eHarmony is giving me more matches now

[mfan]

For many months I was receiving only about 2 matches a week from eHarmony, but I recently did something and now I'm getting many more matches. Here's what I did (for all you eHarmony members out there):

 

1. I wrote to eHarmony and asked to retake the personality questionnaire. I pointed out that I last took it 2 years ago and my answers might be different now. They were happy to reset it for me.

 

2. When I retook the questionnaire I tried to answer it so as to maximize the number of people I am considered compatible with. I'm happy to do the work of reading/filtering out people's profiles, thank-you-very-much, I just want to at least SEE some profiles to read! Two main aspects:

 

(a) I avoided giving extreme answers to any questions. As you know, you answer about 50 questions on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree). The first time I took the questionnaire I put a lot of 1's and 7's. This time I put almost all 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and if I wasn't sure what the question meant, I put 4. For example, I'm an apathetic atheist so when they ask "how important are your religious beliefs" I didn't want to "disqualify" myself by answering the question incorrectly.

 

I only put 1 and 7 when the question was absolutely obvious, e.g. "It's important in a relationship to blame one's partner when things go wrong" -- "1."

 

(b) Whenever the question asked how much I possess a particular good point, I put nothing lower than 4 ("somewhat"). For example, the questions ask me "How patient are you?" "How stylish are you", "How stable are you?" "How sexy are you?". Last time I took the test I was modest and I put some low scores, thinking I was very self-aware and didn't want to brag. This time I realized, wait a minute! They're going to be asking women how important is it that your boyfriend be (a) patient, (b) stylish, © stable, (d) sexy. Are women really going to say these things are "not important at all"??? Certainly they are at least "somewhat" important, so I'd better say I "somewhat" have them. This is no time to be modest. There are LOTS of people compared to whom I am sexy and stylish and patient and stable.

 

Anyway, they're sending me multiple matches per day now, rather than just one or two a week. Maybe it's because they want to reward new questionnaire takers and prevent them from quitting. But maybe this strategy actually worked. I'll let you know how it goes.

-mfan

[Angler]

So basically your advice is to you fudge your numbers and create an idealized version of yourself to generate more matches?

[Throwaway999]

Are any of these matches within an hour's drive of you? They seemingly only send me matches that live 5 states away. What's the point? And the few I get occassionally that are actually in my city, I have nothing in common with. They seem to be sending me completely random profiles. I paid for this? I'm a sucker.

[mfan]

Luckily I live in NYC, so even though the smallest radius you're allowed to choose is 30 miles, a good 25% of the matches live within the NYC metro area

[Realitynut]

Yeah Hazlewood.....my matches were all STATES away! WHAT??? At the beginning they kept putting my brother on.....lol....who got married last year!

(have to admit...he did meet her on eHarmony)

 

Fortunately, I didn't get suckered in until i had to only pay $8 a mo. But then couldn't figure how to GET OFF the DAMN THING! lol

[Throwaway999]

Yeah Hazlewood.....my matches were all STATES away! WHAT??? At the beginning they kept putting my brother on.....lol....who got married last year!

(have to admit...he did meet her on eHarmony)

 

Fortunately, I didn't get suckered in until i had to only pay $8 a mo. But then couldn't figure how to GET OFF the DAMN THING! lol

 

Yeah, I signed up, but never paid b/c it was so expensive. Then I got cheap offer, so I bit - signed up for three months for 20 bucks!

 

I could have spent that twenty bucks on alcohol instead, which would have been a better solution!

[Realitynut]

I'd forget i was even on.....until I'd get a notice from paypal that they took $$$ from my account to pay for eHarmony. Just got off recently...without ONE person sending me a message...or me them!

[Throwaway999]

I'd forget i was even on.....until I'd get a notice from paypal that they took $$$ from my account to pay for eHarmony. Just got off recently...without ONE person sending me a message...or me them!

 

Well, I actually tried... just checked, I've sent all of ten messages, even that was stretching it some of the time. I was mostly excited just to be sent somebody that lived in my town, but then most of them hadn't logged in for over a month. Of the ones I sent, mostly no responses, even though a couple of the women "smiled" at me first!

 

I did have an actual phone conversation with a real, live woman who "smiled" at me and I contacted her - there was a definite lack of enthusiasm on the phone with her and we never actually met in person. The end.

