym subscriptions to diet foods, products abound that suggest that there is something intrinsically unlovable about us that can be mended if you throw money at the problem.

Though the path between, say, a low-fat yogurt and an engagement ring may be slightly more convoluted than the connection between a professional matchmaker and a marriage, both employ narratives that offer single people – especially heterosexual women – the promise of a solution to one of life’s most unsolvable challenges. That women who date men are the particular targets of agencies with questionable ethics is not insignificant.

In a heteronormative culture that values committed, monogamous relationships above all else, heterosexual people are under pressure to be coupled, but also to make no effort to be coupled.

When single, we are told by people in the safety and comfort of longterm relationships that “you’ll meet someone when you least expect it”, and we’re also told that “you’re trying too hard” if we express our feelings of loneliness, or that we’d like to meet someone or ask someone else for help meeting someone – “all of my single friends are awful” is the inevitable response. We are led to believe that expressing a want for love – the most human of desires – makes us less lovable. But we are also reminded that our biological clocks are ticking: that the passage of time rapidly decreases our value in the romantic marketplace.

While single men who date women also receive similar useless advice – and many also know well the pain of unwanted solitude and disconnection – their timeline for commitment is perceived to be longer, no doubt in large part because of the realities of reproduction.

Burki’s top criterion for a new partner was for him to be someone who would have a child with her. For Seventy Thirty to have promised to provide this despite its low number of real candidates was far from ethical – not unlike the practices of private fertility clinics that provide endless “top-up” treatments and services, despite these treatments’ lack of proven efficacy.

Whether promising love in the form of partnerships or parenthood, both of these business strategies may have elements of well-meaning, but they’re ultimately rooted in capitalist enthusiasm to wring money from women’s pain and shame.

While few of us have Burki’s financial resources to go out and find what we’re looking for in a partner, that doesn’t mean she should be judged for making an effort. I met my husband on Tinder when I was 35, which was much cheaper. But if you’re not going to go for a formal arranged marriage, there are few definitive routes to love, marriage and family.

Who are any of us to judge another’s attempts? I would not recommend Tinder as a source of husbands any more than I would recommend marrying someone you meet on a bus, or your next-door neighbour, or someone who slides into your Twitter DMs. This is a hard truth to swallow when you’re lonely, and, what’s more, when you’re led to believe that any expressions of that loneliness will serve to make you less likely to solve that problem.

Yet greater honesty about how hard it is to find love, and greater openness about how much we want it, will not just help us to go about seeking relationships in better faith, but also undermine businesses that target the softest parts of our hearts to make a buck.