Michael Smalley - More Than a Match: The Five Keys to Compatibility for Life

In More Than a Match, we tell several stories about Amy Smalleys relationship with Jeff Miller (not his real name), to whom she was engaged to be married before that relationship ended.

As painful as the episode was for the both of them, Jeff has agreed to let us talk about that time in the hope that it will help you avoid the pain of a broken engagement. We thank Jeff for his courage and willingness to help others.

Elsewhere in this book, we have used pseudonyms for people we have met in our counseling sessions.

M ichael: Falling in love for all the right reasons was turning out to be a real chore. Straightening up in my chair, I ran a hand through a thatch of hair and contemplated the bluish glow emanating from my PowerBook. The eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the cyber world of online dating, eHarmony.com, couldnt wait to match me with the woman of my dreams, but getting to the altar was taking some time. No sooner would I finish clicking my responses to one set of questions when another fresh set would leap before me.

Please use the scale below to rate how well you believe each of the following words generally describes you, the screen directed.

In the left-hand column, fifteen adjectives were listed, including these four:

• content

• humorous

• efficient

• perfectionist

All I had to do was click a number on a scale of 1 to 7 with 1 being not at all and 7 meaning very much so.

Lets seecontentIm pretty contented these days. Thats a 6. Humorous? People do say Im funny. Im going to give myself a 7. Efficient. Cant say Im a world-record holder in that department better give myself a 2. Am I a perfectionist? Thats an easy callnot in the least. Ill take a 1.

And so it went. But after a half hour of point and click, I was only one-third of the way through eHarmony.coms self-personality test. The electronic information gathering was getting more interesting, though. On one screen page, I was asked to rate myself on another 1 to 7 scale regarding the following statements:

• I enjoy mingling with people on social occasions.

• I like reading everything I can about a subject.

• I have a high desire for sexual activity.

Oh yeah, Im a 7 on all of those!

Ninety minutes later, I finished answering the last of 436 questions. I sent my completed eHarmony.com profile into cyberspace, where a massive server churned my reams of personal information for several nanoseconds, seeking to match me in twenty-nine areas of compatibility with the millions of eHarmony.com ladies in its database.

Several minutes later, some very good news was waiting for me in my in box. I had some matches! An eHarmony.com e-mail informed me that five totally foxy women were waiting to hear from me, but before I could see what they looked like or read their profiles, a little business had to be contracted: a payment of $49.95, which would give me access to eHarmonys little black book for the next month.

Amy: If you dont know who John Bobbitt is, just Google his name. Im glad Michael wandered through the garden of online dating, though, which these days is more like the size of Central Park than a backyard plot. According to the research firm Pew Internet, 11 percent of all American, Internet-using adultsabout sixteen million peoplesay they have gone to a dating Web site or another site where they can meet people online, making online dating one of the most lucrative Web businesses out there. (Unfortunately, porn is probably number one, but those revenue figures are hard to track.)

In addition, men and women are meeting each other through community Web sites like MySpace.com, Friendster.com, Facebook.com, and Bebo.com, which are free services that use the Internet for communication through an interactive network of photos, chat rooms, Weblogs, and user profiles.

The more serious-minded gravitate toward online dating sites to find a perfect match rather than just a date, and some serious matching has gone on: Pew Internet said that 26 percent of American adultsfifty-three million peoplehave gone on a date with a person they met through a dating site.