 

I'm still paid up through next month, I've got to remember to cancel before then.

[mfan]

I had one date from eHarmony so far. It cost about $400 in membership fees for two years to get this date, and it was worth it. The girl was really sweet. We weren't quite compatible, but it's because of her that I'm still on this website. Oh well, it's no worse than buying a $1 lottery ticket every day.

[Batya33]

I signed up for the free membership. Based on my first name (which is a very typical name), my profession and my city, a guy was able to figure out who I was (he narrowed it down to two women and emailed me first -I actually know the other woman and she is married). Really something. Turned out we had a number of mutual friends. We met twice - and were not compatible because of his values about sex. But it was a very unusual experience with eharmony!

[Throwaway999]

I signed up for the free membership. Based on my first name (which is a very typical name), my profession and my city, a guy was able to figure out who I was (he narrowed it down to two women and emailed me first -I actually know the other woman and she is married). Really something. Turned out we had a number of mutual friends. We met twice - and were not compatible because of his values about sex. But it was a very unusual experience with eharmony!

 

Were you creeped out by this? It is usually pretty easy to figure out with a combination of name/profile name/google image search/profile information/Facebook/Linkedin/twitter. Usually I do this anyway before emailing a woman to see if there are more pictures, or to get a better idea of what they are like.

 

I've seen some women on other dating sites like Match that I'm not a paying member of, so I can't email them, but I can find out their info. I just assumed it would considered "stalker-y" to email them off of the dating site.

[dobbin]

I'm not a fan of e-harmony and let me tell you why. I saw a 3 month promotion and decided to sign up on it for $15 a month. I had to answer all the questions in the questionnaire and bit my tongue to do because how else will they match me up? Needless to say 3 months passed and they did not send me ANY match. That's when I realized they used me and wasted my time. Never been back since and never will go back. What a scam. By the way the other dating sites let you search for potential matches, e-harmony hides their people because THEY want to be in the control seat and milk you for more money and long term membership fees while you play sitting ducks with them.

I don't know how they are still in business.

[Rosti87]

There is a possibility that eHarmony screens people out who are not in the middle of the road. I recall many moons ago that there were complaints that eHarmony 'discriminates' against people who are not conventional in their questionnaires but not sure to what degree.

 

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

[John John]

I was on eHarmony for a while last year. It did land me some dates, but that's about it. My main issue was that I just wasn't attracted to many of the women they sent me. I got on average like 7 new matches a day, but I found myself blocking all of them (it became almost a natural reflex during my morning commute) before I even got the email to go look at them.

 

The only good thing from eHarmony I guess is that, if you do find someone you like/are attracted to (and they feel the same), chances are they're more serious about something meaningful just from being on there. I would consider trying it again...but I feel like it's too expensive for the quality of women they were sending me.

[pl3asehelp]

You're completely defeating the purpose - might as well just use match or pof. Sad thing is, I've known a lot of people who take this even further and hide who they are from potential partners to fool them into thinking they are compatible. Might get you more dates, but thy won't work long term so you lose really.

[pl3asehelp]

I'm not a fan of e-harmony and let me tell you why. I saw a 3 month promotion and decided to sign up on it for $15 a month. I had to answer all the questions in the questionnaire and bit my tongue to do because how else will they match me up? Needless to say 3 months passed and they did not send me ANY match. That's when I realized they used me and wasted my time. Never been back since and never will go back. What a scam. By the way the other dating sites let you search for potential matches, e-harmony hides their people because THEY want to be in the control seat and milk you for more money and long term membership fees while you play sitting ducks with them.

I don't know how they are still in business.

 

It's going right over your head. You should be happy to full out the questionnaire and put much work and effort into it. The more work you put in and the more honest you are, the better your matches are. The reason they match you is because it's not a superficial looks based site where you browse pictures to select someone. Relationships that start that way are usually a waste of time. You're not a psychologist and don't have enormous amount of data to learn what makes relationships work - let them take care of that, that is actually what you are paying for.

[mfan]

I've also changed how I responded to the multiple choice questions (the OKCupid-style questions that are visible on your eHarmony profile). EHarmony's handling of these is very poor and possibly even damaging. Here's what I mean.

