e-Harmony… e-Heaven or e-Hell?
Last year about this time I was on a Song of Solomon trip with Tom Nelson. (Oops, did you trip over that name I just dropped? Sorry…) While at this conference I am surrounded by young, single, attractive college co-eds just looking to get married. Unfortunately, I live in Texas and the conference was in Ohio. Insert frown here.
Well, after the conference we go and eat at this hole-in-the-wall pizza joint that is in an old one story house with hardwood floors – very Mellow Mushroom meets Little House on the Prarie. While enjoying cheesy breadsticks and pepperoni pizza with garlic butter dipping sauce Tom Nelson and Michael Armstrong start talking about E-Harmony. Well, I am a single guy at a Love, Sex, and Marriage Conference and so my ears perked up like a dogs when he hears the doorbell ring. I imagine that the girl at the door has a great big smile, white teeth, thick hair, long legs, and an enormous purse- because ladies I like to spend money!!! For real though, I am sitting there feeling unambiguously single and so I make a mental note to check out this E-Harmony. Tom says he just married two couples that met on E-Harmony so what is the worst that could happen? Well, let ME tell you….
Online dating is dangerous. You get set up with these people that are supposed to be matched to you on a gazillion different levels. You talk to them, and you rarely find anyone that you really like (or find attractive), and the ones that you do, they don’t like you back. The crazy thing is that I thought I was through with this online dating thing, and I think I am, but a year later after I took this girl out taht I met on E-Harmony- I still find myself thinking about her. Why? Is it because I like girls that play hard to get, or is it because she fit 8 out of 10 of my requirements for marriage? She "just wanted to be friends". The other girls I met on E-Harmony were either very aggressive or ugly. There, I said it, ugly. One girl had a new born that looked like she had literally just pulled it from her womb and then took a picture of herself with this newborn next to her face. Gray sweats, fried blonde hair, and a face that looked like she had just gotten an acid peel completed her look. And then there was the girl that I took out that sang songs in the car like with baby talk, and the girl that kept emailing me wanting to get together immediately... I could go on and on and on.
Now, I am not the only one that has had some bad experiences with E-Harmony. A good friend of mine found many girls that he was interested in, and some of them just wanted to get married immediately. Some of them didn't look at all like their pictures, and some of them were just plain weird. I have heard other horror stories from others but I promised them that I wouldn't post them.
So you tell me... if you have tried e-harmony was it e-Heaven or e-Hell?
22 Comments:
I have to say that I never tried e-Harmony. I think all online dating websites are kind of a hit and miss thing, just like meeting someone out or in school or whatever. You may have a few things in common, but it will take a lot of errors to find the perfect one. I personally put my profile on Match.com a few years ago when it was free (not sure if it still is or not) and accepted e-mails from people but never went looking on there myself. Got some weirdos that e-mailed me, and found one that seemed pretty cute, pretty nice, and pretty normal. So I agreed to meet him.....Three years later, he is now my husband! I believe that ours was divine intervention on some sort though considering he had just given up on the online dating thing and I was the last girl he ever tried to contact and I was giving up hope of finding anyone normal too. ;) So I have to say that it's possible, but it just depends on if you get lucky enough to find the right one. Just be selective, just like you would be in real life and you never know what you might find! :)
Oooh..you went there didn't you. (Ugly.) I think the whole online dating things ounds really awkward to me. I met my hubby over a plate of pancakes at college...good stuff. The hubby, I mean. (Pancakes were good too...)LOL.
eddie. i have never tried eHarmony. i have met someone from online before. i think that was way before eHarmony ever existed. we ended up dating for a couple of months. at first he was normal, but i quickly learned that it was a show. really, he was psycho.
and by psycho, i mean physically abusive. and as you can imagine, i didn't stick around for long.
"One girl had a new born that looked like she had literally just pulled it from her womb and then took a picture of herself with this newborn next to her face."
My eyes are watering I am laughing so hard! :)
My Brother inlaw met his current girlfriend on E Harmony and so far, it seems to be going okay. Keep ya posted.
Yes, Ben, Please keep me posted because I just saw my cousin's children and they were so cute that I decided I wanted to have kids immediately, but I sort of need a wife first... and one that wants to have lots of kids...
and she not only needs to want to have lots of kids, BUT SHE NEEDS TO WANT TO HAVE THEM IMMEDIATELY.
put THAT in your eHarmony profile. ;)
OMW - I just looked through my archives and I found this post that was almost a year to the day that I closed my E-Harmony account and reading it I kept thinking, "Did I write this?" Man I have changed a lot in a year... for the better people, FOR THE BETTER!!!!
http://www.postednote.com/archive/2004_03_01_notearchive.html
Click Here
Okay, the other link was too long and it just got cut off, so here it is again in case you are sumo bored...
I have a friend who is about to marry a guy she met on e-harmony. But, for some unexplained reason, hardly any of her friends have met him yet (not sure what that's about). I just discovered your blog (you and I signed up for bloglinker within minutes of each other--could be indicative of harmony--but I'm already married with offspring). Liking your blog and looking forward to exploring your archives (uhhhh, not to be overly bold on our first meeting).
