Clarification – Compatibility

{Let me apologize in advance for the LONG post.}

I received the following comment from my post on eHarmony’s definition of compatibility, so I thought my previous post might need a little clarification.

“Sorry to hear you’re not happy with your matches thus far. The compatibility to which we refer is measured through your answers to that original long Relationship Questionnaire. The compatibility factors include dimensions like energy level, artistry, ambition, and more. Our research shows that these are the key foundational elements two individuals must share in order to build a solid relationship that will be happy and healthy in the long run. It’s not a guarantee that your life styles or affinities will be the same. And it’s not a guarantee that you’ll have chemistry with all these matches. The goal is to ultimately find one great candidate among the matches sent to you. If you feel, however, that your matching isn’t right, we may be able to reset the Relationship Questionnaire. It is quite possible that your results from a while ago don’t really match who you are today. This can be done for free. You can contact our Customer Care team at: http://help-singles.eharmony.com/ or follow me on Twitter @eharmony_jack we’d love to have a chance to help your experience improve. – Jack”

First of all, I’m not looking for a guarantee; that would be ridiculous. Nor am I dissing my matches or my non-matches. The men I did meet were very nice and there was at least some level of compatibility. No chemistry, but there was compatibility. Which brings me to my second point; I was not complaining about the lack of chemistry nor holding them responsible for chemistry. Chemistry is a tricky thing, certainly not something for which you can hold a third-party responsible.

My issue is that I do not feel that everyone eHarmony is “matching” me with is actually a match according to their “29 DimensionsTM of personality”. Many of the “87 people waiting to talk to me” were part of their “flexible matching” program which they explain as follows:

“From time to time, if no matches can be found for you, we will employ Flexible Matching. With Flexible Matching we temporarily relax the Match Selection criteria which you indicated are least important to you. This often allows us to find you more matches. Rest assured, we never relax our compatibility criteria because we know the key dimensions of compatibility are a crucial foundation for a happy, lasting relationship.”

I am not looking for quantity. I would rather have fewer matches who are actual matches than have a mailbox full of “matches” who aren’t, something I attempted to communicate to eHarmony. The selection process is the reason I joined eHarmony. And from the information in their profiles, I’m really stumped on how the matches still worked on the “key dimensions of compatibility” because I just didn’t see it. One final point, I have reset my settings several times and tried to turn off the flexible matching, but it doesn’t seem to be an option.