eHarmony Is Giving Me No Matches
Published on December 28, 2009
eHarmony is very committed to their matching system. The site takes the approach that it would be better to give its members no matches than to give them bad matches. eHarmony will even reject applicants that they feel they can’t provide adequate matches to. In some ways, it’s good to see eHarmony being so honest but it does cause problems. If you’re not getting any matches, a number of things could be happening.
- When I used eHarmony, I was living in a small town but I had limited my searching radius to around 25 miles. Even though eHarmony has more visitors than any other dating service, most of these people do not live in the woods in western Pennsylvania!
- You might have a profile that is more difficult to provide matches for. It is likely that some personalities that are easier to match than others. If there are people with personalities that the service can’t match at all, there are likely those who are easy to match and those that are hard to match. This isn’t a bad thing, it just makes you unique.
- Your personal matching settings may be too strict.
What Can I Do To Get More Matches
Unfortunately, requesting for more matches when using the service will only work (at most) once a day. If you request more matches and are told there are no new matches, requesting more again the same day won’t help. About the only thing you can do improve your matches is alter your matching preferences:
- You can increase the distance you’re willing to meet someone from. Be sure you’re willing to have a longer distance relationship if you change this because your new matches will be further away!
- You can change your personal preferences for your matches such as whether or not you are willing to date those with children.
- You can widen the age range of the people you’ll be matched with.
- You can change the ethnicities you’re willing to date.
- You could try to convince eHarmony to let you retake the personality test but you’ll have to call them to do so. The longer it’s been since you took the test, the more likely they are to allow this.
There are some other areas you can change in your personal preferences. To view all of the settings click on “My Settings” at the top of your eHarmony account and then select “Match Settings”. Note: if you change these settings to be more inclusive, clicking the “Find More Matches” can provide you more matches immediately.
I’m Still Not Getting Matches!
This is the situation I ran into. I really liked eHarmony but between my personality, my location and the distance I was willing to travel for a relationship, eHarmony wasn’t able to provide me with an adequate number of matches. As I’ve said, I appreciate their honesty as it helped me make the decision to use another service where I could pick from all the members. I chose Match.com and eventually met my wife. You could also try another matching service like Chemistry.com or MatchMaker if you prefer the matching service model. I believe that eHarmony is the strictest when it comes to matching so these other services may be a little more match-count-friendly.
Also, you could take a break from eHarmony and allow matches to accumulate. You can do this by ending your subscription but do not close your account. After a month or two, if you feel you’ve collected enough matches you could sign up again. Also, during this time where you’re not paying for the service, you can still take advantage of eHarmony’s free weekends. These can occur as often as once a month.
Unfortunately, eHarmony’s greatest strength is often its biggest weakness. If you are unable to find a significant number of matches it’s time to find another service. The service is excellent but if you’re not being provided matches, it’s not worth much at all.
Author: Brad
Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.
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