Well, I feel like crap. My psychiatrist suggested that part of my effort to connect with people should include a dating site like eHarmony, mostly because she knows several married couples who met on there. So, I took their 30-minute test, after which I was greeted with:
There’s no opportunity to go back and change answers. Now, I figured one reason is that my self-esteem is not the greatest, and I answered the questions honestly. But upon Googling, I see many claims that all non-Christians are rejected from the site.
That seems odd, especially since they give you the option to choose among several different religions, as well as “not religious or spiritual,” which I chose. Right there at the beginning of the quiz. Would eHarmony really make someone take the whole quiz when their fate was sealed on page 2? If that’s the case, it seems like there could be a class-action lawsuit for a collective waste of time.
Anyway, can someone with better Google-fu than me provide a reliable cite that no non-Christian, or at least no atheist, has ever been allowed to join the site? Or evidence that refutes this claim? My gut feeling is that it was just my downer answers, but I’m curious if it goes any deeper than that.
I thought they just don’t offer the option. That issue is pretty well known, but I’ve never heard of issues with non-Christians. (I’m not single and I’ve never used it, but I’d heard of the no-gays thing.) Anyway, quoting Wikipedia here:
So it sounds like the system may have rejected the OP because it determined he could have depression. I don’t want to criticize the OP’s psychiatrist but this seems like something the therapist should have known before advising a patient to try eHarmony.
I agree online dating CAN be worthwhile. But be very careful when it comes to paying. I mean there are lots of free sites.
You could join a site and pay a lot of money to get the same rejection you’d get in a bar. If you don’t do well in bars or church and such, is there any reason to believe you’d do better online? And you PAY for the priviledge of getting rejected
The site eHarmony has rejected gays because they claim their their scientific method is based on two heterosexuals who want a relationship. Gay people wouldn’t fall into that scientific method. Neither would two straight people wanting to hook up for sex.
This makes sense. In fact eHarmony has a gay site called Compatable Partners. And it does make sense. I am a gay male and dating for gay people is just not the same. You can’t assume it’s is.
If eHarmony rejected you, count your blessings you saved money and find a site that will take you.
Think about it they are saying “We don’t want your money.” This is a good thing. Better than taking your money with no intention of trying to get you a date.
I would suggest you go to IMHO and start a thread about getting back into the dating world and ask for people’s opinions there about online dating for straight people.
Count your blessings they rejected you and just move on. Dating sites on the Internet are like busses. Wait long enough and another one comes along Good luck
I came across this thread through Googling that delightful phrase.
Anyway, I have “major depressive disorder” and was as honest as I could be in my eHarmony profile. My mother suggested I register for it. Anyway. I’m glad I’m not alone.
I just logged back in and reopened my account to see what would happen (giving my SO a bit of a startle in the process, hehe), and it has accepted me and offered me matches despite the fact that I have self-identified as non-religious.
I’m quite certain that I was open about my atheism when I was an active member, and that I had selected only to be matched to other non-religious types. I’m inclined to think that the rumors that eHarm rejects non-Christians are baloney.
No, this makes zero sense. If they have a separate algorithm for gay people, then they could just as easily incorporate it into their existing eHarmony matching program. There is absolutely no reason to start a whole new service just for gay people. It is clearly sending the message that something is wrong with gay.
Your definition of “clearly” doesn’t agree with mine. I see no problem in creating a different site for a different audience for a variety of valid reasons. You’re taking offense where none is apparent.
When I signed up for E-harmony, one of the first questions was about your marital status. You could pick from Single, Divorced, Married, Currently Separated or Widowed I think. I chose currently separated because that’s where I am right now. After I finished filling everything else out it told me I couldn’t join because you have you have to be single to join. Also, it told me the ONLY way to change my answer to divorced is to send in my a copy of my divorce certificate. It bugged the hell out of me that they let me spend all that time filling out the forms when I was rejected based on an answer from a half hour ago. My guess is that they figure after spending all that time filling all that stuff out you’re less likely to set up a new account with falsified info just to get in.
Different audiences required different initial questions, a different UI, and potentially different functionality for same-sex vs opposite-sex dating services. The business models (advertising, promotion, dating patterns) could be quite different as well.
JDate is a site for Jewish singles, why not a separate site for Gay singles? There’s lots of good reasons to create specialized sites.
So the first question is about orientation. The following questions will be determined by what the answer to that question is.
I don’t have any problem with those sites. I personally wouldn’t use them, but at least they announce straight up what they are. eHarmony began by billing itself as a relationship finder for the general public. At the time, I don’t remember any other big players in the industry. If they had made a big “straight people only!” announcement up front, that probably would be OK. I suspect their clientele would have been affected by such a statement though.
The goal of eHarmony is to find a match it’s not a social network site. For instance, I have a MySpace page, I get requests all the time from teen agers and woman. What can’t they read. I am a gay male.
When you run a website you allocate space on your server. You don’t want to tie up your server and databases with straight people shopping around. A lot of gay people are not out and would feel better if they were on a site that their straight co-workers would not look at.
And the list goes. And even if they don’t like gay people so what. I don’t care if people don’t like me and the last thing I want to do is force my way into a private group all for the sake of making a point.
If someone doesn’t want you move on, especially if they’re charging you the $$$$
At one point I was unhappy with my job, so I went to a career counselor and took a career assessment test. It gave me a similar “can’t make a decision based on your answers” result. Now that I know that there’s apparently no job in the world that is suitable for me, my current job doesn’t seem so bad any more.
I thought you said that eHarmony was running a gay site as well. In which case, they would actually save money by using the same server for both. There is no reason that eHarmony has to let profiles be viewable to all people. I would think it strange that eHarmony would make gay profiles viewable to straight people. That would just be bizarre.
But you didn’t address any of my other points. You can make the sites all part of over giant dating site, but there are valid reasons against it that I mentioned. Not all websites and services have to be all things for all people. It doesn’t mean that they are making value judgments, just business decisions.
I take delight in bashing gaybashers just like you do, but really, I think you’re seeing an issue where there isn’t one. I see ads on buses all the time for Christian dating sites, gay dating sites- it’s just been said that eHarmony HAS a gay dating site. eHarmony isn’t a social networking site, it’s a dating site. If it were anything but a dating site I’d think it was segregation. But dude, come on. What? Your beef is that they didn’t think of all these ideas that would allow them to run the sites together? So what? Let them burn extra cash. But seriously, the time isn’t ripe to grab your torch and pitchfork. It’ll come.
Good luck