Slow and steady is NOT my strong suit

Sunday night, while Stacy was sitting on my couch,  I was completing my profile to join eHarmony. I have a friend who married someone she met on EH (waving at you, Carole), so I had always leaned toward it.

There are some basic differences between Match and eHarmony. If you join Match.com, you are given access to the entire database, which you search using whatever parameters you choose - age, location, smoking/drinking habits, income, education, etc. If you don't like the matches you see, then you can search another way, instantly. EHarmony is different. They send you a limited number of people that they have "matched" to you, according to the personality profile. You have some control over other parameters (distance, age, etc.), but you can't search yourself. And they only send matches once a day.

So I hit "Send" on the credit card info Sunday night, and immediately got my first 9 matches. Two of the initial matches were from Arkansas - and one of them was someone Stacy knew! I tell you, it was a really freaky night for coincidences on the ol' couch Sunday night (but Stacy's adventures are chronicled elsewhere). I requested more matches and got 9 new ones. Before morning I had two more, and a couple had sent me questions, which is stage 1 of the eHarmony "guided" (read that as "heavily controlled") communication. Oh, boy, here we go!

There was just one tiny glitch, so I called eHarmony Monday mid-morning to straighten it out. [note: They have just about the pleasantest customer service I've EVER encountered!] They fixed it, but it meant closing and re-opening my account, which would "close" all matches. In eH vocabulary, "closing" means essentially the same as blocking - it takes them off your list, and you off theirs, and there is no way to communicate after that. I went from 20 matches to 0.

Remember what I said about them sending matches once a day? That time is usually between 8:00 and 9:00 am every day, so Monday was pretty much a waste. I got my first 7 matches on Tuesday, and 7 more every day since. It was Thursday before I had the same number of matches that I had Sunday night! This would be an abundance of men, especially after my last 5 years, if they were all great matches. Um. No. One day out of the 7 matches I was sent, only 2 had completed their profile to the point of adding pictures.

[A note about eHarmony. They try to make this as safe as possible. They encourage their subscribers to use their "guided communication" process, which takes time. It involves 3 rounds of communicating with their help, after which you have access to the anonymous emailing system. The 3 rounds are 1) getting to know you, with multiple choice questions. You select 5 from a list of nearly 60 questions for your match to answer. I've just learned you can even write your own multiple choice answers for these questions. Hmm. And, since I haven't had one of these answered, I don't know if they get to question me back. 2) "Must Have's" and "Can't Stands."Again, these are selected from provided lists. I have 10 of each selected, to be exchanged for his lists. I hope "liberal" isn't on the Can't Stand list. :) 3) Learning more - involves sending 3 open-ended questions, to be answered in the person's own words. If you get through all this, you can move to emailing. Or, you can send a request from the beginning to just start emailing - they have to agree. There is even a secure call system (which I subscribed to - I can hear my mother in my head, warning me to be careful) which forwards to your phone without revealing your number. What I can't yet figure out is if everyone buys into this very structured system, or if they all think it's rather dumb. I'm such a rule-follower that I'm trying it the eHarmony way first. We'll see how it turns out.]

Again, I'm so glad I have Stacy as my online dating mentor. A quick strategy session on Tuesday and I had my assignment: to make some sort of contact (send a smile, questions, or a request to email) to at least one match per day, and close at least one match a day (practice having high standards).

Stacy actually signed up on an eHarmony trial over a month ago, but just subscribed Sunday. So she had a LOT of matches waiting for her (including Justin). With me, it's much slower. I've sent out a few smiles and messages, but so far no replies. There was a doctor in Conway who looked like a younger

Mr. Rogers (update: he closed me last night. As Stacy says, "Next!"). There's a nice head of salt-n-pepper hair with a motorcycle over in Broken Arrow. There's a music teacher (plays sax?) in Texas. They are out there, but making contact is much slower than on Match. I still think eHarmony is the site for me. I'm just having to find some things to fill my time. Time to tackle all the stuff piled on my dining table! And truthfully, messaging one and closing one a day still leaves 5 every day just languishing. Cordelia knows the state of my email inbox - I just let things gather. Maybe the weekend will be time for clearing out some extra matches. I'm getting better at seeing which profiles stand out to me, and which just didn't seem to put much effort in.

So I've got some housekeeping to do - online and in the real world. And besides, it's after 9. Got to go see about today's matches. When I actually make contact with a real, live male I'll let you know!