So in the last week or so I’ve been matched with 3 pastors on eHarmony. Interesting. All seem like neat guys, good looking, seem fun. One of them asked me straight up if I’d ever thought about being a pastor’s wife and how would I feel about that. Aside from the forwardness of mentioning the word wife before he knew my last name I thought it was a good question when shopping online for a wife. ( some sarcasm inserted here) It got me thinking. I told him I didn’t grow up as a young girl longing for the day that I’d marry a pastor but that some of the most incredible women I know are pastor’s wives. What the 3 pastor matches really got me thinking about is eHarmony in general. I really didn’t know much about dating sites when I started this whole deal, still don’t really. But as I’ve slowly told friends about my adventures in internet dating I’ve been really surprised by some of the intense reactions I’ve gotten to the eHarmony deal. Some people had some strong feelings and not all of them pleasant. I heard tales of people being told they were “unmatchable” and that eHarmony was only for “bible beating christians” and that I was lame for picking the site. WHO KNEW?! I mean all of the guys I’ve been matched with have professed to be pretty excited about Jesus but I assumed that was just because that’s what I’m looking for and the genius eHarmony scientific equation knows that right?

Well I did a quick google search and found this. The first thing is apparently the message you get if you are “unmatchable”

Unable to Match You At This Time!

eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive testing of married individuals. One of the requirements for it to work successfully is for participants to fall into our rigorously defined profiles. If we aren’t able to match a user well using these profiles, the most considerate approach is to inform them early in the process…Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching system is not suitable for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply would not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand that we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time.

Hmmm, so obviously the unmatchable deal has some people pretty worked up. And I can see how that could be discouraging in a number of ways. Below is something else I found on a message board that caught my attention.

Unless you fit into the white-bread moral-majority norm, eHarmony will not attempt to help you.

It don’t think it’s quite that simple. I’m as left-leaning agnostic as they come, and when I took the test on a lark a couple of years ago, the system accepted me (and immediately sent matches!). A few of the matches they sent were also clearly lefty agnostic types (and — really flying in the face of the “right-wing Christians only” theory — one guy openly stated he was a marketer for a major adult entertainment company), though some were wildly off-base polar opposites (the guy who said he hated books and hated cities was an amusing match for me, I thought).

Not saying that eHarmony isn’t geared in a more narrow direction, but I think it’s a more complex metric than automatically filtering out anyone who isn’t a self-identified conservative Christian.

It’s an interesting deal. Nothing I’m losing sleep over or really digging that deep into but I’m curious if anyone’s heard any of this dialogue or has thoughts on the matter? Who knows, maybe I’m just supposed to marry a pastor. Or maybe a helicopter pilot? haha just sayin