Online dating, chapter 13: eHarmony. Again.

My last post was in July, and it was my final post about our trip (in April) to Taiwan. Since then I’ve been training for a half marathon, going to CrossFit three times a week, stressing out about my job, and freelancing like a madwoman.

Then came Saturday. I was bored, for some reason. I’d gotten a lot done around my apartment and was goofing off online. Then I landed on eHarmony. Then I discovered my old profile – from Austin — from 2009. And then I saw that it was $26.85 for three months. Compare that to $63.93 for three months over at Match.

Click. Click. Boom. I’m now on eHarmony. Again.

The first thing I noticed about EH is that the website design is beautiful. I was blown away by it. Compared to Match, EH is a UX/graphic designer’s dream. Match is a bunch of tabs and white space. And where the photos on Match seem like an afterthought, EH makes them important and easy to see.

Good job, EH. Color me impressed.

I went through my old open-ended answers and redid most of them. For example:

“What is the most important quality that you are looking for in another person?”

(Hey, EH, since you only allow heterosexual matches, it’d be super simple to code that so it asked what I was looking for “in a man”. But that’s neither here nor there.)

With my answer, I wanted to make sure four elements were clear.

1. I want to be with someone who loves to travel. This is fairly non-negotiable.
2. He’s got to have a sense of humor. I need to laugh, and I don’t want to be the funniest one in the relationship. Since I’m not that funny, you’d think this would be a lot easier to find.
3. I also want to date a man who can handle my independence and be strong enough to take care of me anyway. No pushovers and no, as my dad calls them, titty-babies. (He’s a shrink, so that qualifies as a technical term.)
4. Finally, I really want to be with someone who will be active with me. Men who are active are sexy. I don’t care if you do CrossFit, surf, snowboard, go rockclimbing, or do triathlons. Meow.

There have been a few conversations so far, and I seem to be a minister magnet. In fact, most men I’m being matched with are passionate Christians who don’t really seem to agree with me that God has a sense of humor.

The first form of communication on EH is “5 closed-ended questions”. Five multiple-choice questions you choose from a list of 50 (estimate) to shoot to one another. From G, a guy who seemed cool until he told me to call him and sent over his phone number (nope):

Do you enjoy being alone?

How do you feel about relocating for a relationship?

When in a relationship, are you a jealous person?

How do you feel about premarital sex?

How would you assess your verbal intimacy skills?

To him, and the other two guys who contacted me, I replied with these questions:

Your idea of adventure is:

What kind of exercise do you prefer?

Realizing that labels are imperfect, do you consider yourself a dominant person in your personal life?

What’s your philosophy on travel?

What is your opinion on your mate having opposite sex friendships?

One guy told me his favorite exercise was taking walks. G’s idea of adventure was “HEY CALL ME!”. One guy asked if I’d be willing to relocate to Fort Worth to be with him.

I haven’t turned anyone down yet, even with some of the stupid answers I’ve gotten. But I’m not desperate, and I don’t have my wedding planned, and I don’t hear any clocks ticking. I’m not going to date someone if it’s going to waste my time and/or his. My Online Dating Miyagi, Meliana, tells me to be strict and careful, and since she married someone she met online, and she’s been married (and living in Hawaii, terrible life) for a while now, I trust her.

So here we go. Online dating. Again. I have until January 11, 2015, to become an “eHarmony Success Story”.