Since when did statistics replace biology?
Written: Jun 01 '07 (Updated Jun 03 '07)
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I joined eHarmony a few years ago after seeing one of their ads on TV and have kept coming back to it ever since. I've had good and not-so-good experiences on it, but overall, compared to other online dating sites I've used, it's been incredibly disappointing. (I say this even though I almost got engaged to a girl I met on eHarmony.)
I think success on eHarmony (or any dating site - or no site at all) really depends on who you are. From my own experience, here's what I consider to be:
THE BIG PROBLEMS WITH EHARMONY
The site's trademark approach to dating is the "personality profile." To join the site, you have to spend about 45 minutes filling out a detailed "PhD-designed" personality questionnaire, which in theory will help the site's computer match you with other people who chose similar answers. (The length of the questionnaire is also supposed to weed out "predators" and casual flirts who don't care about relationships and are just looking for easy sex - again, this is the theory, not the practice.) Based on your answers, the dating "engine" will then match you with members of the opposite sex who have a similar energy level, standards of cleanliness, religious beliefs, attitudes, social background, level of "sexual compatibility" (read: perennially uninterested or purely horny), etc. Finally, before you go live on the site, you get the chance to say something about yourself in your own words ("What was the last book you read?" "Who's the most influential person in your life?" "What are you looking for in a relationship partner?", etc.)
The problem with the personality profile isn't the idea -it's the fact that:
a) a lot of people have rosy ideas about themselves and can't fill out a personality profile accurately (there's no third party to check the personality profile against the truth);
b) a lot of people are emotionally damaged and lie about themselves; and,
c) seriously, can you really distill the essence of your personality into an electronic profile generated on a computer in 45 minutes?
The questionnaire is extensive enough that in theory, yes, it should be able to match you dead-on with the love of your life. (And you would think that after having to rank your interest in billiards, martial arts, knitting, astrology and astronomy on a scale of 1-10 [just to name a few categories], you should be able to make a pretty strait line to that needle in the haystack.)
From my personal experience with this site, however, I think the eHarmony personality profile is probably the biggest financial heist since Enron. I think it's a bad product and an example of clever, misleading advertising that preys on the emotionally vulnerable.
I'm saying this as someone who has actually had a lot of success on internet dating sites in general.
I was a member of eHarmony for about six months. The site's "dating engines" matched me with 1,049 women between the ages of 20 and 30. (I'm 26.) Of these 1,000+ women, I communicated with about 100 and was genuinely interested in about 20. I went out on dates with 3 of them and almost got engaged to 1. As for the rest, most of them seemed like pretty average women - nice, but definitely no flying sparks. I talked to a few absolutely incredible women, but probably could have found better matches by hanging out at Starbucks or joining a gym.
I could also have found them by joining a different site...
Eharmony's mastermind, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, likes to bash sites like Match.com. According to him, Match and Yahoo Personals are "laundry lists" (his spin on "meat markets"). Warren faults Match and Yahoo for this: your photograph is exposed to view by every potentially dishonest predator and porn-addict around. And he's absolutely right - if you're an attractive female who puts up a profile on Match, you can probably expect 50 e-mails in your box the next morning from guys around the world as old as 60. On eHarmony, however, your matches are strictly rationed out to you, based exclusively on the age and geographical limits you set. (If you're a guy, however, even an attractive, interesting guy, you'll probably never be swamped in e-mail no matter what site you join, since women tend to expect men to make the first move and are further programmed into thinking this on online sites by the genuinely desperate and hopeless males who communicate with every woman they see. This lavish attention also makes women think they're more attractive than they really are.)
Compared to eHarmony, sites like Match have some major advantages. True, your profile is put on public display - but that might be exactly what it takes to get the girl you've been making eyes at forever to put HER profile up and toss an e-mail your way. At eHarmony, you literally CAN'T window shop: apparently as some kind of added protection against predators, you're not allowed to see your matches' photographs until you've paid the $60 subscription fee. Wow! That's a boon to eHarmony stockholders, who are banking on you forking out $60 to see photographs, but a downer for you when you finally get a glimpse of the person you thought "sounded" so attractive.
I've belonged to Match and eHarmony for about 6 months on and off over the last three years. I had exponentially more dates through Match (about 15, versus only three through eHarmony). Overall, I've found that depending on where you live (I've lived in three college towns), women on Match have loads more personality. This is probably a factor of my own personality as much as the sites'. Again, as far as women are concerned, eHarmony tends to attract the more cautious, shy types who think Match and Yahoo are "scuzzy" (actually, Yahoo is pretty scuzzy). eHarmony is also more popular with people over 40 and probably works better for them, since people on these sites over 40 are probably divorced and have kids and don't want their kids running across their picture on "public-access" sites.
