Stop Whining About EHarmony.com

A clinical psychologist spends decades counseling both-sex couples and learning why relationships fail and why they last, and what makes happy marriages happy. He figures out how to determine if a man and woman are compatible with each other in ways that will likely result in a happy, lasting relationship. He wants to increase marital happiness, reduce the divorce rate, and thereby help individuals, their children, their extended families, and thereby society as a whole.

He sees a business opportunity, and he takes what he has learned and modern day technology and launches EHarmony.com. Good for him, right?

It is a voluntary service that people have to log on to and pay to use. Nobody is obligated to use it, and there are many alternative online and offline services.

Yet this hasn’t stopped people from complaining and suing. The complaints and lawsuits are usually about what eHarmony.com isn’t, which is funny because it doesn’t claim to be those things in the first place.

It is a site dedicated to matching people based on their likelihood of entering into and maintaining happy, lasting marriages. It isn’t a “dating” site.

To determine if people are ready for such a relationship and with whom they’d be compatible, eHarmony has people fill answer an extensive list of questions to form and deliver a personality profile. The length and depth of the questioning is set up to smoke out people aren’t really serious or patient enough, may not know themselves well enough, may be misrepresenting themselves (intentionally or not), aren’t mature enough, or have some other emotional condition or character trait that renders them unlikely to be a good marriage partner. EHarmony does not take money from those people, because the people running the service do not think they will be able to successfully help those people find a lasting relationship. Such applicants are told that the site would be unlikely to find them partner. EHarmony also “rejects” people who are currently married, are “too young”, or have been divorced enough times to make another divorce likely.

There are people who are paranoid enough to believe that eHarmony “rejected” them because of their beliefs about religion or their weight, but there are at least thousands of eHarmony.com customers who can demonstrate that not to be true.

I find it curious when people balk at the results of the personality profile, get angry when eHarmony won’t take their money, or complain that they are consistently matched with losers. All of these things are a result of what someone has indicated about themselves. They only have themselves to blame.

Perhaps the most bitter attack against eHarmony.com is that it currently will only match people with someone from the other sex. A lawsuit was filed in California by a woman who was seeking to be matched with a woman. It is true that there are many, many services that already do this. However, none of them are based on the research and experience of Dr. Neil Clark Warren. Apparently, activists such as the one who filed this lawsuit really admire Dr. Warren’s matching abilities, which is interesting considering they usually are quick to bash his convictions as an evangelical Christian and his earlier ties to Focus on the Family. It seems these activists want it both ways – they want to benefit from Warren’s research while condemning the principles behind it.

Thanks to the Federal civil rights laws, businesses do not have the freedom to refuse to exchange goods/services/money with another party simply based on factors like race. You could have started the business with your own personal savings, built it from the ground up, etc., but you don’t have the freedom to choose to only serve certain races and exclude others. (And yes, this supposedly means that if you are “white” and a “black” business refuses to serve you because you are white, you can sue them.) In California, “sexual orientation” is one of those categories where it is illegal to discriminate. You can’t refuse to serve someone because he or she is a homosexual.

That is the law. I’d argue that everyone should have the freedom to hire, fire, and do business or not with whomever they want for whatever reason. If a woman only wants to work with women, she should be allowed to hire only women. If she only wants women as customers, she should be allowed to make that restriction. If she doesn’t want my money because I’m male, then she loses out when I take my money elsewhere. But, we must deal with the laws as they are, not as we want them to be.

I’d argue that eHarmony is not refusing service to anyone based on their sexual orientation. Any woman, regardless of sexual orientation, can take the personality profile and be matched with men – provided she isn’t excluded for the things I mentioned above, like being divorced too many times. If you’re a woman and you don’t want to be matched with a man, then eHarmony is not for you. I wouldn’t go to the Olive Garden and demand that they serve me Mexican food, or sell me footballs. You may not want to be matched with a man, but why is that eHarmony.com's responsibility? It is a voluntary subscription for a non-essential service.

Dr. Warren has pointed out that his decades of research has been with both-sex couples, and so he doesn’t have the experience to match up men with men and women with women. The critics have balked at this, howling and shrieking at his assertion that there could be any difference in the dynamic within the sexes and the dynamic between the sexes. I find this puzzling, because almost none of these critics are bisexual, so clearly they know there is a difference. Men and women are different, and that makes the dynamic between them different than it is between two men and two women. If this wasn’t true, then gay people could easily choose to be straight.

The lesbian can’t have it both ways. Either men and women are different and she is attracted to women and not to men, or there is no difference and therefore she should be attracted to both, and thereby eHarmony matching her with a man should not be a problem for her. But there is a difference, and eHarmony.com’s matching criteria is based on the dynamic between a man and a woman, and thus wouldn’t work it matching a man with a man or a woman with a woman.

Some people assert that the only difference is in body parts, but this doesn’t past muster, either. Is a lesbian really a lesbian only because she prefers vaginas to penises? Such an assertion is ridiculously simplistic, especially considering the use of phallic toys by some lesbians.

Rather than cursing the darkness, why not light a candle? Counselors and psychologists who specialize in counseling same-sex couples should build up, collect, and analyze research about such couples who have happily lasted, and figure out what has made their relationship work. Then, they can take that research, and start their own service. Maybe eHarmony.com would be willing to license its technologies to such a business or launch the service itself. Or is the lawsuit really just about trying to tear down a business because they’re selling chicken when you’re in the mood for tuna?

EHarmony.com has been successful enough that other matchmaking and dating sites compare and contrast themselves to eHarmony. Match.com’s Chemistry.com has gone so far as to appeal to the “rejects” from eHarmony. Great. Go to Chemistry.com if want someone who is already married, or has been divorced a few times already, or is too young or immature to get married, or has some other challenge to having a happy marriage with you. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

Finally, there are the people who simply don’t like the eHarmony.com ads with their happy couples and Dr. Warren. I don’t know - maybe they are lonely and bitter, or maybe they’d rather see a teen pitchman with a bunch of piercings, tats, and a rap sheet. People are entitled to their own tastes. The problem comes when they assert that everyone else has to cater to them and think like them and have the same exact experiences as them.

EHarmony.com is for people who want to find someone to marry - and in almost all of the world, that means someone of the opposite sex. There’s no guarantee you are ready for marriage, or that there’s someone out there who meets your needs/standards. Get over it. EHarmony.com has worked for a lot of people. If it doesn’t work for you, move on and stop wasting your time and energy with whining and consipiracy theories.

Oh, and if that lawsuit against eHarmony.com is succesful, they I'll sue any OB/GYN who refuses to examine my testicles.