Would eHarmony be a good idea in a medium-sized city (Indy)?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve done the two major free sites, OKCupid.com and PlentyofFish.com. I have gotten 5 real relationships off OKCupid, none off the latter site (which is an abomination, in my opinion).

Here’s the thing: I’ve never found someone close to me on OKCupid. The closest was Bloomington, which is about an hour and a half away by car from me. The last one was in Michigan–four hours away. Two were in Fort Wayne (two hours away), and one was in the North Chicago Suburbs. I know you’re thrilled with this impressive geographic detail.

Not only that, but there have not even been any close calls in Indy. Beyond that, the closest dates that showed any potential were in Lafayette (one hour away–more geographic detail).

The problem is basically one of critical mass. There are just not that many people on the site in Indy. I take a brute force approach to OKCupid: I look at all reasonable profiles within a geographic area and message those people who look interesting. After going through literally thousands of profiles, I usually manage to find a relationship. This time around, I have cleared out a 250-mile radius, which is a lot of people. The only restrictions I’ve put in is a generous age range, no smoking, no drugs, and online in the last month. That’s it. Nothing’s turned up this time around.

I am not considering Match.com, the reason being that Match owns OKCupid, and I don’t see a reason to go to Match when I’m using their free site. If there is something truly great about Match that I’m missing feel free to let me know.

The other major player, then, is eHarmony. I have hesitated to do a paid site because, based on my OKC experience, I doubt that there is a critical mass on eHarmony either. My friend had good luck with it, but that was in New York, where the high population density worked in his favor.

Thus questions:

  1. Do you think eHarmony will have a “critical mass” in a medium-sized city like Indy (roughly a million people in the metro area).

  2. Would I be able to do my brute force approach on eHarmony–look at tons of profiles? Or is it so “guided” that there would only be a mere trickle of potential people to look at on any given day.

Thanks for your advice on the above!

2

It took me six weeks to meet my husband on eHarmony, in a county with a population under 200K. He had been on eHarmony for two weeks. Our houses were a 30 minute drive apart, with the urban mass smack dab between the two.

So I encourage you to try it.

3

I found plenty of people in Indy on OKCupid, so YMMV there. The reason people use Match is because there’s buy-in - when you spend money on a dating service, you’re invested in the results. OKC is typically hookups and casuals. I have several female friends that found their spouses on Match, and one via eHarmony.

4

E-Harmony sucks.

Use Match too. The same users are not on both sites.

5

EH is terrible. There’s no ‘brute force’. EH gives you one or two people a day, you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to them and that’s it for the day. If you say yes, you can ask them a few questions and wait to see if they respond. If you say no, you wait a day or two for your next matches. Oh, and in my experience, better than half the people on the site were inactive.
If you want to move beyond OKC, go to Match or even Tinder.

Whenever I get bored with Match I think about trying EH again, then I remember how much I hated it and how big of a waste of money it was. In my few months on there I got an average of two matches per day and had probably 10-20 people look at my profile (the rest were inactive matches)…then I wonder if anyone would care if an Atheist joined JDate (no, not really).

6

I don’t know about Match but, yes, e-Harmony sucks. I signed up for a three-month stint. The first matches were five men in my immdiate area, two of which I’d already noted (and rejected) on POF. The other three didn’t appeal to me. The next 20 or so were within 65 miles of me, and then for the remainder of the time, I was offered matches from 250 to 500+ miles away. As far as I’m concerned, e-Harmony is a complete rip-off.

7

I haven’t been on EHarmony, but I have friends who have and they said similar things. Although they made it sound like there were several matches at first, likely to get you involved and to think it would be fruitful, and then after that it was a trickle. So after hearing that I never signed up.

8

You also pretty much have to be a Christian to use E-Harmony. If you aren’t, they won’t even allow to you create a profile.

I mean if you are, that’s great.

9

I’d always heard that, but I’m an Atheist and answered all questions totally honestly and didn’t have any issues with that.

It did kick me out after answering all the questions for being ‘currently separated’ and told me to send in my divorce paperwork after it was done. Yeah, like I was gonna do that. I just did it again with a new email a few days later and told the system I was divorced since my pending divorce was right around the corner. I promised myself I’d tell anyone that I made contact with about my circumstanced (just like I had been doing on other sites) but it never got that far on EH.

10

Yeah, my husband and I are a pair of atheists. We both got onto eHarmony.

11

Do single people meet up the old fashioned way? Maybe thru talking to others?

12

This is the key distinction between free and paid dating services, if it’s free it probably has a lot more people looking for hookups and peopel who just aren’t willing to put any effort into it. If you’re paying, you’re more likely to put in effort.

As for a difference between eHarmony and Match, I can’t speak to the size of the singles pool on each site, but it does seem that different types will have more or less success on one site than the other. eHarmony does seem to have a somewhat higher concentration of Christians than Match. Also, eHarmony users tend to take the dating a lot more seriously with the mindset of heading toward marriage. In that regard, it seems that most of the success stories I’ve heard of eHarmony have been older couples, often divorced, and less so in a younger crowd.

On the other hand, with Match, if you’re interested in someone, you basically either like some photos, wink, or just send an email, so if you’re shy or not good at starting conversation, especially if they don’t have a lot of good info in their profiles to go off of, that might be difficult. eHarmony allows for direct to email as well, but has a guided communication process which might help someone who isn’t all that good at that process. So, to some regard it helps to solve that problem of whether one should write a thoughtful email, send out a generic one, or just wink, you can just do the guided thing and it sort of serves all those purposes. And when you do get to the email stage, there’s at least some small investment on both sides. And, for what it’s worth, I never had any problems with getting matches on eHarmony when I used it, I consistently got several matches every day as long as I was on it, so I never experienced the drought others did, but I’m in the DC metro area, so that may be part of why

Either way, I’d think if you’re at least in a metropolitan area, you should be reasonably okay. You’d probably see better results picking a pay service than a free one, and a larger one rather than a smaller one, but make sure you pick one that’s appropriate for the community you’re a part of. Match seems sort of like the generic one, eHarmony a bit more serious, and obviously there’s religious, cultural, ethnic, and other communities, but I’d say stay away from the latter types unless you’re strongly set on dating someone that is also strongly set on dating you for that same reason.

13

Thanks for the perspectives thus far!

Right, I’d forgotten about the Christian aspect of eHarmony. I am a New Ager and would get along with neither a hardcore Christian nor an atheist (beyond friends, that is).

Match.com sounds like it might be an option.

I’ve found serious relationships on OKCupid, but, as I said, they’ve been a good distance away…

14

I would try Tindr. Most of the online dating market that I know of has migrated there.

15

Unfortunately, I have a Windows phone and can’t use Tinder. What is the advantage of an app over a website. As I said, I do a lot of work looking at profiles to find good candidates. This would seem difficult with an app.

16

It’s not that it’s an ‘app’ that makes it different. It’s a whole different game.

It gives you someone’s profile. A profile is (more or less) a few pictures and maybe a sentence. That’s literally it. You say yes or no to that profile. If you say no, that’s the end of it. If you say yes to her AND she says yes to you, you get to talk.

Also, making it more interesting, you have no idea what other people have said to you. So, if someone pops up on your app, you have no idea if it’s just some random person or if it’s someone that already said yes to you.

No, here’s where it gets tricky…what happens when that friend that you’ve always had a little crush on pops up? Do you hit no and let sleeping dogs lie or do you hit yes…just to see if she said yes also?

17

That’s a common belief, but it’s just not true. I’m not Christian, and I was able to join E-Harmony with no problem. Even got a few good dates out of it.

However, nothing long-term happened. In any case I’m married now, to someone I didn’t meet online at all.