After hearing the “This Will Be” theme song from eHarmony’s television commercials (for what seemed like the 4,323rd time), I decided to give the service a try. I’d been using FastCupid—a service which operates under the private labels of Nerve, Salon, and The Onion, to name just a few—for over a year but was getting a little burned out and wanted a change, so I decided to take the eHarmony leap. (For more info on FastCupid’s service, check out  "The Many Layers of the Onion.")

If you’ve paid attention to eHarmony’s commercials, you probably know that they put a lot of stock in their “patented Compatibility Matching System,” a fancy name for a painfully lengthy survey that the eHarmony founder says will help match people in twenty-nine key areas of compatibility. I liked the idea of this, as I was a little fragile after a year of being screened by (and screening) potential dates based almost entirely on looks and clever answers to a few pithy questions. I filled out the survey. Three hours later, I was bleary-eyed and exhausted, but I felt strangely optimistic about this less shallow approach to dating. I was excited to see who my matches would be.

When I checked my email the next morning, I had seventeen emails. A few hours later, I had about ten more. Then ten more. Aaaargh! I couldn’t keep up. Since I was at work, I hadn’t opened any of them yet, but the suspense was killing me, so I started checking out my matches.

I should preface my next comments with this: I’m 5’10” tall (6’1” in heels, which I pretty much always wear) and I live in San Francisco without a car. I want a man that’s tall (at least my height) and for convenience sake, I’d prefer a man that lives in the city (though that one’s not a deal-breaker). I can’t recall filling out my physical or geographical preferences anywhere on eHarmony, and when I opened my emails, I was in for a shock: