Curse you, eHarmony. You’ve done it to me again. You got my hopes up and then nothing. NOTHING!

Okay, maybe I should back up. I love the concept of eHarmony. It does the work for you, which I find awesome. They’re supposed to nip it in the bud so you don’t end up sitting across from someone who in no way shares your beliefs, values, and lifestyle. My dating life has been bad enough without having to kiss all those frogs. And I still think it can work. But I’m beginning to think I’m gonna have to move.

I initially signed up for this emotional flagellation five years ago, just out of college and coming home from my grad school disaster. I admit I was not in the best shape to be trying to date and I was only 22 but that doesn’t explain the way the whole thing went down. I got some communication right out of the gate. This is going to be so easy, I thought. Guys are lining up to date me. Me. I went on three bad first dates in a six month period. And then…crickets. Nobody was starting communication with me. So I decided to be bold and start initiating contact with the guys who looked promising. And…more crickets. A few more months went by and then I tried an experiment. Let’s just see what happens if I send a smile to every guy on my match list, regardless of how I feel about them. And you know what happened? NOTHING! Not a single guy responded. At all. Ever.

Sooooo, five years on, I’m at it again and it looks like history may be repeating itself. I’ve gotten three guys who wanted to talk to me. I answered one and we went through the entire back and forth thing that eHarmony does with the exchanging questions and what not. His last batch of questions included “What’s your e-mail and phone number?” I gave it to him thinking I was about to get an e-mail or a phone call. The next day I log in and…his profile has been taken down. He has “moved on” according to the site. Are you kidding me? You get all the way to asking a girl for her number and then decide that you’ve found your bliss and delete your profile? Arrggg!!

What happens on both eHarmony and Match is that I get messages from guys I don’t like and the ones I like never respond to my messages. And before you say I’m being too picky about it, let me point out that these sights are trying to match me with guys who live in other states and guys who write like this:

“Like I said up top I’m looking for a fun and energetic woman to have fun with go out or hang out at home doesn’t matter to me I’m easily entertained and enjoy doing most anything. I do work a lot at my two jobs so it’s hard to meet women ao I figured is try this out and see what happens”

You know, punctuation is really overrated. Who wouldn’t want to go out with a guy who has mastered the art of the run-on sentence? By the way, that is an actual copy and paste from the profile of a guy who sent me a message.

I realize I may be jumping the gun with this rant. You never know. This time next year I could be getting engaged to my soul mate that eHarmony picked out. But if it keeps up this way, I’ll have no choice but to quit my job, move to another state, sign up for more dating sights, and stay home all day compulsively sending smiles and winks muttering to myself, “Why don’t they like me?”