Honest Question: Does Eharmony work for Black women?


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Coca-Cola is offline Coca-Cola Post #31  October 28,2009, 12:07am
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I have Black, Indian and Pacific Islander friends who have used EH and their experience have been less successful than my white friends. There are inconveniences. For example, the eHarmony Canada website's option for the ethnicity is "African American". Do Black Canadians choose that or choose "Other"?

* The Quantcast website provides a racial breakdown of the site's visitors. Currently, 83% are white, 7% are black.

* The OKCupid blog posted an analysis early this month of the racial preferences of their members. They found that men on their site don't write Black women back.

Data like this tell us that it isn't you, it isn't EH. It's the populace's preference. In a white-dominated world (83%), minorities and blacks get what they get. eHarmony membership in your locality may be more white-dominant, or less.

We used patterns like these to come up with ideas and suggestions how to "shake it up a little" when one's match settings aren't working. One thing for anyone to try is removing "White Non-Hispanic" from his or her settings. The small batch of matches one gets daily will thus be minorities and blacks, potentially more receptive.

We praise eHarmony for pushing interracial success stories. We hope they brings in more members who choose "No Preference" in their ethnicity settings and mean it. Then again, EH cannot create these members out of thin air; if these people don't exist in the area.

Finally, Sexyme13, you haven't mentioned whether you initiate communication at all! Have you started any communication with the Native American, Pacific Islander and Indian men among your matches that have "potential"? Also, are you an insta-closer (closing a match immediately when there's a slight incompatibility or dislike)?
 
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NEOSOUL34 is offline NEOSOUL34 Post #32  October 30,2009, 1:24am
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Greetings to the forum,

I cannot agree with you that Afro-American people, both men and women, are not getting any matches on eHarmony. As an Afro-American man, I get quite a few matches from various ethnicities especially black women. The issue I find is that many of them do not provide me with enough dialogue or open ended communication when we move to the questions. I’ve also noticed that many times, in their profile, they have multiple children, their occupation is homemaker (unemployed), they ask for things in the beginning stage that they cannot even offer and this makes them look needy, they don't have a photo posted or if they do, it's a really bad one. Now, I've seen these things in some other races but mainly with the Afro-American women on the site. If your profile is to standard, you’ve used spell check and proofread your profile, you are a paid subscriber, you've got some business about yourself that would make a man interested in you, you are not making yourself look overly "Independent" in your profile and you take some nice, classy, quality pictures I guarantee you will find that black men will begin to correspond with you. In closing, black women, take this bit of advice; if you want a good brother then you need to step your game up!

Thank you for the space to express my thoughts.

NEOSOUL34
Last edited by NEOSOUL34; October 30,2009 at 1:27am.
 
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independentthinker is offline independentthinker Post #33  October 30,2009, 4:08am
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NEOSOUL34 wrote :
Greetings to the forum,

I cannot agree with you that Afro-American people, both men and women, are not getting any matches on eHarmony. As an Afro-American man, I get quite a few matches from various ethnicities especially black women. The issue I find is that many of them do not provide me with enough dialogue or open ended communication when we move to the questions. I’ve also noticed that many times, in their profile, they have multiple children, their occupation is homemaker (unemployed), they ask for things in the beginning stage that they cannot even offer and this makes them look needy, they don't have a photo posted or if they do, it's a really bad one. Now, I've seen these things in some other races but mainly with the Afro-American women on the site. If your profile is to standard, you’ve used spell check and proofread your profile, you are a paid subscriber, you've got some business about yourself that would make a man interested in you, you are not making yourself look overly "Independent" in your profile and you take some nice, classy, quality pictures I guarantee you will find that black men will begin to correspond with you. In closing, black women, take this bit of advice; if you want a good brother then you need to step your game up!

Thank you for the space to express my thoughts.

NEOSOUL34

Given some of your other comments, I am wondering what it means to look "overly independent" in a profile. Does that mean having a great job and no children, which are the opposite of two things you decry? It would seem that to meet all of the rest of the criteria you set forth, a black woman would have to pretty much walk on water. Does that standard apply to every one? Because honestly, having received a good 4000 matches over the years, not half of them -- and that's with most of them being white men -- measure up to your list. FWIW, I have found black men the least likely to post photos (and for a while I kept track). So maybe some problem streets run two ways. I think that reflects on those people as individuals, however, and wouldn't assume anything about how likely it makes the men that do post photos to find what they are looking for.

