eHarmony Review — A Man’s Perspective

So a while back, I decided to try playing the online dating field yet again.  I’m not really a big fan of online dating because I feel there is a lot of signal to noise ratio (ie:  You meet a lot of chicks through it, but most of them aren’t worth your trouble), and I’ve always been more successful in meeting women in person, and THEN dating them.  This could be because I’m not a very good looking guy, and online dating is so dependent on pictures, whereas in-field meetings allow my personality to shine through.

(What can I say?  I’m a charming dude.  =)

So anyway, I was kind of tired of Match.com and Yahoo! Personals, and MySpace was a little bit too played out, so I decided to check out eHarmony.  The big hook (supposedly) for eHarmony was that you get matches tailored just for you, so that chances for success in dating were increased dramatically.

Now, anyone who’s done online dating knows that the worst part is setting up your profile and crap like that.  It’s annoying and time consuming!  But if you think that’s bad, try signing up for eHarmony!  Not only do you have to take a long personality test, but then you have to go into your profile and answer a bunch of pre-set questions which will appear to your matches.  There just seemed to be pages and pages of stuff you had to fill out.  I got bored easily, and it took me the better part of two weeks to finish the whole damn thing.

Another annoying factor about eHarmony is that you aren’t allowed to browse other people’s profiles, like you can on Match.com or Yahoo.  Instead, matches are assigned to you based on compatitbility.

Now, this may “sound” like a good thing, until you actually start checking out the matches and seeing that a good 98% are UGLY women.

And I’m not talking about “plain” or “somewhat cute” here.  I’m talking about UGLY.  As in fat, buck-toothed, mildly retarded looking women.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some decent ones in the bunch (and a handful of hotties) but for the most part the vast majority of girls on eHarmony were not only beaten with the ugly stick, they were RAPED with it.  (This all, of course, assumes eHarmony didn’t judge my personality to be partial to ugly women, but I digress…)

It would seem that eHarmony just tends to attract the homlier sort of women, due to it’s promise of “true love based on personality,” which is an Oprah Watcher’s dream.  So not being able to search through the database of subscribers and seeing what the site has to offer is a big drawback in my opinion, because you could easily get stuck with a bunch of “perfect matches” you have absolutley no interest in!

But as though that wasn’t bad enough, you’re not allowed to start communicating with your matches right away.  Instead you have to go through a series of steps to start communicating with them.

This involves sending them a series of pre-selected questions they have to answer.  Then they send you questions.  Then you send them your “Don’t likes and must haves.”  Then they send you yours.  Then you send them more generic pre-set questions.  And on and on it goes.

And if you get ALL the way through that, THEN you can start “open communication.”

I guess this is eHarmony’s way of easing you into talking with each other, and allowing you to screen the other person more effectively.  However, when it comes to online dating, the only things I really care about is:

1.  How the girl looks in her pictures
2.  How they interact with me on the phone.

Because let’s face it, until you actually TALK to the girl, you have no idea if you two are gonna click or not — no matter how many emails you exchange.

When I date online, I want to send the girl some fantastic emails FAST to demonstrate my personality, and get her on the phone quickly to lock her in and set up a date.  eHarmony makes that IMPOSSIBLE.  I actually had maybe 2-3 good looking girls in My Matches page, but I lost them all because of their clunky forced communication process, whereas had I been able to email them straight away, I might have had a chance.

Not only that, but eHarmony only allows a minimum match radius of 30 miles from where you live, so you’re getting matches from girls who are really freakin’ far away!  Living in LA, a five mile jaunt can take up to an hour to drive.  Can you imagine how long a 30 mile commute would be?  Definitely a problem there.

Over all, I’d say that eHarmony is one of the WORST dating sites for guys out there.  Personally, I think that company is kept afloat by a gaggle of desperate, ugly women who struck out on all the other dating sites out there.  If you’re looking to get some quality results with online dating, go for a site that gives you more freedom and better search quality, like Match or Yahoo.

And if you don’t want to pay for it, stick to MySpace.