It's a Touchy Subject

Rant Alert: It has been a long time since I had PMS, but I feel like I've had a bad case all day. One of my favorite bloggers did a post on Being Lazy for the Lord. I love Jonathan's blog. Absolutely love it. Most days he pokes fun at things Christians do, say, and believe, and he manages to be hysterical and convicting at the same time. On Wednesdays, his posts are always serious.

Today Jon talked about people who want change in their lives, but aren't willing to do anything to help make that happen. It's not unlike the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about those open doors that God provides in our lives. He went into much more detail, though. He made some excellent points. I really liked what he had to say about Nehemiah.

For the  most part, the post was well received. Most of the negative comments - heck, maybe all of the negative comments - came from single women. I was one of them.

What did he say that was so offensive? Nothing I haven't heard before. That's why it offended me. And it wasn't just what he said...it was that I felt that it reinforced stereotypes about singles that are not helpful.

He was talking about singles who want to get married without putting any effort into meeting people. Yes, I know such people exist, but I also think they are the minority, and do not represent the rest of us. Some singles want to marry, some don't, and others of us have honestly reached a point where we have given this to God and said - and we mean it - "Not my will, but Thine." We manage to remain emotionally healthy despite our singleness - some might even say because of our singleness. We get out and are involved in our communities. We are not living in our parents' basements. Really, you would think Christians would understand this concept, but no, Christians can be the worst when it comes to accepting another's singleness.

Jon's comments reminded me of an Ann Landers answer to singleness - you know, "Get out and join a singles group at your church." That's not exactly the way Jon put it, but that's how I read it. And I know that's not what he intended. But the comments in his defense only served to validate why it bothered me.

I have run into this for years decades. "Decades?" you ask. Yes, decades. Everyone has advice that they want to offer to those of us who are single. Rarely is the advice solicited. Joining a singles group at church is typical of the advice that is given.

First of all, as I said in my comment to Jonathan's post, single people go to church for the same reasons married people do. They are looking for fellowship with other followers of Christ. They are looking for a deeper knowledge of the Bible. They are looking for a stronger relationship with Christ. They are looking for the same things that married people look for in a church group.

Yes, there will always be some who are at church looking for a mate, but  - particularly in groups over the age of 30 - they are the minority. (Which works out nicely because after 30, the ratio of men to women typically drops each and every year.) So could we please stop perpetuating the myth that singles go to church to get married?

Secondly, the responses directed to those of us who were offended echoed too much of the advice I've received over the years.

"You'll find someone when you quit looking." I don't even remember when I quit looking, but sometimes God's answer is just, "No." Sometimes it's "Not now." I don't need people who don't know me to tell me what God's plan is for my life. For that matter, I don't need people who do know me to tell me what God's plan is for me.

"I met my husband on eHarmony." That's nice. I'm thinking I could make money selling a t-shirt that says "I joined eHarmony and all I got was this lousy t-shirt and a boatload of gun-toting redneck matches." WE KNOW ABOUT eHARMONY. (Sorry, I didn't mean to shout.) I know a lot of people seem to think singles are living on another planet, but really, we have heard all about online dating.


"Get out and meet people." Excuse me, but most of us are not single because we're in hibernation. Again, it's assigning a stereotype to people that doesn't fit most of us. We are a "living, breathing, vital part of society," thank you very much.

And then there were a few suggestions that weren't posted, but ran through my head when I read the comments:

"You know, at this point in life, you just can't be picky." You're right. Set me up with that guy who you wouldn't set your own sister up with (for obvious reasons) because I can't be picky. I'm sorry, but when it comes to marriage, I think a little more discernment is in order, not less.

"You're not listening to God." This came from a married guy who was offering to "help me out" and the man wasn't offering to fix my faucet. He gave me the story about the guy sitting on his roof in a flood who turned away a life preserver, a boat, and a helicopter, saying he was trusting God to save him. Then the guy drowned. When he got to heaven, he asked God why he let him drown, and God replied, "I sent you a dingy, a lifeguard, and a helicopter and you refused them. What else could I do?"

Trust me. I know God's voice. And in this case, God told me to tell that guy to take a hike.

"God doesn't have a 'right person' for you. You just have to find 'someone' and make it work." The implication here is that just anyone will do...and yet we wonder why the divorce rate is so high. Again, I have to go back to that discernment thing. I understand that there is no perfect person but at the same time, you can't just find anybody and expect to make a marriage work. I once heard a pastor of a church I visited preach a sermon about how you just have to find someone and make the best of it. I later learned that he was cheating on his wife. Interesting how much of the bad advice seems to come from people who aren't happy in their own marriages.

There has been other bad advice over the years...do "something" with your hair, wear contacts, pretend to be someone you're not, you spend too much time with singles (?)....the list goes on.

Really, I love Jon's "Serious Wednesday" posts, but marriage advice for singles is a bit of a touchy subject.

eHarmony, eSchmarmony: The Conclusion

After trying researching eHarmony for several months and receiving an inordinate number of matches that filled my mind with images of Ernest T. Bass, I decided I was done.