I think Sexy (and many other women) should take a pass on assuming that the problem is necessarily her profile or her need to "step up her game." Then again, I'm mighty independent, or at least have high self-esteem. On the other hand, some of her criteria might be worth re-considering. As one suggestion for Sexy, I recognize that we can't always control who we are attracted to, but I would worry a lot less about height if possible. At 5'4, 5'6 seems ok to me, and would open up the numbers tremendously. I am 5'8, hardly a giant, but it is hard to find men taller than I am, and I decided long ago I don't really care. I have noticed that a good number of the men with quality personalities are my height or shorter, and a few extra inches of torso never led to a better conversation in my experience.

I think the reasons it can be hard to find a match are complicated and nuanced. But I absolutely think it is hardest of all for black women to find dates everywhere, and that includes on eHarmony. That doesn't mean impossible, but numbers don't lie. Cocacola's stats are very telling, and reflect my experience on Match.com. I was amazed, but not too surprised, how many men of all kinds of backgrounds would indicate their willingness to date women of all ethnicities....except black women. They put it on their profiles. What did shock me was when such men would initiate communication with me anyhow. I sometimes asked them why, and conveyed my offense at their list of preferences. Their attitude pretty much was that they generally were not interested in black women, but were willing to "make exceptions". That went over great with me, let me tell you. And sometimes I suspect that's the reason behind some of the closings I get here, even though there's no way for them to tell me that (and I don't know if they would have the guts to say it if they could). I think all ANYONE can do is accept that this is a tough process, many people have obstacles to overcome in seeking love, and try to have enough fulfilling things things in their lives to not let this worry take over.

I truly wish the site owners cared enough to invest in a quality marketing campaign targeted to various kinds of diversity. There are plenty of other "dating sites", but this one sets itself apart as being geared to the commitment-minded. I think people of all backgrounds could appreciate that if they felt they would find a decent sized community here.
Last edited by independentthinker; October 31,2009 at 10:32am.
 
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tranquility2 is offline tranquility2 Post #34  October 31,2009, 6:24am
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NEOSOUL34 wrote :
Greetings to the forum,

I cannot agree with you that Afro-American people, both men and women, are not getting any matches on eHarmony. As an Afro-American man, I get quite a few matches from various ethnicities especially black women. The issue I find is that many of them do not provide me with enough dialogue or open ended communication when we move to the questions. I’ve also noticed that many times, in their profile, they have multiple children, their occupation is homemaker (unemployed), they ask for things in the beginning stage that they cannot even offer and this makes them look needy, they don't have a photo posted or if they do, it's a really bad one. Now, I've seen these things in some other races but mainly with the Afro-American women on the site. If your profile is to standard, you’ve used spell check and proofread your profile, you are a paid subscriber, you've got some business about yourself that would make a man interested in you, you are not making yourself look overly "Independent" in your profile and you take some nice, classy, quality pictures I guarantee you will find that black men will begin to correspond with you. In closing, black women, take this bit of advice; if you want a good brother then you need to step your game up!

Thank you for the space to express my thoughts.

NEOSOUL34
I find neosoul's stereotyping of all African-American women more than a little disturbing and probably part of the reason why a negative perception is created of black women.
I know a fair share of black women on this site that are the complete opposite of his description and have great success on the this site in a fairly short amount of time. So by no means is his experience representative of the general population of black women on this site. Now I will slowly back away from further commentary...
 
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chefertiti is offline chefertiti Post #35  November 2,2009, 6:52pm
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I am an African American woman. When I joined, I indicated that I had no racial preferences and my age preferences skewed a little younger than myself (I stated that I was willing to date men up to ten years younger than myself). I was never matched up with any younger men (they were always at least five years older than me), nor was I matched with any Asians or Latinos. I sometimes got the impression that EH matching systems were just never programed to do any inter-racial matching beyond the standard black/white; or is it that there are few Asians or Latino(a)s who use EH.

