The eHarmony.com profile is THE way that people decide if they are interested enough in you to communicate with you. It’s your first impression, your shingle, your calling card, and your homepage, if you will. It’s safe to say that many eHarmony users effectively hobble their success rate by leaving large parts of the profile blank, or poorly written.
The “In Your Own Words” section of the profile allows you to answer questions about yourself. Questions like, “Other than your parents, who has been the most influential person in your life and why?” and “Other than your appearance, what is the first thing that people notice about you?”
I’ve recently been thinking about new questions, different questions, even better questions. This seems like a great time to ask you what questions you would add to the profile.
Before you answer consider that many people (men) hate to answer long and detailed questions about themselves. If the question is an obvious deep dive it tends to get skipped. For example a questions like, “Share a time in your life when you felt vulnerable and scared. How did you overcome these feelings?” THAT question is NEVER going to get answered. Well, it’s going to get skipped a lot. The trick here is to come up with questions that ask for concrete information that is deeply revealing of the person. It’s also important that the question not likely have the exact same answer for each person. I don’t have a stellar example at hand but something like…
“What is your favorite place? Why do you love it so much?”
That is a question that would be a) easy to answer, b) unique from person to person, c) quite revealing. If the answer was, “Central Park”, you know that the person appreciates the city and likes to take a step out into the green. They appreciate the beauty, but want the concrete jungle nearby. If the answer was, “Prague”, you’ve got an international traveler on your hands. If the answer is, “My local fishing hole”, you may not have an international traveler on your hands. Of course, the description of why they love that space is vital to your understanding of who they are, but even without it you’d have some important window into what they think.
I know there are others…maybe dozens of others. So, let’s make this a contest. Submit your question suggestions and I’ll do a drawing of all the participants for a free month of eHarmony.
Grant Langston — Vice President, Content and Customer Experience
Jeannie Assimos, — Director of Content
Marni Battista — Relationship Expert
Monique A Honaman — Author
Dr. Seth Meyers — Licensed clinical psychologist
Sarah Schmermund, M.A. — M.A.
1. What age range are you children in?
0-5
6-10
11-15
16+
2. Do your children live with you on a full time basis?
3. What type of gifts would you give to that special someone in your life?
1. Expensive–jewelry
2. Creative –like writing them a song
3. Romantic — weekend getaway
4. Home made — dinner, cake, household project needing to be done
5. Or not at all — don’t believe in gifts
4. What kind of relationship to you have with your ex-spouse?
1. None at all-only communicate via email/text messages
2. Very good — friends
3. Civil — but can get heated at times
4. Widow/widower
These few questions going forward would be a help.
I’d ask this because
1. people love to talk about what they like
2. it can be casually answered (for those with short attention spans) or answered with depth
3. it’s an energy question, people should get energized trying to answer it. when that happened, it allows people to be seen in their best mood/light (which makes them an easier sell)
4. it can be revealing (of a person’s values and goals) and will be different for each person
or that’s my guess anyway, only way to know for sure though is to test it for real!
Q2.
The other question, that I think is needed and can be filled out via checkboxes (i.e. multiple checkboxes filled is ok…like our options for religion or race preferences) …”What are you looking for/hope/intend to get out of this?”
[_] marriage
[_] long term relationship
[_] casual dating
[_] friendship / activity partner
[_] etc, etc
[_] I don’t know..
eHarmony can then match us to the people who have the same objectives as us. it’s going to come up eventually anyway, but would be best to clear it upfront to save time and avoid any misunderstandings down the road.
Q1. “If you were granted 3 wishes, what would they be?”
I’d ask this because
1. people love to talk about what they like
2. it can be casually answered (for those with short attention spans) or answered with depth
3. it’s an energy question, people should get energized trying to answer it. when that happened, it allows people to be seen in their best mood/light (which makes them an easier sell)
4. it can be revealing (of a person’s values and goals) and will be different for each person
or that’s my guess anyway, only way to know for sure though is to test it for real!
Q2.
The other question, that I think is needed and can be filled out via checkboxes (i.e. multiple checkboxes filled is ok…like our options for religion or race preferences) …”What are you looking for/hope/intend to get out of this?”
[_] marriage
[_] long term relationship
[_] casual dating
[_] friendship / activity partner
[_] etc, etc
[_] I don’t know..
eHarmony can then match us to the people who have the same objectives as us. it’s going to come up eventually anyway, but would be best to clear it upfront to save time and avoid any misunderstandings down the road.
A question I would LOVE to know the answer to “up front” but don’t know if there is really a good way to verbalize it, except the option of , check all that apply!
If Hind Sight is 20/20, what would you have done differently in your past relationships?
a) Been more ready to look at myself and the possibility I might have made a mistake that caused a conflict.
b) Focused more and given more of my time to my partner for “just us” time.
c) Verbalized “I love you” more often.
d) Been more assertive in communication of negative feelings as opposed to bottling them up.
e) Made more effort to initiate physical intimacy with my partner.
f) Tried harder to show my partner they were a top priority by not working so much overtime or taking that extra assignment.
e) Been more willing to participate in partner’s choice of activities as opposed to only showing enthusiasm in activities of your choice.
Another way to find out if your match has learned from their past mistakes is just to ask and then provide space for an answer
“If you had it to do over again, what would you have done differently that you NOW realize caused problems in your past relationships”?
These are things that show if a person has truly learned from the past, or if they are doomed to continue the pattern they developed in past failed relationships.
Oh and a biggie, I forgot to list.
If you have an ex-spouse, are they remarried? or are they still in love with you and will make our lives together as miserable as possible?
LOL, probably not a question eHarmony can tenderly ask, BUT, let me tell you how important the answer to that one is!
Ok, It looks like the comments have dropped off on this post and so, as promised, I’m going to award one of the three participants a free month of eHarmony.
Drum role please…..
the winner is Jessica, our first commenter. I’ll notify Jessica by email.
In your profile wizard, “Something to talk about” section I think it would be more beneficial to have a check box system in the areas like favorite music. We could then check all that apply and at the end leave a space that says “List some favorite artists”. You could do this with the books, movies, sports, TV, etc sections. I realize that there are a couple which are already efficient, like politics, but the more information of this type you can gather up front would open up more match potentials. (ie: I like Mystery novels, romance, sci-fi, contempory fiction and sometimes self-help. So I check all of those and then answer an open-ended question with “I have recently read Christine Feehan and Stephen King’s “The Two Towers, I & II, and “Demons and Angels”). I hope this makes sense. Also, don’t worry about the contest, I realize this is past the deadline. Thank-you for your consideration of my suggestion.