Well, I've been trying the on-line thing lately too, but only on Match. It's way cheaper than e-harmony and you actually get to see some pictures. I figure I'm a pretty good judge of character, so I don't necessarily need 39-point matching. Just a few emails and maybe a phone call. Has it worked? I don't know. I've been busy as crap talking to about 5 different girls though. Oh, and I have a second date with a former Miss Teen America/runner up Miss Oklahoma tonight.
bloglinker! eddie! i recently signed up for that, too. except i can't decide whether i like it or not. and im not sure if i want to implement it on my site.
lately i've been reading Tequila Mockingbird, and she has it. but the fact that she has it has nothing to do with me reading her blog. i just think she's a good read. :)
i'm not positive yet, but i think she changes her masthead EVERY DAY. can you imagine the drama i would go through if i did that? roger and i would have to employ you. except we couldn't afford to pay you, so we'd just let you live rent-free in our 2nd bedroom, and you could eat meatballs whenever you wanted.
seriously.
who are you, anonymous?
nosy people want to know.
MEL! How did I miss that you and Austin met online? Is my long-term memory THAT bad? Or have you not told me this? Anyway, Eddo, to answer your question, e-Harmony=e-Hell. SERIOUSLY. I used it for a while, and actually had two relationships with guys I met on there. The first one cheated on me with 7, yes SEVEN, other girls, and the second one was, well, let's just say NOT MENTALLY STABLE. Unfortunately, that one met up with some of my friends at a later date, and showed his mental unstableness to them as well when he tried to talk to them about how I was psycho. Hmm. Ok. WHATEVER, DUDE. However, I met my husband online through a different, not as well know Christian dating service, and he is the PERFECT match for me. I will agree with Mel, though, I think it's pretty much like real life: not everybody you meet is going to be a match. You still have to weed through them. But, e-Harmony is a joke (in my personal, highly-regarded opinion). :)
Amanda, you are not crazy. I don't think I've mentioned it before particularly. Not even all my friends & family know about that mostly because they would probably flip out because they wouldn't understand that it is now a viable way to meet people (although it can be scary too I'm sure - Austin tells me stories about other girls he met and theose traumatic experiences). So I don't bring it up all the time but feel comfortable in letting you all know :)
dag/twisteduterus here
I was a member of ehell for one month and never met anyone. I was also a member of UDATE for 3 months. That was the worst-i won't go into that here though. Part of the issue of online dating for me is distance, I live in a a small town.
I casually play around on a few other online dating sites as a non-paying member and have met a few people but it never went anywhere. maybe it is me, maybe not.
for a woman is does help if you are externally pretty and thin. I think the fact that I am not thin, and I am honest about it on my profile, it turns people away. put the word overweight or a few extra pounds in your profile and images of jabba the hut come into mind, not someone who goes to the gym regularlly or is active.
Perhaps in a larger city it works better. the male demographics in a small town are different, i am more educated than most of them, can support myself and really have no interest in NASCAR-so the number of men interested in me are slim.
so, guess i am not sure if the online thing is good or not..sometimes it is better to see the whole person, not just who is behind the screen.
just my 2 cents
dag/tu
I have never tried it, but an older couple at my Church meet through it and they could not bee a more perfect match. The bad both been divorced and she actually lived in California. The did the long distance thing for a long time and then they got married and she moved here. Because of their testimony I have thought about trying it. Who knows, maybe I will give it a go someday.
I'm a youngin' so e-harmony refused to even match me with people, they won't until you are 21 because then you are more likely to actually sign a marriage license. *shrugs* I liked the idea of a place where people wanted more than a person to have a one night stand or three. I met my boyfriend of a year on another smaller dating site for people just in Las Vegas. I signed up and used it for a week, messaged him, and then forgot for over a month...realized he responded and felt like an ass. We exchanged e-mails, and then talked on the phone and finally met. It was luck, I have had bad experiances with people i've dated online as well, it's just like meeting people in a bar..MOST you are not going to hit it off with, you may find a quality person in the mix but it's not guaranteed.
I've never tried E-Harmony, but my best friend met her husband online and they've been married for close to 5 years now.
I really don't understand what e-Harmony purports to offer. I was a member for three months 2 1/2 years ago. The application seemed like an endless process. Make sure you have milk, bread and toilet paper on hand before you start that thing because you are in for the long haul. In the end, the people I was in mutual contact with were people I had absolutely nothing in commmon with whatsoever. Case in point: I am a middle aged person made the apparent mistake of indicating that I strongly valued my positive relationship with my teenage son. This simple statement translated into my being a "family" person. So I was contacted by a minister with a very young child to raise on his own. I was also contacted by a man who said he spent most of his free time with his family, and he was glad to know I valued family above all else. Hello?!! I don't see how my positive relationship with my own kid means that I want to adopt and care for the family of another. Am I missing something here? In short, the more you can write to someone very openly and honestly, the better. The psychological profile I took for e-Harmony was meaningless and did not pair me with people I even wanted to meet once. Try Match, Matchmaker and Yahoo and post a recent picture. I have met reasonable people through all three, but alas, no soulmate.
I know one person who tried e-harmony and met her husband on there and have been married for a little over a year and recently had their first child. I have tried it and am going to meet someone soon I met over it. Mainly tried it because I was at a recent wedding of some neighbors and was talking about the facade I have seen with many women in much of the church single area where you would get aparent intrest and then they would just give you the just want to be friend thing. Thus someone suggested trying e-harmnoy. I am sure like anything there are hits and misses. As far as psychos I knew someone met someone at church got engaged and then found them to be abusive. I known even people who met at church would find the other person to be abusive or wind up not being faithful. I think the key thing is getting to know someone what their goals are and what type of person. Plus there are lot of option out their but as someone once pointed out to me if you are not willing to be directed by God it does not matter where you meet.
Wow, nice point Anon, that last line of your post was right on. E-Harmony does indeed work for some people and that is cool, the main thing is trusting God for direction in all areas of your life.
That's a great story. Waiting for more. film editing schools
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