Neil Clark Warren would probably argue that even if you do get more dates out of Match, eHarmony produces more successful long-term relationships. I'd like to see the statistics, but I don't see how many relationships are going to come out of a site that is intended to produce fewer dates by matching you with a more "select" group of people. A date is biology's own personality profile. Filling out a statistical chart on a computer is no substitute for meeting in person. If the date doesn't work out, great, that's biology's built-in radar talking to you.
This leads to the biggest problem with eHarmony: it doesn't even let you see 99% of the people who join. FACT: of the thousands of people who join every day, almost every last one of them is deliberately eliminated from being matched with you. There could be an absolutely perfect match down the street who you'll never see because Warren's computers think they're "too aggressive" or "not interested enough in taekwondo" or whatever). Ultimately, eHarmony substitutes healthy window shopping for a paternalistic and rigidly statistical system of matching based on a self-generated and therefore (more than likely) inaccurate personality profile.
Case in point: if the personality profile is all Warren says it is, why have I been out on three dates out of the 1,049 matches I've received through his site? If eHarmony's matching system is so rigidly exclusive that I'm only "compatible" with 1% of its members, why have I been matched with libido-tormented tattoo artists in Lynchburg, Virginia, who list their 7:00 in the morning 32-ounce Diet Coke as one of the "five things they can't live without"? Surely, I'm not so incompatible with everybody else in a 100 mile radius of where I live (covering three major American cities) that I couldn't decide for myself whether someone is "compatible" with me or not?
What if I'm not looking for someone with my personality? What if I'm attracted to women who aren't like me? Shouldn't I be allowed to shop for what I find attractive as opposed to what a computer-generated logarhithm thinks is "good" for me?
Another big problem with eHarmony is that in spite of the effort Warren went to to design a site that attracts only people who are "genuinely interested" in a relationship, his big 45-minute, 20-page personality profile just doesn't scare enough losers away from the site. Come on, it's Friday night, you're alone and bored: what's 45 minutes to fill out this free personality thing? Warren seems to have caught on to this and doubled the subscription rate to keep the masses away from his prized coterie of dedicated online daters. (Three years ago, it was only $29.95 a month to join. Now it's $60.)
There's no safeguard against players and predators joining the site, just like there's no safeguard against what Warren considers the ulimate dating crime: zapping someone's profile because they're not physically attractive, or because they just put up lousy pictures of themselves. People will always make snap judgements based on appearance. I've done it.
Finally, eHarmony tends to attract a certain type of person. I was matched with a few really amazing girls who blew me out of the water, but if you're a guy, your matches are pretty much going to be what's left over from professions where it's hard to meet men. I got a lot of pudgy and not very exciting elementary teachers, nurses, physicians' assistants, retail managers, dog groomers, public accountants.... Don't join the site expecting to be matched with a bunch of PhD candidates in French just because eHarmony looks more "intellectual" than Match.com. In fact, you're far more likely to find arts and humanities types on Match than on eHarmony.
Additionally, eHarmony appeals to women who are afraid or who want to wait to share their photographs. The way you view matches on eHarmony basically ensures that everybody at least takes a brief glance at your profile, whereas on Match, the chances of people viewing you without a photograph are slim to none. Sometimes, you finally get a picture and you're wowed. Usually, you just politely close down that match. Warren knows this (it's his way of allowing you to look for the "real" person under the skin instead of making snap judgments based on photographs), but it can also create some real heartbreak, allowing people who aren't conventionally attractive to flirt with super-attractive people they're not physically compatible with. When they finally have to make their photos available, bam, someone decides to end communication. I've been there and done it, and it sucked to do it.
ADVANTAGES OF EHARMONY
Eharmony's great if you live in the middle of nowhere and just can't meet people. Paradoxically, it's not so great if you live in a big city or a college town with lots of singles and have the option of meeting people off-line.
If you're over 50 and want to date again, eHarmony is perfect. Read the success stories. Old folks don't tend to be picky like college students about stupid things like breast size and eye color - if you're just looking for companionship and don't need "the perfect 10" at age 60, you'll find your match here. What you DON'T see is a bunch of success stories from people in their 20's like me. Yes, to hell with us!
It must work for nurses and teachers and dog groomers, because there's a bunch of them on the site. More power to them.
It works if you're rich and can afford to subscribe for 12 months. It also works if you can afford to look for matches all over the country and fly long-distance to meet someone in person.
It works if you're not gay - Warren apparently thinks gays find each other by writing on the bathroom stall.
Like any other kind of dating, eHarmony isn't the way to meet people, but it's definitely one way. And like every other kind of dating, in the end it just comes down to luck.
If you can afford to blow $60.00, go for it. Otherwise I'd join a club, join a church, go back to school, hang out downtown on Friday night, camp out in a coffee shop, smile and wink at everybody you meet, or just take up a hobby and enjoy being single. Luck will dog your footsteps eventually.
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About the Author
Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 1 member
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