You’ve probably seen the adverts. People saying how eHarmony was very nice and did all the right things and matched them up with someone perfect. You know, just like every other dating website, but done with a little more style. I don’t have a TV so I don’t see many adverts. But the first time I actually considered giving eHarmony a chance was after meeting someone who’d apparently met the founder of eHarmony and had been winding him up about it.
So it was that, last week some time, late one evening, with not much going on, I figured I’d give eHarmony a go.
eHarmony are apparently not a dating website. This may well be true. For reasons that will become apparent later I may never find out. Although, to me, it looked a hell of a lot like a dating website.
It reminded me slightly of Match Affinity, and as far as I can tell runs on a similar idea; answering a series of questions about you the site constructs your personality profile, and endeavours to find someone with a personality that matches yours. So far so simple, right?
eHarmony has a massive questionnaire. Massive. It took me the best part of an hour to complete, although admittedly I was simultaneously on Twitter. The first page asks you the basics. You know, what your name is, your contact details, that sort of thing. The next couple of pages get a bit more probing. What race are you? What religion, if any, do you follow? Are you married, separated, single? Do you have kids? And so on.
After these come the bulk of the questionnaire, where the site asks you to rate yourself in various categories from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much so). There are maybe 20 different categories to rate yourself on. On each successive page of the questionnaire. Maybe even more than 20. I always find these things fascinating. For one I’m interested in how people rate themselves. I suppose I’m a little conservative in that I rarely think so low or high of myself to give myself a 1 or a 7. A very few rare situations might crop up but, ultimately, very few. But I’m also intrigued by the idea that a person can know the answers to all these questions. Do you really know how attractive you are? Do you know how funny you are? Do you know how sexy you are? It’s all a bit random, and you get the idea that perhaps putting a tick one column too far to the left or the right might mean a great deal when it comes to your final results. I found it fascinating… but frustrating.
The first few pages of this sort focus on you. The hero of this little adventure. We’re building up our image of ourselves to sell to prospective love interests. So… the next stage is logical. What are you looking for in your prospective love interests? How sexy do they need to be? How intelligent? Further pages take this further… how important is a passionate sexual relationship to you? Must your prospective love interest be able to admit mistakes? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck…? You get the idea.
Another page gets into activites and hobbies. Is socialising important to you? What pastimes do you enjoy? There’s one page where you need to pick three topics from a list of maybe thirty different things that you might like to do. And then there are a few open questions.
I liked the open questions. The answers to these questions, it says, will appear on your profile. You feel like you’re really going to be putting your heart on your sleeve. So let’s see. There’s a request for you to tell eHarmony about something you feel passionate about, or a talent you have, or something. And my answer went something like this…
“I find creativity fascinating. The way that emotions can be explored, can be triggered, without words. I love music. I’m in awe of people who can pick up an instrument and play a piece of music which will reach into your heart and make you feel a particular emotion, experience a particular mood. I can’t play a musical instrument, but I can write and draw, and the feedback I get from someone appreciating these talents is the most amazing buzz, that someone gets an emotional response to something I’ve done, that you can literally inspire certain feelings. But music is my greatest passion, nothing hits me quite so immediately and deeply as music. I love to dance.”
Which, you know, I thought was pretty heartfelt and honest and me saying “Hey world. This is me. Music. Emotions. Empathic communication between souls. That’s what makes me tick.”
Another open question. ‘What three things are you most grateful for?’ Understandably some of this was already touched on but, here goes:
1. My kids
2. My creativity
3. Music
And, you know, that was pretty much it. Pretty much. Perhaps a case of dotting the odd I or crossing the occasional t, but essentially that was the questionnaire. I clicked NEXT to pass through to the next stage, having been told the questionnaire was now 100% complete. Phew! Nearly an hour’s worth of pondering, of reflecting, of trying to work out who I was and who I wanted, of assigning numbers to sliding scales that might have little bearing on reality…
The message that came up took the wind out of my sails. Because it stated that eHarmony were unable to accept me as a member to their site. Why? Because I’m separated. I’m not properly single. I’m not divorced. I’m separated. I’m in some dingy formless purgatory where I’m still kinda married to someone, and that’s too married for eHarmony to work with.
