Is eHarmony Worth Joining?

eHarmony is one of the better known online dating brands on the net. Like Match.com, you often see eHarmony ads on TV, billboards and elsewhere. The whole premise behind eHarmony is that it matches single men and women looking for long-term relationships, using a comprehensive compatibility test.

eHarmony was started by Neil Clark Warren, and author of many relationship advice books. Having worked as a clinical psychologist and marriage counselor for more than 35 years, he came up with the idea that certain characteristics in people could predict compatibility with one another. He worked on this idea for over three years, and developed the compatibility matching system that is the basis of how eHarmony matches people today.

eHarmony Relationship Questionnaire

After entering in your basic information like email and date of birth, you will be asked to fill out the eHarmony Relationship Questionnaire. This is basis of the entire site and the resulting profile will give you insights about yourself and allows the system to find highly compatible matches for you. The Relationship Questionnaire is quite long, so you don't actually have to fill in everything in one setting, as you can save your place as you go.

There are a total of 13 sections to the questionnaire and completing it takes about 30 minutes going at a good pace. Most of the questions asks you to rate various things on a 7 point scale, although there are the occasional true/false and short answer questions as well.




One interesting thing about the eHarmony relationship questionnaire is that you can't go back and change your answers. Why? The idea is that answers are most accurate when you move through the questionnaire at a medium pace and answer the first question that comes to your mind.

After you have finished with all the questions, you will be asked to submit a photo. You can also go into your account and complete your profile. Completing your profile requires you to answer several essay type questions.

Finding Matches on eHarmony

Once you have completed everything, the eHarmony system will go out an find a handful of matches for you. All these can be seen under the Matches tab. To entice you into becoming a paid member, you can't see photos of any of your matches until you subscribe.



One interesting aspect of eHarmony is their guided communication system. Instead of emailing a person directly, you can send 5 questions to a person to get an insight in how they think. Questions like "if you were taken by your date to a party where you knew no one, how would you respond?" or "How important is chemistry to you?" You can also communicate via standard email if you choose. Unfortunately, you also can't send messages to your matches until you subscribe either.

Subscribing to eHarmony

eHarmony offers two types of plans. The Basic plan and the Total Connect plan. The Basic plan lets you view photos and communicate with your matches. TotalConnect gives you access to the Premium Personality profile, RelyID and SecureCall + all the normal Basic plan features. Plans start off at $44.95 a month if you signup for 3 months. If you sign up for 12 months, then the cost goes down to $23.95 a month.

Conclusion

As you might be able to tell, eHarmony is mainly for serious daters only. There's really not much point in going through the entire process, unless you want to signup as a premium member. However, if you do match this criteria, then eHarmony does offer a unique way of finding compatible matches for you.

if you are still undecided, I would also read this eHarmony vs Match.com review as well.