 

Like OKCupid, eH has a large collection of multiple-choice questions, of which you can answer as many as you want, and skip any that you don't want to answer. The questions have two, three, or four choices. The questions range from trivial (Do you like to eat ketchup on your macaroni & cheese?) to meaningful (Do you believe in evolution?)

 

When someone views your profile on EH, they see a green circle showing what percentage of the questions you and they answered the same, and a red circle showing what percentage you mismatched on. Users can click the red circle to see exactly which questions were mismatches.

 

My goals were to (a) maximize how much my responses match other users', and (b) to make it easy to tell which important issues I disagree with another user on. Loosely speaking, this means separating the macaroni from the death penalty. It's a lot harder to do this on eHarmony than on OKCupid.

 

OKCupid also lets you assign levels of importance to different questions, so you can make ketchup on macaroni "a little important" and death penalty "very important". You can easily view which important questions you and another user disagreed on. Not so with eHarmony.

 

Also, OKCupid lets you designate several different answers that you'd accept from a partner, but on EH, it's considered a match if you answer the question exactly the same, and a mismatch if you don't. Think about what this means: Suppose the question is "Bowling is..." and the choices are (a) Fun (b) Awesome © Boring (d) OK now and then. If you choose Fun and another user chooses Awesome, this counts as a mismatch and increases the red "mismatch" percentage. Many of eHarmony's questions are defective in this way, having two or more answers that are essentially synonyms, meaning you may be compatible with someone and still mismatch.

 

Lots of eHarmony questions seem to serve no purpose except to bring down your average. For example, a question like "Which of the following four actors do you like the most" (a), (b), ©, (d). There's only about a 25% chance that you'll happen to match another user on this question, and what the heck difference does it make in choosing who you want to date? You're lucky you received any matches who live within 30 miles of you in the first place. You can always ask the person about actors later if you really care.

 

And don't get me started on questions like: "Are you shy? (a) Yes, (b) Sometimes, © A little, (d) No". Just because you're shy doesn't mean you necessarily want a partner who is shy also. So you might mismatch even though you are both perfect for each other.

 

The result is that if you answer a whole bunch of random questions, you'll probably end up matching most other users only about 40% to 50% (because most questions have 3 or 4 choices but usually one choice is off-the-wall so nobody picks it). eHarmony wants people to see the occasional 70% and go "OMG! We both like ketchup on macaroni and we both like spring more than summer and we both think Matt Damon is better than Leonardo DiCaprio! We're soulmates!!!". Meanwhile, most users who view your profile will just see a low number and a few of them might lose interest because of it.

 

So I recommend maximizing your matching percentage with other users by using the following technique:

1. Answer all the questions that have only two choices (e.g. Yes/No; True/False). There aren't that many of these and you can scroll through to find them. These questions guarantee you at least 50%, and usually much higher than that, since many of them are like "Have you ever had an affair?" and most users will answer No. If you think your answer will differ from most other people, feel free to skip the question. It's allowed. Other users have no way to see which questions you were asked but that you declined to answer. They'll probably just assume you haven't seen the question yet.

 

2. Scroll through the 3- and 4- choice questions and answer the ones that have one very obvious answer (provided, of course, that you can truthfully give that answer). For example, "What are your feelings about a menage-a-trois? (a) It's awesome! (b) I like it occasionally, © It's not for me". Answer the question and pick ©; if your answer would have been (a) or (b), skip it.

 

3. Scroll through the other questions and answer those which are very important to you. Not the macaroni or favorite season questions. I mean the serious questions like "Do you believe God talks to people" or "Do you believe in evolution". If you disagree with someone on one of these questions, it will lower your percentage but this will be meaningful. It won't be because you didn't guess the same favorite color that they did.

 

As a result of answering only the questions that are (a) Obvious and (b) Very important to you, you will now get percentages over 50% (sometimes much higher) with almost every other user. And in addition you will have given yourself a special new tool, over and above eH's secret matching algorithm, to find out more about the people you've been matched with. When viewing someone's profile, just click the red circle and it'll show which questions you've both answered but answered differently. This will now consist only of differences on Obvious and Very Important questions (since the macaroni and favorite colors have been eliminated), so you can easily find out if you disagree with someone about the death penalty or about evolution. This helps you better determine whether you want to respond to the person's profile or not.

