Most people are led to believe that they’ll be able to get into eHarmony’s online dating system with ease, but are soon to be amazed with an eHarmony rejection notice. This is something that is common for people to receive, and quite shocking that it is happening as often as it is. Continue reading to see how you could of got rejected from eHarmony, and why you aren’t the only one experiencing this.
A search for the phrase “eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system” (an excerpt of eHarmony’s rejection notice) in Technorati, a blog search engine, gives 50 hits in the last 45 days — This means that, once a day, someone is blogging that eH rejected them — that they flunked a personality test. At the same time, searching for “eHarmony reject” in Google gives 39,000 hits.
There really is something irksome about being promised “someone who will love you for who you are” and then getting a boilerplate rejection notice.
“Unable to match you at this time” — so what does this mean?
What irritates us about the boilerplate reason, which has been unchanged since 2000 when eHarmony launched, is that it loves to be vague. We at Rachael West Designs hate vagueness, so, for you, we did some research. The cursed test still lets you go through all questions even if it knows on page 1 that it will reject you. And, look, it even has the irony to say, “If we find that we will not be able to match a user using these profiles, we feel it is only fair to inform them early in the process.”
Reasons Why eHarmony Rejected You
eHarmony Rejection Reason #1
You said you are separated/married on page 1. 30% of eHarmony rejects fall into this category.
eHarmony Rejection Reason #2
You said you are below the age of 20 on page 1. 27% percent of rejections fall into this category.
eHarmony Rejection Reason #3
You said you were married more than twice on page 1.1. eHarmony also rejects anyone younger than 60 who’s been married more than four times.
eHarmony Rejection Reason #4
Your answers don’t tally, i.e., (a) you clicked randomly or (b) for example, you put “1″ under Aloof on page 1, but checked “Outgoing” on page 6. 9% of rejects fall into this category.
eHarmony Rejection Reason #5
You scored low on the following traits — eHarmony calls them dimensions:
- Self-Concept (how you perceive yourself)
- Emotional Status (feeling happy, fulfilled and hopeful)
- Character (honesty and trustworthiness)
- Obstreperousness (the black hole dimension)
- Character (honesty and trustworthiness)2
- Emotion Management: Anger (expressing negative emotions constructively)
- Conflict Resolution (resolving issues).
- Family Background (happy childhood and supportiveness of your parents)
If you remember, there are entire sections in the test asking if you’ve had ill feelings in the last month, how you handle arguments and how good your relationship is with your parents. If a registrant just left an abusive relationship and she revealed her feelings in the test, well, instead of saying, “Sorry but you’re not emotionally ready to get married. We’d like to tell you what you need to work on, but we’re not your therapist,” eH rejects the registrant.
So what do I do next?
We want to tell you to open another Yahoo or Hotmail account today and retake the test, but we can’t. Instead we offer a gentle suggestion. May we suggest that you take a break first from seeking committed relationships. We mean, enjoy being single again (or for now). Or we could be wrong. It’s possible that eHarmony is not for you. There’s nothing wrong with you; it’s just that the eHarmony system was designed for a certain profile of people and match them for marriage — it isn’t ready for someone like you yet.
Don’t read this as a judgement that there is no one out there for you. You know best what is best for you. Don’t let the above generalisations discourage you from desiring and working towards a lifetime loving commitment with another person. If the above reasons do not apply, then we invite you to retake the test, now or after a few weeks or months. In the end, eHarmony doesn’t want to be prevailed as judgemental and diverse, but sadly they are not, clearly. There are other online dating sites available that will gladly take you on, such as Match.com. Check these out and don’t give up on your chances with dating.
