How to Get the Perfect Amount of Matches

You've joined eHarmony and you're either inundated with matches or still waiting for one. What do you do?

by eHarmony Staff

eHarmony is the only relationship site that creates compatible matches based on 29 dimensions to predict happier, healthier relationships. But what happens when you have just joined the service, you log into your account expecting to see your matches and you have none? Are you supposed to think that you are not compatible with at least one match out of the millions of users on our service?

What Can You Do?

Many times a lack of matches boils down to a handful of settings. Sometimes it’s not clear exactly what the specific match settings will do, and many people end up choosing a setting that doesn’t quite match up to what they’re looking for. Other times, it’s a case of someone being too specific about what he or she might be looking for, and thus limiting where or how eHarmony finds a compatible match. We’d like to give you a short overview of some important match settings, and how they may be the reason you are not getting enough matches.

Distance

Distance is one of the biggest levers you have at your disposal to dramatically increase or decrease your number of matches. The narrowest setting is 30 miles or less, while the widest setting is anywhere in the world. At eHarmony, we’ve had couples find the love of their lives in the same city, the same state, across the country, and even on the other side of the world. While you might first be inclined to set your distance to 30 miles, just think, would you be willing to drive 31 miles if that’s how far away the love of your life was? Unfortunately, that person could be screened out with a distance setting of less than 30 miles. Phone calls, emails, text messages, webcams, there are many tools to facilitate a burgeoning relationship, particularly when that person has already met eHarmony’s 29 dimensions of compatibility.

So if you have a narrow distance setting, try increasing how far eHarmony will search by expanding your distance setting. You may be missing that special someone because they live 31 miles away!

To change you match settings for distance, click the My Settings tab, and then click “Edit Preferences” on the distance section

Age

When you join eHarmony, we’ll automatically look for matches for you within a certain age range. Typically, this is a range of about 10 years. You are free to limit the age range to something narrower like 6 years, but just like the distance setting, this is another feature that will limit how many matches you receive.

For instance, if a 43 year old man narrowly defined the age range for his matches as 27-32, he would severely limit the number of matches he would receive. Not only is he limiting his search to only women within this 6 year age range, but those same women must also have an age range which includes 43 years old. If the typical 30 year old woman picks an age range of 30- 40, this man is not going to be matched with her. It’s ok if you have your heart set on meeting people only within a certain age range. And if this is the case, you might want to offset that strict setting by widening another setting – like increasing the acceptable distance of your matches.

To change your match settings for age, click the My Settings tab, and then click “Edit Preferences” on the Personal Preferences section.

Drinking and Smoking

Your lifestyle preferences play an integral part in the matches you receive (as they should!) – specifically drinking and smoking. People have strong opinions on this, and so you should only choose settings with which you are 100% comfortable. BUT (there’s always a but), you should know this:

• If you are a smoker and you are not willing to accept a match who smokes, it is harder to be matched.
• If you are not a smoker, and are not willing to accept matches that smoke even a few times a year, you are screening out matches that may have 1 or 2 cigarettes a year in social settings – like at bars or clubs.
• If you opt to be matched with only non-drinkers, you are excluding a person who rings in the New Year with a glass of champagne or that drinks a glass or red wine every day for its health benefits.

To change your match settings for drinking or smoking, click the My Settings tab, and then click “Edit Preferences” on the Personal Preferences section.

Match Flexibility

If you widened your distance, age, drinking, and smoking settings and still aren’t getting enough matches, it may be due to your match flexibility settings. Your Flexibility settings are really trying to get at the question of how important these different settings really are to you.

Your Match Flexibility settings include: distance, religion, religious denomination, ethnicity, education, income, height, age, smoking, and drinking. The settings are defined on a 7 point scale, where 1 and 2 = Not Important, where 3, 4, and 5 = Somewhat Important, and 6 and 7 = Very Important.

What does the scale mean? Take a look at the following chart:

Given that, a bad strategy is to set all of your Flexibility Settings as Very Important. For most people that will severely limit your available matches. A good strategy is to really think about how you would rank order the Flexibility Settings from 1-10. What’s most important? What’s least important? Following that, feel free to experiment. Take your top two most important settings and rate those as Very Important. Take the next 5-6 and rate those in the Somewhat Important range. Take the remainder and rate those as Not Important.

Remember you want to talk to as many of your compatible matches as you can so that you can find that individual that will change your life forever. Adjusting your settings is free, as is the conversations that follow (if you’re a subscriber). If you find you’d rather receive fewer matches than more, adjust the importance of your settings upwards. Your eHarmony experience is in your hands!

To change your Match Flexibility settings, click the My Settings tab, and then click “Edit Preferences” on the Match Flexibility section at the bottom of the page.