So I've been single now for over a month. And though I hadn't really thought about getting back into the dating game, I was making dinner last night and heard a commercial for eHarmony. After several adorable and perfectly matched couples shared their stories of finding true love via this online matchmaker, the commercial wooed me with, 'Sign up now and check your matches for free!
I like free stuff as much as the next single lady, so I got onto eHarmony, registered and then began filling out THE LONGEST QUESTIONNAIRE of all time: 436 questions that range from things like your religious background to whether you smoke to how clean your room is to whether your mate's physical appearance is important to you, etc. I joked later with my brother (who had also signed up) that I don't think I care enough about who I'm going to date to laboriously answer an almost 500 question survey.
So after 45 minutes of applying random scaled numbers to questions like, 'How in control of your life do you feel?' (there was no negative number options) to, 'Are you a happy person?' (sober?), I finally completed this behemoth and was ready to meet my matches.
Then I get an emotional punch in the gut from eHarmony. After giving almost an hour of my time and energy to this process, I get a message that reads, 'Unable to match you at this time.' Then there's a whole lot of 'it's not you it's me' nonsense and how the service actually won't work for 1 in every 5 users because they 'are so convinced of the importance of creating compatible matches that [they] sometimes choose not to provide service rather than risk an uncertain match.' Wow, thanks eHarmony.
Talk about getting kicked while you're down. I wasn't even outta the 'dating' gates yet and already I'm in last place. I still feel like there's a stigma attached to online dating, and for people who are possibly using this site a last resort to find love, getting rejected by the matchmaker is going make most forlorn singles cry themselves to sleep with a bottle of merlot in hand. Seriously, it was quite a blow to my self-esteem that I'm not fit to date even one of the millions of people registered for their site. (And my dream of starring in one of those tooth-achingly sweet commercial where I dance around a loft and fawn over my new beau has been crushed!)
So why the rejection? Thoughts are mixed. Some say if you list yourself as married or separated or married more than twice, if you're under 20, if you seem mentally or emotionally unstable (based on how you answered certain questions) or seemingly not ready for a long term, committed, monogamous relationship you'll get the big fat R from eHarmony.
I'm not sure where I fit in this list. I'm in my 20s and I've never been married or separated (jury's still out my mental and emotional stability!). But I said I wasn't looking for marriage right away, and that could have been the clincher. But after doing some research, I realized most people who get rejected from eHarmony never really find out why they didn't make the cut.
Ah well, a little rejection on the path to find true love is inevitable, no?
Have you tried eHarmony? Have you been rejected? Do you use online dating sites? And which one do you think is best?
- Vanessa
20 Comments
LEAVE YOUR COMMENT
You must sign in to leave a commentcharacter(s) remaining