 

Cheers,-mfan

[pl3asehelp]

You're completely missing the point and attempting to defeat eHarmony's strength. You may think the ketchup and Mac and cheese question is trivial, but I can tell based on that one fact wether I could date that person. If you have no preferences of your own, yeah it's going to be hard to match you with anyone. Designing your answers to get a high volume of matches just mean you can go on lots of bad dates with people you're not compatible with.

 

If you're just looking for volume and not compatibility, eHarmony is not for you.

 

I used it and had tons of great matches and dated very attractive well adjusted women with careers and then married one of them - we have 2 kids now and my wife is absolutely perfect for me.

[mfan]

I've tried it eHarmony's way for two years. Got one date, which happened to be a good quality one. Now I'm going to try it my way for two years, and if I get more than one good quality date within that time period then I'm going to continue doing it my way.

[Sportster2005]

I've never used eHarmony. From what is sounds like they put all the emphasis on compatibility. When you do these questionnaires on dating sites it's for determining compatibility. Compatibility is necessary for a relationship. But attraction is what gets people together in the first place. That's why I don't go on eHarmony. I want to find attractive women, then determine if there is mutual attraction, and then determine compatibility. Personally I think all these personality questionnaires are gimmicks and not really based in a whole lot of science. If they were valid we would see higher success rates on dating sites that use them.

 

As far as the questionnaire goes, it would seem natural that if you are off the bell curve you are going to have fewer options.

[John John]

I've never used eHarmony. From what is sounds like they put all the emphasis on compatibility. When you do these questionnaires on dating sites it's for determining compatibility. Compatibility is necessary for a relationship. But attraction is what gets people together in the first place. That's why I don't go on eHarmony. I want to find attractive women, then determine if there is mutual attraction, and then determine compatibility. Personally I think all these personality questionnaires are gimmicks and not really based in a whole lot of science. If they were valid we would see higher success rates on dating sites that use them.

 

As far as the questionnaire goes, it would seem natural that if you are off the bell curve you are going to have fewer options.

 

 

I agree...this is precisely why I hated eHarmony. I was hardly ever attracted to any of the girls they sent me. I think, over the course of the year I was on it, I went on like 4 dates from that site. All very attractive...two I had no chemistry with (so eHarmomy was wrong here, we weren't compatible), one was just bad timing, and can't remember what happened with the fourth girl. Most days, I just quickly deleted all 7 or so girls they sent me because I wasn't attracted to them at all.

 

I wonder if someone will ever make a dating site that attempts to do what eHarmony does, but also match people based on their "leagues" of physical attraction at the same time. I was once on link removed, but that site is horrible, and I deleted it very soon after. So I guess this site attempted to do that...it's probably too hard to do that, since beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Would probaby be too controversial.

[Realitynut]

I live in Iowa. I guess all the people I'm compatible with live in Texas!

[mfan]

I wonder if someone will ever make a dating site that attempts to do what eHarmony does, but also match people based on their "leagues" of physical attraction at the same time.

OKCupid has a rudimentary "leagues" thing - A-list members can restrict searches to show only people who were rated 5-star, 4-star, or 3-star in physical attractiveness by other members. However, they don't seem to be encouraging members to actually evaluate other members, so this is in its infancy.

[John John]

OKCupid has a rudimentary "leagues" thing - A-list members can restrict searches to show only people who were rated 5-star, 4-star, or 3-star in physical attractiveness by other members. However, they don't seem to be encouraging members to actually evaluate other members, so this is in its infancy.

 

Yeah I remember that, actually. I think if you get enough 4 or 5 star ratings, they start matching you with members of the opposite sex who received similar ratings. I remember getting an email telling me that they bumped me up. But I thought those ratings had to do if they just "liked you" as a person, not just your pics. Who knows?

 

eHarmony clearly doesn't follow anything like that! lol. Everyone I've met who has been on it (all different attraction levels) agrees with me that they were rarely, if ever, physically attracted to any of the matches they received.

[mfan]

Another thing about eHarmony is I'm tired of reading about everyone's grandmothers. One of the questions on the front page of an eH profile is "What person was most influential in your life?". Women go into exhaustive detail about what their grandmother has taught them here. I never realized before how many people's grandmothers were the most influential people in their lives, and quite frankly I don't care! I want to know about you, not your grandmother!