Love, Lust and Lies: Is your soulmate on eHarmony?

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About a month ago I took a dive into online dating and made an account on Plenty of Fish. I thought I would jump back into it and see what eHarmony is all about, and here is my review.

The initial setup of the account took some time. Since eHarmony matches you up with potential fits, it's important that your answers to the questionnaire are more indepth than just your occupation or your drinking habits. I suggest you snuggle up on your couch, pop some popcorn and make an account. If you run out of time, you can always save the page and go back to it. The questions ask about your personality, your feelings and your values.

Some of the questions it asks are very specific. For example, it asks you which religions your match should be associated with. If that's important to you, this could be very useful. Not only do you specify a religion, but it also gives you the option to choose which religious denominations your matches should be. For example if you're Catholic, but your denomination is Roman Catholic or Baptist, you might only be interested in people of the same faith.

What I liked about this site is that you can get to know a person without actually sending them a message and not just by reading a profile. There are questions that anyone can choose to answer and then when people view their profile they can answer the questions too and then compare your answers. For example, one of the questions was "Do you think you spend more on clothes or food?" You can see how much you have in common before you send the first message.

eHarmony learns about your personality, then uses its experts to find you matches so that you may have new matches to meet every morning. If in the first few days you find you don't get too many messages, don't get discouraged; many people find it takes a few days before the messages start coming in. What makes eHarmony different is that anyone can make an account, but you have to subscribe to message your matches or view pictures. It's an average of about $40 a month but that amount varies depending on what plan you want and how long you want to sign up for. The one good thing you can get from this site is knowing that people are serious about getting to know someone, because no one is going to pay that kind of money to get a dating website to set up a booty call.

Now that I have told you a little bit about eHarmony, I want to look at the differences a person might find between Plenty of Fish and eHarmony. I decided to ask some people who have found success with these online dating sites.

A huge difference is that with Plenty of Fish you will only find some people who are sincere about their true intentions. Since it is a free website, it allows anyone to make an account. There is no filter and you can't really search for qualities you like without going through every profile. Swimming with the fishes is like going to a bar — you never know what you are going to find. Like I said in my previous article about Plenty of Fish, for every 100 people who message you, you might only find two or three are worth messaging back.

With eHarmony, people have genuine intentions and are serious about getting into a relationship because they are paying for the service. The matching service eHarmony provides you with isn't always going to be perfect but it's a good starting point, and this way only matches can message you or see your account, which allows your choices to be more specific to what you want.

One couple I spoke with that met through eHarmony said that they felt like they already knew each other before their first date. They had common interests and were looking for someone with the same goals as them; eHarmony provided them with the basic footwork to their relationship before it even began. It was up to them to discover if there was chemistry, and luckily for them, there was.

I've heard success stories from both Plenty of Fish and eHarmony, but I think you just need to find one that works for you. You'd be surprised at how many people actually meet their partner through online dating — maybe it's time you found someone, too.