My first clue that eHarmony was willing to play rough with the computer mouse came when I had a customer service question. One employee responded to my question, and then went on to add, "Margaret, I'd also like to take this opportunity to make a recommendation that I feel would improve your eHarmony experience. I see that you don't have a great photo posted. Please remember you are allowed to use the space provided to post up to 12 photos, allowing your matches to see the various aspects of your personality and interests."

My photo wasn't great? Does this clown know how long it took to come up with that photo, which I actually thought was pretty good? After all, most middle-aged single women don't have hundreds of pictures of themselves from which to choose.

I considered typing, “Thanks for your concern, but that’s what I look like.” Instead I thanked him for looking into my question and ignored the insult.

The next day, a second customer service rep emailed me with further information and then went on to add, "Margaret with your active account, I would like to take the time and encourage you to post more photos since it is part of a successful eHarmony experience. Posting as many photos as possible shows that you are fully engaged in the eHarmony process and opens up conversation by allowing your matches to see your personality."

What is with these people? This time, I was pretty irritated. Post more pictures? Are they kidding me? Good grief, it took forever to come up with one picture. And what was with the same suggestions coming from both customer service reps? Gee, there seemed to be a pattern...

I’m not a trained professional, but I'm starting to think this obsession with my picture is a form of emotional abuse. Blame the unphotogenic soul who can't get a dozen decent pictures. I ignored the advice, and yet I still continued to receive plenty of requests to communicate...of course mostly from the gun lobby I told you about in my second post on this topic.

As I told you in my last post, I did eventually communicate with one match, and when that match was closed, decided to take my profile down. That was when eHarmony started playing hardball. As you close your account, you are taken through a progression of screens, each asking you if you’re sure and giving you a list of reasons why you are making the BIGGEST MISTAKE OF YOUR LIFE!!! They tell you that it takes time...it often takes people a year or more to find the right match. Of course it does. eHarmony couldn't stay in business if people found the right match in the first week.

But my favorite ploy to try to keep me hooked was this one:

I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of that statement...only 1 in 4 American marriages is actually happy? Really? That doesn't exactly make marriage seem that appealing, does it?

And with that, I clicked one final time, and closed my account for good.

Don't get me wrong. I know that some people really do meet the "love of their life" online. Still others have met "good enough for now" online. But it's not for everyone. For me, a sense of humor is huge, and that's almost impossible to get across in an online profile because it can come off as either snarky or stupid. Spirituality is easier to fake online than in person, as is character. No, my brief experience with eHarmony did nothing to sell me on the idea of online dating.

Besides, if God does have a husband for me - and I have long since come to accept that may not be in God's plan for my life - God knows where to find me. He also knows how to speak to me in a way that will lead me to recognize His voice. That's way better than anything eHarmony can promise.

What’s more, God is never going to say, “Hey, Margaret, I noticed your picture’s not great.”

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” ~ Psalm 20:7

eHarmony, eSchmarmony: Pt. 3

Over the last couple of posts, I’ve been telling you about my brief, and yet painfully too long, association with eHarmony.

Occasionally someone would send a request to communicate. eHarmony has a number of levels of communication. Once a match decides they’re interested, they can send icebreaker questions. This is where the eHarmony experience begins to break down. You have to pay in order to see the questions, but you don’t know if your match is a paying member or not. So the guys who sent the request didn’t know that I was just browsing, so to speak. (I prefer to think of it as blog research. That's right, I'm sticking to that story.)

It was amazing how quickly some lost patience. One guy closed the match because I didn’t respond to his communication request within the first 48 hours. Not only was I not a paying member, I often went a week or two without checking the email account that was linked to eHarmony. I thought his impatience was a little extreme. I feel sorry for any woman who jumped on that match.

I did eventually reach the communication stage with one guy. He patiently waited 2 weeks after sending the first request to communicate before sending a “nudge”. (Apparently that other guy who was annoyed after only 2 days wasn't aware of the whole nudge thing.) I looked at the patient guy's profile and didn't see any of sign of the firearm fetish that seemed to plague the vast majority of my matches. eHarmony was running a special at the time, so I decided it wouldn’t kill me to go for the 3-month trial. So it was only after I became a paying member who could enter the guided communication phase that I learned that the "patient" guy's wife had left him about 30 seconds before he decided to join eHarmony. YIKES! (BTW, I think someone owes me $60 for the 3 months for which I had to sign up in order to get that piece of information.)

This is another eHarmony flaw. The advertising invites people to join to find the “love of their life.” Very often, the people who are most likely to join are doing so because they have been hurt…very recently. And eHarmony doesn’t tell those who are signing up that a couple of months isn’t long enough to get over the end of a marriage that lasted for decades. Nor are there any red flags for their matches, which would have been nice.

Really, eHarmony should work out progressive warnings for people who are looking for relationships too soon, kind of like the Homeland Security Advisories. They could start with low-key warnings, and work their way up to Code Red. Something like this could work:

 

 

Oh my, I seem to have digressed. Back to that one guy I with whom I actually communicated. We sent brief messages back a few times, progressing from guided to open communication (but never exchanging email addresses). It was in the open communication phase that I learned how recently his wife had left.

