If a cow ever got the chance...

It started when C had to go to Utah for work. When he came back he was full of anecdotes about these billboards that are apparently everywhere in Salt Lake City: "They say their eHarmony service has the HIGHEST MARRIAGE RATE of any online dating service! Ewww!" (C has never made a secret about his attitudes toward marriage, which are those of any eight-year-old. That was so mean, but you know, we differ on this point and I have taken a lot of crap from him for my traditionalist stance, the fact that I'm brainwashed by society's expectations. So there.)

So then a couple weeks later I had dinner with a friend who was telling me all about--you guessed it--eHarmony, which has apparently been netting him like three or four dates per week. The concept is that you fill out this giant personality profile and then they do the matching for you based on "29 dimensions of compatibility." You can read the profiles of your customized matches and decide if you want to communicate with them via a gentle series of guided questions like "Name five things you're thankful for."

So, you know, I have had nothing to do at work all week, and is there anyone in this self-absorbed Internet diarist universe who can resist taking free online personality quizzes when they're stumbled upon? Certainly not me. (INFJ, baby, INFJ.)

I start taking the profile and it's HUGE (I will learn later that there are 436 questions). Most of them involve rating your agreement with statements like "I am a generous, giving person" on a scale of 1 ("not at all") to 7 "very". I'm taking the profile and going along and the first thing that starts to worry me is, believe it or not, the founder's picture beaming down at me.

There's something about his well-scrubbed face and greasy smile that's, I don't know, too beatific. Too concerned for my own good. Too much like...

JAMES DOBSON! Founder of evil right-wing fundamentalist organization Focus on the Family. (Today their front page has "suggestions for persuading others about the importance of traditional marriage".)

So I googled them both and sure enough, Neil Clark Warren (the eHarmony founder) regularly makes appearances on Focus on the Family's radio show. They regularly plug each other's books... In other words, eHarmony is a stealth Christian thing! Like Creed! Here's the normal welcome screen and here's an alternate. Maybe C was right all along... And those couples molesting each other are really starting to make my teeth hurt.

But, you know, I've taken half the profile already and I am, despite myself, interested in what the matches will show. So I keep going, realizing that I probably shouldn't have answered 1 to that question that said "Church is a good place to socialize and meet potential partners." I finish the quiz, get my profile.

Despite disturbing sidebar testimonies from previous users like "I couldn't believe the accuracy of my profile! It nailed me to the wall!", I am only mildly impressed. The profile keeps reiterating variations on "You remain rather self-contained in social situations. Some may perceive you as aloof, but it's really caution." Wow, I'm an introvert! They nailed me to the wall too! (Wait, is that a crucifixion image?)

And now the moment of truth, where I click the button to get my matches.

Nothing. No one at all.

It asks me to be patient; they will not match me with someone unless they are sure we are truly compatible blah blah. Not everyone is matched right away. (I no longer have the exact wording, unfortunately.)

Since I am impatient to find my soulmate, I expand the search radius from city, to suburbs, to state, to region. I don't get any matches until I go all the way out to "Anywhere in the World!" (sic). Then I get one in St. Louis, one in D.C., and one in San Diego.

The St. Louis guy has answered the "last book you read" question by saying "the entire left behind series- loved it!!!!" The five things the San Diego guy can't live without are, in order: "air conditioning, TV, food, cell phone, and debit card". I can't live without food either, so we're off to a rockin' start. He also says, in response to the question that asks "What's the first thing someone new would notice about me?", "I can't think of anything someone would notice about me."

The D.C. guy is not completely hopeless--his last book was "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren--but he's one thousand miles away and his responses, although lengthy, are devoid of any sense of humor. I probably shouldn't have kept clicking "1" to all those questions like "I enjoy leaving the house occasionally to socialize with others."

So now it's the next day and I still don't have any matches. And worse, my profile is posted on a right-wing fundamentalist stealth dating site. The embarrassment! I still don't have any work to do either, so I keep googling and learn disturbing facts like these:

eHarmony will only match women with men who are the same height or taller. They admit it flat-out on their website, explaining that "so many women complain if they're set up with shorter men." No, I think it's so I'll be able to look up to my husband. When I was telling C and DNR about it, I made a hilarious off-color joke about this, but they didn't seem to think it was funny so I won't repeat it here, sorry.

eHarmony's services are only available to heterosexuals. Again, from their FAQ: "eHarmony does not offer same sex matching services. We're sorry if the placement of recent advertising led you to believe that we offer this service. eHarmony's matching system is designed to match highly compatible men and women who are seeking a successful long-term relationship. Our ongoing research has examined thousands of married couples to determine what factors predict the greatest degree of success in the marriage relationship. Based on over 35 years of clinical practice and empirical study, eHarmony has discovered what similarities and differences between men and women lead to their most successful unions. This unprecedented research into compatibility has been conducted with the goal of lowering the rate of unsuccessful marriages and divorce by providing singles with a tool for finding truly compatible matches with whom to pursue a relationship. With this goal in mind, eHarmony's research has only examined heterosexual relationships."

Polite, but I get the picture. As an open-minded Kinsey 1 (not a zero), this makes me very sad. What if my soulmate is a chick? It is--at the very least--possible.

And on a less selfish and more serious note, this is icky. Why would I want to associate myself with a website that doesn't welcome everyone? It would be like being white in the deep South and taking a black friend to Cracker Barrel. Or going to the whites-only prom. Sorry that both these examples are black/white when there are so many other forms of discrimination, but maybe it's not that inappropriate. I firmly believe that gay marriage is a civil-rights issue, and I don't want to be on the wrong side of it, either through words or through actions (such as giving money to eHarmony. The profile and initial matching is free.).

And I'm not bitter that eHarmony thinks I'm unmatchable. (Okay, maybe a little, but that's not why I'm writing all this.) Mostly I think it's funny. Hey, maybe I should start an eHarmony rejects club. If you want to date an overweight, sarcastic, semi-depressed semi-vegan with unrealized poetic ambitions, an incestuous but loving ex-boyfriend, and higher self-esteem than this sentence would indicate, come on down! You know where to find me. Sort of.

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