Rejected by eHarmony...again!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A few years back, when I first decided to try online dating, I went on eHarmony and filled in their questionnaire, and got told that they were unable help me. I didn’t really read the rejection too carefully, and thought that perhaps I had answered the questions a bit inaccurately…they seemed (at that time) a little skewed in favor of a more conservative personality. But as I said, I didn’t really absorb what they were saying.

Yesterday I had a customer who was getting married soon, and we fell into conversation about dating again at our age (over 45) and how he had met his new love, and since he is a counselor, he wanted to give me all sorts of advice. He asked if I had tried eHarmony, and I told him how I’d not had any luck with it, but told him how I couldn’t remember exactly why. Turns out he is a friend of eHarmony creator Neil Clark Warren, and he urged me to give it another try.

So, having time on my hands last night, I went through the questionnaire again, trying to be as honest as possible and not looking for the “good” answers. When I was all done, this was the response I got:

**"eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive research with married couples. One of the requirements for successful matching is that participants to fall within certain defined profiles. If we find that we will not be able to match a user using these profiles, we feel it is only fair to inform them early in the process.

We are so convinced of the importance of creating compatible matches to help people establish happy, lasting relationships that we sometimes choose not to provide service rather than risk an uncertain match.

Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching model could not accurately predict with whom you would be best matched. This occurs for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand, and we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time."**

WTF? I’m a healthy, happy, 49-year-old church-going woman, not someone with any bizarre needs or requirements in a man. I reviewed their results on “what you’re looking for in a Match” and they were right on target in describing the kind of man I want: Mature, hard-working, church-going (or at least open to religion), stable, fun-loving, open-minded, honest, funny, smart, dependable, kind, able to talk about things rather than pout, Nothing weird, and definitely what eHarmony seems to be targeting in their marketing.

So what’s wrong with me that they can’t “predict with whom I’d be best matched”? What answers would have swayed them to my side? Is it just my age? Or could it be the geographic range? Has anyone else here been turned down by eHarmony? Or if you’ve been accepted, what kinds of people are using the service that I don’t fit in with? They also say it can take months before they find you a match, and to be patient (which I think just means that they want your money for longer than one month), but in my case they’ve just said, “can’t help you, you weirdo”, not “be patient, the right guy hasn’t joined up yet”.

2

Hey! Don’t feel so blue, kitten. I got rejected from eHarmony before too. I think it’s a problem with their paradigm rather than a problem with us. I’m pretty much a free thinker with a wide variety of interests. That doesn’t really sit too well with personality matching they way eHarmony does it. If you don’t hit the percentages enough on any particular rating, they can’t just drop you into that particular pigeonhole. If you don’t fit in the pigeonhole, they don’t think they can help you. This seems to be their model, rather than looking for people who match on sliding scales for a variety of topics. It seems that they match pigeonholes rather than individuals.

However, to their credit, they don’t just take our money when they think they can’t be of service.

3

Damn, I wasn’t* rejeted by eHarmony – does that mean I’m a lot more boring than I thought? :frowning:

4

Another non-eHarmony match here! Probably because I am Soooooooo Phleg/Mel.

5

Dang! I forgot!

So, kittenblue, how you doing?

6

I got a similar message from eHarmony waybackwhen, which I then figured was due to my half-assed efforts to fill out their questionnaire. Then they came out with their ad campaign with billboard ads with whitebread, cow-eyed, pastel-clad couples mooning at each other in the most insipid, dough-faced manner possible; I figured that if this was the demographic to which they’re endeavoring to whom to appeal then they did me a favor by not letting me play their raindeer games[sup]*[/sup].

eHarmony blows, but then, so does [del]internet[/del] dating in general.

Anyway, that billboard finally got replaced by one with these totally vapid looking real estate agents who boast that they’re married to their clients instead of each other.

Don’t mind me; I’m just in a hypercritical mood today. Back to eHarmony.

Stranger

[sup]*[/sup]This is despite the fact that I am also ethnically Wonder Bread and Pillbury-countenanced (and possibly equipped with eyes suitable for a bovine), but I absolutely do not wear pastels or engage in slack-jawed mooning at members of the opposite sex.