I was speechless. Then I was a bit miffed. For a few seconds. And then… angry…
Refresh your memory a bit. When exactly was it that the site asked me whether I was married or separated? That’s right. Within the first few pages. Before I’d had to spend another half hour or so furrowing my brow and determining what numbers to ascribe to what traits, before deciding, truly and honestly what I’d like in a prospective lover, before asking me to tip a quill into my hearts blood and scrawl my worldly desires across their page. You’d think that, if this was going to be an issue, they’d let you know then and there, five minutes in, that they wouldn’t be able to accept you. But no.Apparently, for reasons better known to them, they’d rather you take the time to answer all the questions first. Really throw yourself into it. Like giving your best pitch for a job they’ve already offered to someone else but, for sake of appearances, they have to hear you out.
But no. Look. It’s okay. It’s not a perfect waste. Because… ta da! Most of those answers can be put together to give you a lovely personality profile of yourself. Why not have a look at it now?
Sure. Sure, let’s have a look. What a generous thing to offer. I was wrong to be angry, because you’re offering me this free token thing that will tell me exactly who I am. Because I really haven’t a clue. Let’s see. Maybe some golden beam of insight will make me feel a little better about being rejected by a website because I’ve not had the money to settle a divorce…
The problem is that there are maybe eight different categories, eight different aspects of your personality to consider. Each category is summed up with a paragraph saying ‘You are like this!’ Okay, great, what problems might arise? ‘Well, some people will think you’re too such-and-such. But conversely some will find you not such-and-such enough.’ In essence, in more cases than not I was described as a middle-of-the-road fence-sitting type. And here’s why. It’s because eHarmony seems to work only through a process of sliding scales.
Here’s how it works. If I suggest in my answers that sometimes I’m really happy, yet at other times I’m really sad (because, as we’ve already established, I’m emotional – and when you’re emotional you tend to get highs and lows), then they cancel each other out. No, I’m not really happy. No, I’m not really sad. I’m really balanced, stable, calm, I walk through life unbothered by extremes. Similarly, because I like to consider multiple perspectives and am also open to new experiences, I might say I’d like two things that are, to all intents and purposes, opposites. So eHarmony would say that I’m the person who wisely sits in the middle without taking sides, or some rubbish like that. I’m painted in muddied browns and greys instead of a spectrum of different colours.
IT’S NOT ACCURATE!
That was pretty bad. But I think the last straw may have been reading about how different people might judge me on my levels of compassion. Some, apparently, might not think I was compassionate enough, that there’s more I could do, whilst others might consider me too much of a bleeding heart. Thanks. Thanks a lot. That’s Ladybird level logic there. This is pop psychology for people who struggle to make sense of the world around them. WHATEVER you’re doing in your life, there are people who are doing it more, and people who are doing it less, and plenty of people willing to judge you for however far up or down the sliding scale you are. You shouldn’t need a psychological profile to tell you that and, Jesus, if you do there are better places to go get them. Match Affinity for one. They present your results on a series of grids, cross referencing sliding scales on both an x and a y axis. That’s twice what eHarmony does, at least for us poor bastards who can’t get in the door.
So, in conclusion? eHarmony was a complete waste of my time. It looked so promising when I was filling out the questionnaire, really SO promising, with some clever and unexpected categories to appoint scores to, and some thought-provoking questions that I really spent time on, thinking that they’d be a chance to really say something deep and personal about myself beyond all the normal guff about what music you’re into, where you like to drink, blah, blah, blah… And it’s snatched away for no real good reason. A complete waste of my time. Although if my complete waste of time can be put to good use by either helping prevent you wasting your own time, or else entertaining you somehow then I guess it hasn’t been a complete waste of time. And it’s a learning curve, right?
On a scale of 1 to 7 I’d give eHarmony a disappointing 2. Some people might think that’s too high. Some people might think its not high enough. I’m not losing sleep over it.
