You’re an eHarmony dating service user and have a few matches and have taken a glance at their profiles. You see someone or something about him or her that peeks your interest. You want to get to know them. So you start the guided communication process.

What is guided communication? Well at eHarmony when you want to communicate with someone you can either try the Fasttrack feature or as most do use the Guided Communication.

How does this guided communication work?

Guided communication is made up of 4 steps.

1. You send or get sent Closed Ended Questions
2. You exchange Must Haves/Can’t Stands
3. You swap answers to Open Ended Question
4. You reach Open Communication

The first step is Closed Ended Questions. In this stage you select from a list multiple choice questions for your match to answer. When they answer your questions they send you their questions for you. These are used as icebreakers or sorts. Questions like:

If you decided to stay at home for the evening would you tend to:

watch TV

clean

talk on the phone

read

or you can type in a short answer

How organized are you?

I plan everything in advance

I usually don’t get caught by surprise

I like to just let things happen

I never know what I’m doing until it is done

or you can type in you own answer

The next stage is Must Haves/Can’t Stands. Before you send them the first time you have to select yours from the list. You choose 10 of each that fit what you are looking for best. Must Haves are things like:

Sense of Humor…

I must have someone who is sharp and can enjoy the humorous side of life.

Family Life…

I must have a partner who is committed to marriage, home, and family.

Can’t Stands are things like:

Pessimism…

I can’t stand someone who always sees the glass as half empty.

Rude…

I can’t stand someone who is belittling, impatient or hateful to people in any situation.

If you believe you fit with your matches Must Haves/Can’t Stands then you move on to the Open Ended Questions.

In this stage of the communication you can either choose from a list of questions or you can type in your own question. Answers are usually about a small paragraph or two. The questions you can choose from at this stage are things like:

Describe an interest you have that you would truly hope your partner could share with you.
Tonight you can do anything you want, no penalties, no reprisals, and the cost is unimportant. What are you going to do?

If after all this you are still interested in each other then you move onto Open Communication. The eHarmony service provides you with an internal email system. You can use this for as long as you like. Once you feel comfortable you can exchange external email addresses or phone numbers.

For those that just want to get to Open part as quickly as possible, eHarmony has a Fasttrack option. You click on this and if your match agrees you skip all the steps mentioned above and go straight to communicating via the internal eHarmony email system.

This should give you a basic understanding of the eHarmony online dating service.

So you have decided to become an eHarmony user. What happens now? How does the eHarmony system work? It is quite different than what you may think of, when envisioning the average online dating website. It works a little differently.

First off, you are only matched with people the eHarmony system finds you to be compatible with. You don’t get to see everyone in the system like at a say Match.com. My experience was about 3 to 5 new matches a week. These are the people that you communicate with and see if something develops.

You do have some control over you matches. Such as from how big and area do you want to draw from. Like just your city or your state or whatever you choose. You can also get matches by ethnicity, religion, smoking and drinking habits and whether or not they have children. So if you are looking for someone of a certain ethnicity, who is spiritual, doesn’t smoke, drinks occasionally and has no children but is highly compatible with you nonetheless then you can. Or, if none of these things matter to you except compatibility then that is fine too.

As an eHarmony user when you login you are taken to your list of matches. From there you can view their individual profiles. These are the basic stats of each match. On this page you will find your matches:

• Picture
• Name
• Occupation
• Area they live
• Height
• Age
• Ethnicity
• Date the match was created
• When the last communication was
• What the next step in the communication process is
• And a page of introductory information

The introductory info consists a few tidbits pulled from your personality profile questionnaire like:

• Following are 3 Relationship Strengths from So-in-so’s Personality Profile:
• Three of So-in-so’s best life-skills are:
• Below are some of the important interests that you and So-in-so share:

You will also find answers to a few questions they have answered like:

• The one thing So-in-so is most passionate about:
• The most important thing So-in-so is looking for in a person is:
• So-in-so typically spends his/her leisure time:

There are 15 of these in total. They are the beginning of how you get to know your matches. They can be quite informative or in some cases quite bland. Bad profile pages can really hurt you in this process but that is a topic for another day.

Now you decide if you are going to enter in to communication with any or all of them. I would recommend all. You can’t really tell by just a few things on a page if you have any chemistry or not with these people. You can only find that out by communicating with them.

Next: The eHarmony Guided Communication Method. For a continuing look into the eHarmony online dating service.

I have been using eHarmony for just over a year now. I want to start by explaining how eHarmony works before I go into what I like about this online dating site and what I think could be better. An understanding of the process by which they match people and how their system works is essential. Then we can break it down a little and see where they could make some changes and what I and other users could do to make the process work better.

The eHarmony site bills their site as more of a relationship site than a dating site. I tend to agree with this premise. Their site is definitely less about getting a bunch of dates. It is about putting you in contact with people that you are compatible with. Then you go about the journey of seeing if there is any chemistry. If there is, then you have a great foundation as to which to build an outstanding loving and lifelong relationship.

You are matched by taking their Personality Profile, which measures your compatibility with others in the eHarmony system. This profile provides you with an interesting look at yourself as well as attributes to look for in any potential partners. This is based on Dr. Neil Clark Warren’s 29 dimensions of compatibility.

Dr. Warren believes from his years as a relationship counselor and clinical psychologist, that compatibility in these 29 areas is the key to strong relationships that last. He has written multiple books over the years on the subject of relationships and strong marriages. The most recent being: Falling in Love for All the Right Reasons. Where he explains the 29 dimensions and more.

So, what are these 29 dimensions anyway? Well they fall into two categories. Core Traits and Vital Attributes. Your Core Traits are what make you, you. These do not tend to change much. The Vital Attributes are the things you pickup along the way through out your life, your experiences. These tend to change over your lifetime as life happens and you learn new things. Core Traits are broken down into Emotional Temperament, Social Style, Cognitive Mode and Physicality. The Vital Attributes are Relationship Skills, Values and Beliefs, and Key Experiences. For a complete understanding of each of the individual 29 dimensions check out the full explanation, “What are the 29 Dimensions?” at their site.

As a potential eHarmony user you go to the site and fill out the all the questions. For this process to be truly beneficial, you really need to take this part seriously. I mean this is how you are going to be matched with potential partners. I think it took me about 30 to 40 minutes to complete. Once this is completed you will be taken to your profile to read. Also, you are now entered into the pool of potential matches.

Now you decide whether to signup or not. Most likely you will not have too many matches if any at first. It took about 3 or 4 days before I was notified of my first few matches. That is when I signed up for the service.

Next: Once you are an eHarmony member, then what happens? For a continuing look into the eHarmony online dating service.