7

Heh. I’m going to go fill it out and see what they say. :slight_smile:

8

I guess I was approved, I didn’t get anything stating I wasn’t. Too bad, I was looking forward to sharing that rejection letter with friends!

On another note, they are pretty spot on in regards to what I look for in a guy. All the major things were there, and even some of the minor things were mentioned. Very neat.

9

Yeah, I was rejected also.
All I want is a girl who will dress up like my mother and who is also into beastiality. Is that so much to ask? :confused:

10

I never finished the eHarmony questionnaire. So many of their questions, I couldn’t answer. “I can accept the circumstances of my life as they are”–WTF does that mean? That could be interpreted in quite a number of ways.

Or, how about: “My beliefs make me a better person”… I take my beliefs seriously, but in the end my actions and choices make me a better person. All of us know Christians who believe in Jesus’s teachings but don’t follow them, after all. Does giving a strong “no” response mark me as a libertine?

In the end, I decided that as neurotic as I am, anyone who could finish all 40 pages is even more neurotic. Thusly, my eHarmony profile will remain stuck in 28% progress forever.

11

Don’t worry about getting turned down by E-Harmony. At least they are upfront and honest instead of taking your $50 a month and then just stringing you along. I think match.com is doing something along the eharmony line. You might have better results.

12

I’ve heard of this eharmony thing, so I did the survey today. (I know I’m still married…I lied and said I was divorced, to see what it was like.)

What a lot of questions! They were very general…for example, it asked if music was important…Listening to music is extremely important to me…but nothing about the type of music I like.

On the part where you’re supposed to rank the activities you like, yoga was not there.

I don’t think they would have any matches for liberal, rock and roll loving, yoga doing, non-church going me. I don’t care though…if they were to reject me, I’d wear it like a badge. Those people on the ads that found their matches through eHarmony seem a little straight laced to me.

13

I wasn’t given the rejection speech, but they have no matches for me. Perhaps I need to look in a wider geographical region.

14

I have to admit, the reason I never gave eHarmony another thought for years was because the ads were so cloyingly insipid. The word “soulmate” makes me cringe, because while I may believe in the concept, I find that people who refer to each other as soulmates are usually not people I want to have intelligent discussions with. I can respect people who, after struggling to find a word to describe their loving relationship, have to settle on “soulmate” because no other word seems to fit…but they really have to struggle to find another word first!

But the gentleman I talked to the other day was so convincing that I would find good, serious, marriage-minded men on eHarmony in higher concentrations than on other sites, mainly because of the questions and the lack of a classic personal ad-style profile. And I figured older guys weren’t going to be doing the radio ads, but would be looking for good women. I just didn’t realize that eHarmony’s idea of a good woman is a boring, one dimensional one!

So I guess I should be flattered that I’ve been rejected, is that the consensus? Because it means I’m a complex, fascinating woman? But so is twickster! (And how you doing, Friar Ted?) :smiley:

15

I was accepted by eHarmony, though I’ve no idea why. I’m pretty socially liberal with alot of unconventional interests, and I admitted to being non-spiritual atheist heretic scum and everything.

Lots of scary “marriage-minded” chicks on there and not alot of chemistry so I ran away. For all the hoops you jump through, you’d expect your matches to be pretty good, but mine were all bad to blah. Oh well.

16

Hell, I’d settle for “looks good in a Catholic school girl outfit.”

Eharmony sucks. I gave it a shot once and got accepted. Even got sent a rather huge number of matches*…but they were all either rather frightening or so far out of my geographical area that it wasn’t worthwhile to follow up on any it.

Weird selection of matches, too. 40 year old bus driver (I’m picturing the South Park bus driver here). 18 year old semi-educated girl with a loose command of the english language. Those were the good ones. :dubious:

  • I guess their matching algorhythm considers me “money”. This prospect keeps me awake at nights and has inspired more than one life change. Please, dear God, don’t let me be like an Eharmony ad…
17

I dunno, I think it’s so cute when couples dress in matching outfits … :wink:

18

Actually, I must admit that I love the goopy eHarmony ads. Since I am nasty and bitter, I speculate on how long their marriages will last.

19

::Scampering off to try this, just to see if I can be an E-harmony reject too::

20

You people are determined to make me feel bad about not being rejected by them, aren’t you? :frowning: