How eFfective is eHarmony?

Name: www.eHarmony.com
What it is: On-line dating site
Cost: $59.95 for one month
$36.95 per month for three months (billed in one installment of $110.85)
$28.95 per month for six months (billed in one installment of $173.70)
$20.95 per month for 12 months (billed in one installment of $251.40)
Random fact: According to a Harris Interactive study from the fall of 2005 and posted on eHarmony’s web site, on average 90 eHarmony members get married every day.

The scoop: To be honest, I had heard some negative things about eHarmony -- that it’s hard to cancel your subscription, that you tend to get matched with much older singles who live far away, etc. But a friend’s mom met someone really nice through the site, and then I got an offer I couldn’t refuse (which has since expired, or I’d share it with you) -- three months for the price of one. So I thought, why not?

eHarmony asks you a ton of questions about yourself and what you want, and I mean a TON – it took me over an hour to get set up. But then they e-mail you the people they think would be a good match for you, based on what you’ve said (you can stipulate that you only want to meet people within a certain distance of where you live, for example), along with the “proven personality profile” and their patented Compatibility Matching System™ . You have to roll your eyes through some of this stuff, but I have to say, it’s refreshing to have matches just e-mailed to you. Searching for guys on Match.com (review coming soon!) was so time-consuming and excruciating after a while. The down side is that sometimes you’ll log into eHarmony and have several “closed” messages from guys you didn’t even know were considering you. Rejected already! But it’s not like you even knew they existed before, which takes (most of) the sting out of it.

When I first signed up I thought it would take forever to meet anyone in person, because they put you through so many steps until you can actually exchange contact information -- you have to send a set of multiple choice questions to each other and answer them; exchange your “must haves/can’t stands” lists (um, doesn’t everyone list “rudeness” and “poor hygiene” as “can’t stands”??); exchange short answer questions; and finally you get to freely e-mail each other. You can bypass all this by choosing to go “FastTrack” with a particular match and e-mail each other through the site right away, but you both have to agree to do this.

My date: But surprisingly, it was only two weeks and five days from the first day of my subscription to my first real date, which is actually pretty good. Even on Match, I found you can e-mail a guy forever until he finally asks you out (if he ever does).

We’ll call my date The Great Debater. He’s 36 (a year older than I am), moved here from India when he was 16, and is some sort of computer consultant. (Computers apparently need a lot of consultation, judging by the number of computer consultants I’ve met.) We met by the clock at Grand Central Terminal. He was cute, and seemed nice. He treated me to hot chocolate from Starbucks and got a cup of coffee for himself, but that particular Starbucks only had two seats, both taken, so we ended up sitting on a bench in the terminal, watching passers-by and talking for an hour and a half. Unfortunately, pretty soon our conversation degenerated into a political debate about whether people only making minimum wage, doing poorly-paid but much-needed jobs (like scrubbing toilets) should be “allowed” to have kids, considering how hard it would be financially. I like discussing politics, and it can be really educational to talk to someone from a different viewpoint, but it’s not like I have a Ph.D. in this stuff, and after a while my head hurt. But he kept going on and on, and of course he’s a Republican who voted for Bush. In one of the most liberal cities in the country, I always seem to meet the Republicans! Why didn’t their patented Compatibility Matching System™ catch that?? When he wouldn’t stop talking I finally had to put my hands over my ears and say, “No more! No more!”

Then he did stop and apologize (“Here we were supposed to be discerning if we could be each other’s life partners, and all we did was talk politics!”), but we really had nothing more to say to each other after that.

“Well, you can always use another friend, right?” The Great Debater said as we shook hands good-bye.

I said yes.

And then I went home and added “no Republicans, please,” to my eHarmony profile.