I think I do remember an African American couple that was featured several years back and there was one Asian/White inter-racial couple featured recently. Ultimately, I think that EH needs to aim for greater diversity in their advertising campaigns. We need to see some couples who are older than thirty, who don't meet the mainstream standards of beauty, who are something other than Caucasian, and yes, a few more inter-racial couples would be nice as well.

Fortunately, I met someone in a social setting so my issues with EH are now moot. But I would have to say that I hope that the orignial poster is not relying solely on EH to find suitable men to date.
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tbesq is offline tbesq Post #36  November 2,2009, 10:05pm
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This is an interesting thread to me, since I am African-American. And it is a sensitive topic to the extent that no one -- not white people, and certainly not eHA -- would want to outright acknowledge that there are any exclusionary practices going on when it comes to dating or promoting a dating service. That's why many of these threads with racial themes fail to get the wide participation that other less substantive threads receive.

In my experiences with online dating, it's not really that there aren't opportunities for African-Americans to connect...it's that the quantity of opportunities is not on par with white counterparts. I've seen some white people on here (particularly the women) who say they're also having no luck, but it's certainly not because they lack opportunity. More often than not, it's more indicative of their selectivity within the available pool, which is substantial. I believe that most black people who do online dating frequent the predominantly African-American dating sites. I've tried out some of those sites, and found that eHarmony actually has a better dating pool in terms of what I'm really looking for.

There are also many African-Americans who don't date outside their race, while other ethnicities (including Caucasians) are a little more open with their dating preferences (not in number, but in the percentage of those ethnicities versus the percentage of blacks). As someone else said, there are countless dynamics at work here. There just isn't a simple answer to this dilemma.

Like others have said, I would like to see more diversity in eHarmony's ads. Sure there are some ads, and sure some couples may decline to have their success stories shared with others, but I don't think that truly explains the lack of diversity on their overall advertising campaigns.
 
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Somethingtosay is offline Somethingtosay Post #37  November 10,2009, 2:09pm
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I am African American and new to EH. I have received a lot of matches but most I assume are not paying customers because they do not respond to first set of questions. I receive more responses from white men than black men. I have been in communications with two black men and neither seemed like starting a relationship was on the top of their list. I don't understand why some people are on this site because I have run across some men looking for a "casual" relationship. I thought everyone on this site would be looking for a long term relationship but that is not the case. I can see from of the comments posted to your thread, some people are unrealistic in what they expect to find on this site. It's like I paid my money now give me my soul mate like they just "bought" a person. I am being more open to other races because they way things are going I don't think my "husband" will be a black man. I'm sorry to say the other races seemed to be more open and are actually looking for a person to grow with instead of a perfectly made woman to feel some man's fantasy. Good look girlfriend!
 
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uniquegurl is offline uniquegurl Post #38  March 7,2010, 4:49pm
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sexyme13 wrote :
This is a very honest heartfelt question....does eharmony work for Black women?
As a Black woman that has been a member for about a month and have had little luck. In real life I date all ethnicities (tall is my only requirement). Will I renew my subscription when it expires in May Most likely not.
 
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BrandonP is offline BrandonP Post #39  March 7,2010, 7:40pm
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I'm a white man who has a strong preference for black women, and I haven't had a lot of luck using this website either. I send requests to communicate to women, and they never respond. I think it's because they're all non-paying members. In fact, I myself stopped paying today, because my checking account is running dry.
 
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2clueless is offline 2clueless Post #40  March 8,2010, 12:56pm
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Interesting topic. I joined here in 2007 and met a great African American man that I dated for over a year. Neither of us had pictures posted initially, but we shared pictures along the process. He was the first match I met and we met during the first month of both of our memberships and decided on exclusivity on our second date so it was not the typical scenario.

I rejoined last month and feel like I am not getting many matches. I contacted the customer service to retake my test and redo the profile since it was outdated anyhow. I am taking a break for now and focusing on other more tailored sites (single parents) however, I do plan on rejoining EH for a three month term with a refreshed profile to see how it goes later this spring.

I agree that the advertising strategy needs a total overhaul.
 
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