How we met on eHarmony

Trisha: I never thought I would be a widow with a seven-month-old baby at 26 years of age. Lonely and desiring someone to share a life and family with, I gradually entered a very different dating scene than I had departed from before I got married six years prior.

Dating wasn’t near as much fun the second time around. This time I had to be concerned with finding someone who would not only love me, but also my son. I wanted to find someone who would gladly accept the position of both husband and Daddy.

There were a number of websites I turned to in order to meet people… and meet people, I did. There were some real characters in the mix. I met men who were half-drunk before the date even began. I met men who thought the perfect date was taking a woman to a car show and explaining every detail of every car to her. I became a pro at ditching out of a date early. (Having a son who I needed to be picked up before too late definitely worked in my favor.) After trying other websites, I eventually decided to try eHarmony.

Luke: It was June 4, 2007. I was sitting at home feeling lonely and pathetic, thinking about my friends who were at home snuggling with their wives while I was falling asleep to Conan O’Brien for the umpteenth time. The day before I had spoken to another single friend, Amanda, about how she recently got on eHarmony. The whole idea of Internet dating really didn’t appeal to me. But I had to face the facts: I was 28; the dating pool had been progressively drying up since college; and I was living in the 21st century. It was time to see what eHarmony was all about.

Trisha: I’d heard the accolades of eHarmony’s profiling system and even knew a few couples who had met on eHarmony. When I signed up I didn’t get a whole lot of matches, and even when I did, communication never progressed very far with the guys I met. Weary of dating, and pessimistic that I’d ever meet anyone on eHarmony, by June 2007 I was ready to let my subscription run out.

Luke: Filling out information for a profile on eHarmony is like applying to be an astronaut for NASA. They leave no stone unturned. eHarmony wants to know everything…well, not everything, but a lot anyway. I think it took me about two hours to fill out all their self-assessment information. They asked about personal beliefs, relationship values, personal interests, communication style, and half a dozen more things. But right away my work paid off, and soon I was looking at profile pictures of real, available women. Jackpot.

Trisha: With less than a week left on my subscription, I had a new match who had begun communication with me. This dude looked pretty interesting… well as much as one can tell from a short profile. I decided to respond, but wasn’t too hopeful considering how all of my other eHarmony matches had turned out. But we progressed very quickly through the communication stages and in just a couple of days reached “open communication.”

Luke: eHarmony had me jumping through a number of hoops before I could reach open communication with Trisha.

• eHarmony first asks you to send a list of “closed-ended questions.” This is just a series of multiple choice questions that help you to weed out people who are obviously wrong matches. Trisha sent me her questions, too. I don’t remember what the questions were but I must have answered alright.
• Next you move to step 2: trading your “must haves” and “can’t stands” lists. These are lists you create when we signed up for eHarmony. They basically give you a long list of truly deplorable qualities and ask you to pick 10 you couldn’t stand being around. Then they give you an equally long list of stellar qualities and ask you to choose 10 you simply must have in the person you date.
• If you both like the must-haves and can’t-stands lists, then you move to step 3: trading lists of open-ended questions. You trade questions and answer them more thoroughly.
• Finally, if all goes well, you move to step 4: the match is opened and you can send personal messages to each other.

Trisha: The first message from Luke was a request to talk more on the phone. I was relieved to see this message. You see, I had sent e-mail messages back and forth for months with a number of different men ad nauseam only to finally talk on the phone and realize we didn’t mesh so well after all. It was good this guy wasn’t messing around!

To Be Continued… 

See Part II of our story here From eHarmony to First Date