Is eHarmony eHarming Me?

I realize lately that I have to be super aware of how I peruse my matches on eHarmony. Since I don't have to interact with a person in the immediate sense, its very easy to fall into either objectification or insensitivity. I end up thinking and often times even saying things out loud about these guys to my friends that I wouldn't normally say if it was a person that we actually knew. At least if I knew them, I would have been a whole lot more kinder or PC about it. Is that fake? Two faced? I don't know. But the point is I need to treat my matches with the same respect that I would treat anyone that I met in person, whether or not they can hear what I'm saying. Overall, I, and I think the rest of the online daters need to remember that sifting through your matches is not like shopping for fruit at a grocery store, where you may very nonchalantly cast off or pick up the ones that look the best. Its more like searching for diamonds among barrel full of other precious gems.

Best,
ODQ

To Close or Not to Close the Match

This week I debated for a while about closing communication with a match on eHarmony. I am trying to be "open" I keep reminding myself. Well, I was only mildly attracted to him and his profile answers were not that unique. It was the typical stuff (not bad stuff): loves God, hanging out with friends, values family. He seemed like he was a likable person, but I wasn't sure the chemistry was going to be there, especially because it seemed like he might not be very funny (believe me when I tell you that it pains me how much of a deal breaker this is for me).

This guy is not very quick to respond to communication so I had thought he might have just decided to pass after seeing my answers to his first set of questions. So I was surprised when I found out a couple days ago that he had moved to the next level of communication: Sending "must haves" and "can't stands." This is the level of communication where you send the person a list of things that you must have in a partner and things you cannot stand to have in a partner. Pretty self explanatory right? Of course one of my must haves is sense of humor. Looking back on the situation I realize that I really was looking for him to say something, anything that would give me a legitimate reason to close the match. So when I received his "must haves" and "cant stands" I immediatly latched onto one of his "cant stands" that I had an issue with and closed the match. Judge me if you must but I did it. I didn't stop to think that this guy might not just be going though the motions of eHarmony communication and might actually be genuinly intrested in me. So I was even more surprised when he decided to send me a message after I closed the match (you can send one final farethewell message on eharmony before a match is fully closed). In his message he said that he thought if we met in person I would feel differently, to which I had to respect. And so I decided to take my own ODQ advice: I sent him a message back and agreed to meet with him one on one.

Maybe I made the decision to close the match prematurely. My instincs are usually spot on but I'm open to being wrong. Let you know how it goes :)

Open,
ODQ