Then he stopped communicating, and after a few weeks, he closed the match with a canned message, “There’s too much going on in my life right now.”

No kidding.

That was when I decided to take my profile down. What happens when you try to close your account? That's in my next post...

eHarmony, eSchmarmony: Pt. 2

eHarmony is supposed to be better than a blind date because they match you on a scientific basis. "Supposed to be" is the operative phrase here. I'm not convinced that's the case.

Here’s how it works. After you answer your profile questions, you select things that matter to you, such as distance, age, education, etc. and then you determine how much each one matters. For instance, you might want to limit your search to within 50 miles of your home, but you can decide if that matters a lot or just a little. If you say it matters a lot, then they will only deliver matches within that 50-mile range. If you say it matters a little, then eHarmony might give you a match who lives 200 miles away.

As far as matching to your profile questions, eHarmony also provides different levels of matching. Some matches are highly compatible, others are flexible. Apparently flexible is the online equivalent of a friend fixing you up with someone because you’re the only two single people they know. If my experience is any indication, the highly compatible matches are generally only a notch or two above that.

If you’re a paying member, then when matches are delivered, you see their picture(s), and you can communicate with them. You’ll also see what non-paying members see, answers to a few of the profile questions completed by your match, including things like leisure activities, the things you can’t live without, and something about the most influential person in your life.

One of the first matches rejected me because he “didn’t feel the chemistry.” I don't know if he was a paying member who saw my picture, or if he might have based that entirely on the smattering of information that shows up regardless of whether you pay or not. Since he was 48 it was June, and I figured he was desperately searching for someone he deemed hot enough to show up with for his high school reunion so it didn't bother me...too much. By the way, "Good luck with that, fella."

I was just as shallow. I rejected others just because I didn’t want them cluttering up my inbox. You have to close enough matches in order for eHarmony to provide new ones, although there are those who say that because women greatly outnumber men on the site, men continually receive new matches while women can go weeks without receiving any at all.

Now to digress just a second, in my last post, I told you I went to high school with a girl who married a guy she met on eHarmony. They are reportedly very happy. I also went to high school with a girl whose younger sister tried eHarmony. I understand that she met a few guys on the site…all of whom she characterized as craaaaaaaazy.

Back to my own eHarmony matches. I live in what is known as a red state, some go so far as to call it the reddest of the red states. I prefer to think it's the conservative nature of so many men in this part of the country and not something in my personality profile, but the vast majority of my matches tended to have a preoccupation with guns. One of them even listed FIREARMS (if it wasn’t in all caps, it might as well have been) at the very top of the list of things that he can’t live without. Now this isn’t a Second Amendment issue here. It’s a dating profile, people. I have to be a little concerned by this obsession about guns from guys on an online dating site – one I might add where my friend’s little sister met nothing but men who were craaaaaaaazy. If there's a chance you might not be as (reasonably) sane as I am, I would prefer that you not come with a weapons cache. I closed all of those firearm-related matches without batting an eye.

There were other activities that mystified me. They say that past college, men rarely form close friendships with other men. That would appear to be true. There must be a huge unmet need for bromance matching, because many of the men appeared to be looking for someone to fill the role of guyfriend more than girlfriend. They want someone with whom they can go hunting, fishing, and hiking. I realize there are women who like those things, but I’m not one of them. Absolutely nothing in the painfully long questionnaire would indicate that I’m that kind of woman. For Pete’s sake, how put off would men be if I said I was looking for some guy to go with me to a tea room or to the nail salon?

Then there were the guys who described what they were looking for in a woman solely by her appearance. I’d like to thank each of those men for making it so easy for me to close their matches.

On the plus side, there were a number of men looking for match in their own age range. I found that very encouraging because too often we think that most men are looking for much younger women. eHarmony convinced me that is not (at least not necessarily) the case.

On the negative side, the vast majority of the matches I received left me humming the theme from Deliverance. Eeeeewwwwww.

Excuse me, but I need to go take a shower now. There will be more on my eHarmony experience next week.

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.

The Trials and Tribulations of eHarmony

Years ago, I thought I'd try eHarmony to see if there was anything to it. I guess I filled out the profile - it's been so long that I don't really remember. I do remember getting stumped on the user name. Yep, that was the sticking point for me.

I didn't want anything that sounded too frumpy or too Church Lady.


On the other hand, I didn't want anything that sounded too, um, friendly.



I didn't want anything misleading, like CubsFan because I don't care about sports, and that would clearly be false advertising.

BookWorm would likewise be bad on so many levels. First, it would imply that I read a lot and while I have stacks of books I intend to get to - someday - I never seem to get around to reading them. And secondly, and perhaps most importantly, we're back to frumpy Church Lady - boring.

So today I decided to go back to eHarmony and face the challenge of coming up with a user name head-on.

Turns out they don't go with a user name anymore. It's just your first name.

Damn.