They ARE Very Sorry

Okay, so I moved to my new apartment. I dropped quite a bit of money in an effort to furnish said apartment and am actually getting close to being done – I still need to get the two bathrooms finished and pick up a few more kitchen needs; however it does appear that I will soon be fully “moved in”… So where do I go from here? What’s next on my silly little agenda that is my life…? I know! I’ll head on over to eHarmony and see if they can find me someone to hang out with – they can match anyone, right? Nope…

The thing is, I was rejected by eHarmony a few years back. I filled out their rather extensive questionnaire with what I believed at the time to be 100% honest answers. The result was a notification that their system could not predict good matches for me. Oh well, whatever… Perhaps I was not being as honest as I should; unfortunately, once you get rejected, you are not allowed to change your answers. I don’t know how long you need to wait before you can try again, but (at least with the email address used for your first attempt) their system is set up to block access to the questionnaire on people that get deemed unmatchable. I basically let it end there and assumed that I had made a mistake with my answers…

Today, however, I logged back on to eHarmony. Apparently, enough time had passed to clear out my old, unmatchable questionnaire and I was once again allowed to give it another shot. Now since I’ve got no reason not to try again, I filled out the questionnaire – this time with the knowledge that my last attempt was unmatchable. I spent quite a bit of time making sure that all of my answers where completely honest. The way I figured it was that, the last time I did this, I did it too quickly and must have made some silly mistake. This time, I was going to get it right. I think it took me somewhere around 2 and a half hours, but I answered all of the questions and this time I know I was 100% honest.

The result: “We’re very sorry, but our matching system cannot predict good matches for you.”

I guess that explains a lot… For one thing, it shows that I was correct in thinking that my answers to the questionnaire a few years back were actually valid. I guess I didn’t make a silly mistake; I actually am unmatchable by eHarmony. But why…?

You see, that’s the rub. They come back and tell you that “ matching system cannot identify high quality compatible matches” based on your responses to their questionnaire; however they give absolutely no explanation as to why this is. They “apologize and regret inability to find good matches” and even provide you with a free “Personality Profile” to let you learn more about yourself and “provide you with valuable insights.” I looked over the Profile provided for me and wasn’t able to find anything that would make me out and out unmatchable. It actually describes me as a pretty well adjusted, rather stable, focused and agreeable man. But then I remembered…

Whilst filling out this questionnaire, I was struck by a few of the qualities it was asking me to rank myself on. There were three in particular that, to me, stuck out like a turd in a punchbowl. They were having me rate the importance of my religious beliefs – after, by the way, I had already chosen “neither religious nor spiritual” on one of the first questions asked. This got me to pondering … “Was my lack of religion the reason I was unable to be matched?”

I would have just gone back and changed my answers for those religious-based questions as a test; however, as I stated above, one is not allowed to change any answers once one has been deemed unmatchable. That, however, didn’t stop me from starting over from scratch with a different email address; and in today’s technical society, who doesn’t have multiple email addresses that they can use, right? So that’s what I did. I started again from scratch with my work email address and changed my name and location. I answered everything as identical to the last time as I could remember except for the religious aspect – there I decided to become a rather devout Christian from the “Church-of-Christ” cult.

The result this time: I was suddenly extremely matchable and given seven pages of matches with 20 women on each. Now remember, this is for the exact same person (me) with the only difference in responses being that I was now lying about my religious beliefs.

Now I’m not really sure how mad I should be about this. It’s just one more blatant example of how religious people can be such narrow-minded, self-righteous pieces of shit. I mean, think about it; why would somebody bother setting up an online matchmaker service and automatically ban non-religious people from using it? It’s not like any atheists are going to join that site in an attempt to pull theists away from their mindless flocks. Maybe we (the atheists) are just looking to find a date as well. But I guess they’re just using that intolerance that their religion has taught them so well…

bis später,

Coriolis