Let's dip into our mailbag today.
Our first writer asks:
"I generally close out any match sent to me that does not have a picture uploaded, I figure, if they are afraid to show a pic, then they are probably ugly. Your thoughts?"
There are a lot of reasons why a woman might be reluctant to post a picture. Unfortunately, the most common reason is because they logged onto the service to see what it's like, took the personality profile, and abandoned the service soon after. This covers about 90% of the women who don't leave a photo, in my experience. Other tell-tale signs include the use of an obvious pseudonym, and blank "about me" questions.
Generally, I close these matches. If they're real, they can always send a final response. But keeping people like this off of your "active" list clears the way for more matches, so it's worth purging these people quickly.
What about the other 10%?
There are a lot of explanations as to why a woman might not leave a photo. She may be truly ugly. She may just be insecure about her looks. (Many attractive women are.) She may be afraid that someone she knows will see her on the service. Or she may be very attractive, and sick of men hitting on her without reading her profile. Or (and this is the most common reason), they still aren't sure yet about whether or not they want to meet someone on eHarmony.
So, what do I do if I decide to give her a chance?
I hold my picture back. The photo caption will read that I have a picture, but I've chosen not to share it yet. And I'll start communication.
If she hasn't shared her picture by the time we've finished exchanging must haves/can't stands, I'll reveal it then.
Most women, at this point, will put a picture up. And if they don't, they'll give their excuses quickly during open communication. Do you want to accept the excuses? That's up to you.
By the way... if your social calendar isn't too full, you might want to consider meeting some of the ugly ones. In my experience, eHarmony is much better at predicting friendship than romantic potential. It's good practice, and ugly women will often have cute friends. Just a thought.
Another letter reads:
"I've thought about staring on eHarmony, but I don't hold any religious beliefs. I'm afraid I won't find anyone through the service."
True, there are going to be a number of women who will say that they only want to meet someone of their religion. But, did you really want to meet those women?
I'll speak with some experience here. I'm Jewish, and I was not willing to meet people who weren't. That instantly excluded 94% of the membership. Plus, I had to have a personality match. That excluded another large chunk the eHarmony population.
But, thanks to the constant advertising, the population is huge. And, although I rarely saw a potential match in my mid-sized city, I got interesting matches from nearby large cities on a regular basis.
My advice? Lose the fear. Sign up, take the profile, and see what matches you get. If you don't get any, you don't have to subscribe.
That's all for now. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming...
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