I’d like to share a story with everyone concerning my own experience on eHarmony. I hope that this gives everyone some perspective on the use of the line, “I’m pursuing another relationship,” or any of the other lines people use when closing a match.

I met my girlfriend, Katie, on eHarmony a little over a year ago. In fact, she was one of the first four matches I received when I signed up for the service. Like other successful couples (and yes, we do exist!), our relationship started out humbly enough. We ventured through the four stages of Guided Communication and eventually started a nice conversation when we reached Open Communication status. After a few weeks, we exchanged numbers, spoke to each other on the phone for the first time, and finally met face to face.

Now it should go without saying that during our online communications, I continued to receive and communicate with other matches through eHarmony. Like many of you, I quickly noticed that matches come and go at a sometimes alarming rate. Some may communicate with you for a while and then either close you out suddenly or disappear altogether. Because of this, I decided to not put too much stock in my matches since any of them, including Katie, could wind up being just another dead end.

What may shock some of you is that even during the course of our first few dates, I continued to receive and communicate with my matches. Some of them were even in Open Communication status. Why would I do this? Did I not really care about Katie at all? Was I just leading these other women on? Of course not. I simply didn’t know what the future held for us at that point. The possibilities on those first couple dates are so wide open, it’s impossible to know what might happen. Maybe we’d meet and discover an overwhelming lack of chemistry between us. Maybe I’d learn something about her that would be a deal breaker and vice versa. Because of this, I wasn’t going to limit my options elsewhere in the online dating pool. Besides, it’s not like we had promised anything to each other at that point. We had not agreed to date each other exclusively yet, so why would either one of us expect the other person to be “faithful?”

Around the time of our third date, I realized that this relationship might actually go somewhere. The more time I spent with Katie, the fonder I grew of her, and I could tell she also enjoyed being with me, (which was a nice bonus of course). At that point, I decided to stop receiving matches and close out the ones I already had. Since I was in pursuit of another relationship, I told my matches, “I’m pursuing another relationship.”

However, I did consider what I should do about the matches I had in Open Communication status. Should I send them a closing letter, explaining what happened and apologizing for the sudden end of our communication? Would they be mad at me if I didn’t? Would they even believe me when I said I was pursuing another relationship? Ultimately, I decided not to do anything beyond closing the match and saying, “I’m pursuing another relationship.” Some of you may thing it was rude to go about it in this manner, but I disagree. Again, I didn’t believe I owed these women an explanation beyond that. It’s not like I was deeply involved with any of them. The full extent of our interactions existed through some e-mails exchanged on a dating website. If I had gone on a few dates with them, I agree that I would owe them more of an explanation, but that’s not the case. Maybe some of them did get mad at me. Maybe they didn’t believe me. If so, I can’t do much about it, not even with a detailed letter explaining myself. I know I was being honest with them, and that’s what counts.

My point is that you can never know for certain whether or not someone is being honest with you when he or she closes communication. So don’t worry about! Don’t assume the worst. For all you know, that person could have been completely honest with you all along.