"If you happen to be a woman, you know that the odds are stacked against you from the start."

Oh, boo hoo hoo. My 3-month membership is ending soon. I've been matched with about 300 local women, which sounds great, but:

At least half were expired members. That is eHarmony's dirtiest secret. Either they never look at you so their match status never changes from "View Match Details" to "Start Communication", or they never respond to 1st Questions and simply sink to the bottom of your match list. They're not really there. This is inexcusable.

Of the active members, a third closed me right away and I closed about a third right away. I closed matches with children, matches whose profiles ranted about one thing or another. A few tried to initiate communication but insisted on hiding their pictures. When I asked them to reveal the pictures, they closed me. That's just great.

There were only about 20 real "possibles" that I communicated with. I initiated some, and some initiated with me. Almost all raced through the first two guided stages, which require very little thought, in 2 or 3 days. Then most went stone cold at the 2nd Questions stage, where you have to think a little but have the opportunity to demonstrate your personality and develop the other person's interest. Some eventually responded to Nudges (a notice you can send after 7 days of non-responsiveness) and continued the process - but ladies, know this: having to Nudge made me resentful and a LOT less interested in you as a person.

I made it to Open Communication with 9 matches out of the original 300:

Two simply never replied to my first OC message. Not a word. And keep in mind that if a man sends the first OC, it's because the woman initiated the communication. So what's that all about?

Two wanted to argue right from the start. Disasters.

One sent messages at a glacial pace. But she wrote about her life, she wrote while traveling, she claimed to want to meet. But after declining every suggestion of meeting that I made, she closed me cold-turkey with the canned answer "I have too much going on in my life", not even the courtesy of an actual written message. In such situations, you get no opportunity to send a final message yourself. It's a crime that eHarmony allows people to be so inconsiderate and/or fraudulent.

Two stopped replying after a few messages. Perhaps they wanted to be "pursued" but that's not how I play the game. I closed them instead of resorting to Nudging or other tactics.

I met one match in person. ONE. Out of 300. She claimed to be 5-foot-7 in her profile but turned out to be maybe 5-foot-1 on a good day. A pleasant enough meeting but no spark.

As my membership ends, I've got one match remaining in OC whom I might meet someday, and one who may or may not ever enter OC. I haven't gotten any new matches in over a week, although I'll be curious to see if I'm given a fresh batch to look at as my expiration date nears. (Keeping in mind that half of them will be inactive members...)

So, Abbie... tell me again how the odds are stacked against the women. I am convinced that the women eHarmony matched me with were not at all serious about the process. Or they signed up and as they started to interact with their matches, they became terrified of the whole thing. These are probably not women that I'd want to meet in real life anyway.

I've posted more comments about my eHarmony experience on eharmonycracked.blogspot.com . This site is required reading for men new to the eHarmony game. It is just a game, and you must not treat it as anything more than that.