We are not intelligent until we know exactly what they want al the time without them having to tell us and until we know exactly how to act and what to say all the time in the perfect way they want us to act and say things.

then they will STILL find the one flaw that breaks the deal.

As a low 50's veteran of the dating websites, this letter reminded me of how many women are fixated on intelligence. They mention it over and over in their profiles, they even include it as their title i.e. "Searching for intelligent Life". The Intelligence requirement trumps caring, compassion, money or even a tight butt.

I admit there are stupid and incoherent men; (we need look no further than the White House). But in general, most men are intelligent, caring and reasonable company if you meet them half-way; (same as women).

Why then do most dating women insist that they are awash in a sea of stupidity?

I like a clean man. Fresh sweat, okay. Old sweat, not into that. And I like to be clean myself too. This isn't a reflection on a person's character, it's just how I'm comfortable. But the reason is because I DO like oral sex. I just prefer going down on a clean guy. So it seems unlikely to me that men want you clean because they DON'T want oral sex. And in my experience, even though we all have showers doesn't mean we all use them on a regular basis.

But also I think what other people have said about clean meaning housekeeping habits is pretty likely too. Since we're speculating about it and coming up with different answers, of course it means different things to the people who check it as essential. I agree with you that I'd have concerns about a guy who thought it was more important than ruling out racism and other serious character flaws, but I'd advise you not to assume it means one thing or another.

...and despite my dislike for "eHarmony" in general, the "not clean" question was just kinda stupid.

When I read it, it was pretty literal. Who wouldn't want someone clean versus someone not? It brought up comparison images of someone sitting out on the street in Santa Cruz who thinks that patchouli is a suitable substitute for a shower, versus someone I might meet at work or at the post office dressed nicely and without the redolence of B.O.

And yes, I'm quite realistic about this - I don't expect my girlfriend to be spotless all the time. I do expect that we'll occasionally avail ourselves of the washroom so that being clean is the norm.

I guess what I'm getting at is - don't read so much into the question. That's one of the things that turned me off of eHarmony in the first place...the combination of the ticking clocks, the must-have-a-husband-NOW attitude that seems prevalent in so many of the profiles, these things resulted in overdissection of every little detail.

And never mind Neil Warren's links to John Dobson.

Now that's "Bleeeeechhh."

T

I have had good luck meeting the few women I have met so far, could have dated any one of them but for lack of phyiscal attraction. The other reason is many of these women seem very bitter.

I think the problem is the women are so angry and lacking in discipline that they lump all these sites together and trash them equally instead of using some logic and having some faith that a psychologically matched couple will probably get along better over the longer term than a random one night stand with the cute loser you haven't a clue about.

I imagine many women think if the boy on the computer screen is not EXACTLY what you imagined you need, then it is open season on him, on the site, indeed on the existence of the internet, and the very demon patriarchy invisibly swathing all of us in its iron grip.

It is all very disheartening to see. So many ultra bitter women who got destroyed on the rocks of all the insincere but hot players they bedded and got screwed over by in their younger years.

I have to say, I'm confused by the all the vitriol towards eHarmony.

The site is run by evangelical Christians -- so what? I didn't go on the site to meet the founders, and I'm pretty sure that none of them showed up in my matches. I checked the box for "not religious" and that was that. No Jesus fans in the mix. In no way did the site, it's questions, or any of the people I met through it proselytize to me or try to make me more "godly."

eHarmony's "hook" is that instead of presenting a sea of people who can describe themselves any way they choose, you see only the people that they think are compatible with you based on a personality test. I think a lot of people misunderstand that concept. Someone in an earlier letter said they only match you with people just like you, which is flat wrong. . . they are assessing compatibility, not similarity.

Maybe it's rooted in some distrust of psychology (What the hell? Are you all Scientologists?), but I think people blame eHarmony when they don't see themselves the same way the test sees them. If you're getting matched with people you can't stand, maybe you weren't completely honest when you took the test.

I work in the clinical assessments industry, so I have some idea of how these things work (though the details of eHarmony's test and scoring rules are of course not public). The assessments are designed with controls to evaluate the validity of the answers, and are normed against particular control groups. And it's possible for a person's responses to place them outside of the test's defined categories.

Understanding this, it doesn't seem all that sinister that eHarmony will "reject" some people as unmatchable. It just means they didn't get any statistically significant results from your assessment.

And, although it DOES bother me that the site caters only to male-female matches, even this makes sense. A compatibility assessment normalized on that assumption would not be valid for a male-male or female-female pairing. Those situations would each require different scoring rules, possibly different test questions altogether, and developing an assessment that proves useful and valid is not a simple thing.

All I'm saying is what is so bad about eHarmony? That it doesn't work for everybody?

I dated two people I met on eHarmony, and got along famously with both of them. It was only two, because that's all it took -- my girlfriend and I have been together for a year, and she's moving into my house next week. So, it worked for me, when six years of trying everything else yielded nothing.

I don't like the founders of the site, and I'm sure not going to magically become a Christian because I looked at it. But I'm sure glad it was there.