The eHarmony Experiment

About three weeks ago, I thought to myself “Shit.  I’m bored.”  I’ve been single for almost 9 months now, and it took awhile for me to really get bored.  I hadn’t really been all that intent on dating.  I was fine with my travels for work, spending time with friends, and just relaxing at home on the couch, catching up on my DVR.  But then it hit…  and by “it” I mean loneliness.   I’m crazy busy!  How on earth could I be bored?!?!  I realized that the boredom stemmed from being lonely.  Nobody to come home to, nobody to call and talk about the people at work who drive me crazy, nobody who expected to hear from me when I was out of town.  So being a generally positive person, I decided rather than mope about it, I needed to do something about it!  So I joined eHarmony.

The experience thus far has been nothing short of hilarious, so I decided to share my stories with the world and blog about it.  So congratulations to YOU, as you are now taking part in popping my blogger cherry, so to speak.  Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t see the whole eHarmony thing as a joke.  I’m actually taking it quite seriously, I promise!  But there has been far too much comedy in the whole thing, and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share.  Far be it from me to hog all the hilarity for myself.  I’m a giver, what can I say?

Let me start with the whole “questionnaire”.  Now when I see Dr. Neil Clark Warren, (that gray haired dude on the commercials) talk about the 23 levels of compatibility, I assume he’s referring to some scientific way they take the answers to the 157 million questions I had to answer to set up my profile, and match me with others who may have responded similarly.  The whole set-up process took about 4 hours.  Granted, a girlfriend of mine and I were doing it together, and drinking cosmos, so we may have taken a couple of cocktail breaks.  This could have extended the time, but I’m not kidding when I tell you – this thing was EXTENSIVE.  I swear we went though at least 8 pages of questions, with about 30+ questions per page.  And this was the kind of stuff that really made you think!  The point was to be as honest as possible, right?  No use in lying on your eHarmony profile questionnaire, that would just result in matches that weren’t really right for you!  So my cohort in romantic endeavors and I bounced responses off of each other.  This could be considered both good and bad.  Luckily I was open to the whole process, otherwise I may have been offended by “Um, generous towards others?  You might want to put ‘Almost Never’ for that one.”  It was definitely a learning experience, both in how I see myself, and how one of my best friends sees me.  But throughout, we laughed our asses off.  The entire situation was just so funny!  Here we were, two intelligent, successful, I’d like to think fairly attractive women, embarking upon a journey into the wild world of internet dating.  In a situation like that, you’re torn between “I’m a normal person, and I’m doing this!  There have to be other normal people on there!  I’m going to find love, dammit!!!” and “Holy crap, am I the biggest loser I know?  Jesus, this stuff is expensive.”  But logic and reason prevailed.  Internet dating is almost the norm these days.  We are busy people!  Who wants to start dating someone they met in a bar?  They could be a serial killer, or even WORSE -  a total douche bag!  And apparently all of the great guys my friends are with run with losers who they’d feel just awful about hooking me up with.  So eHarmony it is! 

Once you have spent 3-4 hours answering Dr. Neil Clark Warren’s questions, and in turn questioning your entire existence, you are immediately sent 8 matches.  They suck you right in!  I definitely remember thinking in excitement “Wow!  This stuff must really work!  I’m bound to find ‘the one’ on here!”  But hindsight being 20/20, that sentiment was probably caused by the 4 cosmos.  Either way, I was hooked.  I have to admit, even though I knew nothing about these people besides what they chose to share on their profiles, I was excited about the prospect that one of them might possibly be the man I’ve been waiting for, my knight in shining armor, the future father of my children!  My gal pal and I immediately began to discuss and compare… and crack the hell up.  I made some immediate rules about who I was willing to talk to.  Rule #1-if you don’t have a picture, I am forced to immediately archive you.  Buh bye.  That’s just weird!  How can you even expect people to talk to you if you’re not willing to show them what you look like??  Now you might say, “Well it’s not about looks.  It’s about finding a deep, spiritual connection, Megan.  It’s about learning so much about someone that you’re attracted to who they are as a person and you fall in love with them regardless of what they look like.”  But really… I call bullshit.  C’mon now!  I know we all want to think we’re more advanced than that, that we’re not superficial, but let’s not fool ourselves.  If you’re not physically attracted to someone, they could be the coolest person in the world, but they will forever live in the friend zone.  I have a ton of amazing friends, and I do not need to fork over $45 a month to make more.  Those dues are reserved for finding a mate.  Rule #2- if your profile is a hot mess of grammatical errors and poor writing, again, you will be immediately archived.  Call me a bitch, but I just can’t deal with that.  How can women be expected to take you seriously if you’re too spastic to even make your profile presentable?  If you are the type of person I’m going to mesh well with, then you have got to be pretty darn intelligent.  Or, at least smart enough to have someone proof read your profile.  I’d even take that!  If you recognize you’re a crappy writer, but you’re still looking to put your best foot forward to find that special someone, then I commend your efforts!

So thus far, I’ve gathered that every guy that chooses to join eHarmony enjoys “staying physically fit” and participating in “outdoor activites”.  Oh, and they all golf.  Seriously, every single one of them plays golf.  And I’m not talking occasionally, I’m talking every waking moment outside of work and a date here and there seems to be golf for these dudes.  They have an average of 6 profile pictures posted, and at least 2 are of them on the golf course.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m good with some golf!  I figure it works out well for me!  Either the future Mr. Right takes me on fantastic trips to beautiful country clubs where I get to hang out with other golf wives, OR he leaves me alone on Saturday mornings so I can go shopping, and have lunch with the girls.  Plus, golf totally lends itself to some adorable, albeit clichéd, dates.  You know, that whole man behind me, with his arms around me, showing me how to correctly hold the club, correcting my swing, keeping me from totally shanking the ball.  “Tee Hee…  I’m sooooo terrible at this!  Thank goodness you’re so awesome, and patient enough to show me the ropes!”  Okay okay, so that’s not quite my style.  But I’m all for a guy putting his arms around me and swinging a golf club.  It’s cute, admit it!  The obsession with fitness cracks me up.  One guy sent me his ‘5 Questions’ (there’s a whole method to this eHarmony “Guided Communication”) so I looked over his profile.  My first internal question was “How on earth is this guy as obsessed with hitting the gym as he says he is, yet still at least 50 lbs overweight?”  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Victoria’s Secret model, and I know that!  But I don’t claim that one of the 5 Things I Can’t Live Without is my gym membership.  Alright, now maybe I do kinda get a kick out of telling guys that I’m a Zumba instructor…  but I don’t pretend that it’s my sole focus and that I’m rocking six pack abs.  So I apologize, ‘Jonathan, 32, Orlando’.  I had to archive you, it was just too odd!

All in all, despite my sarcasm and moderate mocking of the whole thing, I’m still extremely intrigued and plan on continuing this experiment.  I have no doubt that it will continue to produce excellent subject matter for future musings.  So if you’ve enjoyed this one, keep in touch and I’ll keep posting!  With any luck, I’ll take everyone along with me on this conquest!  I think next time I’ll touch on the ego factor involved.  And I’ll go ahead and give you a quick preview on my results thus far…  I’ve been on 3 dates total, 1 with one guy and 2 with another.  Time will tell how it all turns out!  Ideally I'll end up on one of those commercials!  "Megan and John - matched August 2011, married March 2013". I've always thought a spring wedding would be nice...