eHarmony, eSchmarmony: Pt. 1

Despite the fact that I am the Scrooge of online dating sites, I gave eHarmony a month more than NBC gave Conan. Unlike Conan, I didn’t come out of the deal with a multi-million dollar settlement. I did, however, come out of it with a handful of posts for my blog, so all was not lost.

For years, well-meaning friends and family have asked me the question no one should ever ask a single, “Why don’t you try eHarmony?”

Believe me, single people are aware that eHarmony exists, although if I hadn’t gone to high school with a girl who really did marry a guy she met on eHarmony, I’d be convinced that all the hype is just an urban myth. I still think it’s mostly a myth.

I actually attended a conference led by Neil Clark Warren shortly before he launched the eHarmony site. I have an autographed book to prove it. I even read the book. And shortly after eHarmony began, I considered trying it. I never made it to the personality profile though, because I couldn’t get past the user name.

So shortly after I began this blog and wrote about my user name conundrum, I decided to go back and give eHarmony a try for a couple of reasons. The first was purely blog research, as I thought I might get a post or two out of it. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!) Second, I had given enough dirty looks to the people who asked me if I had ever tried eHarmony to feel compelled to prove I could be open-minded enough to take a stab at it. (Althought now that I've taken the stab, my new answer will be, "Stick a fork in me, I'm done.")

As I told you in one of my first posts at Single and Sane, the user name had apparently long since been eliminated so I was able to progress directly to the personality profile questions. The very extensive profile questions, at that. Once I had finished the profile section, I wished I had timed it. Some say it takes about 20 minutes, while others say it takes a couple of hours to complete. I can tell you it’s definitely longer than 20 minutes.

There’s some controversy about the personality profile, because evidently you can flunk it. I had always assumed that it was like a lot of personality profiles, and that it would throw out the results if you gave contradictory answers to the essentially the same questions with different wording. However many who have been rejected after taking the inordinate amount of time required to complete it, think it’s a religious issue. They contend that if you choose anything other than Christianity as your religion, eHarmony will reject you.*

Either way, I kind of think those who are rejected by eHarmony get the better deal. I’ll tell you more in my next couple of posts.


*Note added April 1, 2010:  There is an unofficial eHarmony blog with some answers to the rejection question - no mention of religion. Check it out here.