eHarmony Advice

You’ve created your eHarmony profile, which is a great first step. But once you start receiving matches, what next? Our top tips will help you get the ball rolling and give you the confidence to make the first move.

You’ve created your eHarmony profile, which is a great first step. But once you start receiving matches, what next? Should you wait for them to get in touch? Send an Icebreaker? Or should you bite the bullet and get communicating? Our top tips will help you get the ball rolling and give you the confidence to make the first move.

Choose your preferred way to communicate
At eHarmony, we know that everyone is different, which is why we give you a selection of ways to communicate with your matches:

Icebreaker: If you’re a bit hesitant, send your match an icebreaker. Icebreakers are a selection of eight phrases designed to get the conversation going, for example, ‘Just wanted to say Hi!’ This may prompt your match to contact you.

Guided Communication: This allows you to communicate with a match in three stages, in a structured way, by swapping information at each stage.
>You can find out more in our article ‘Guided Communication explained’

Open Communication:  After the three stages of Guided Communication, you can enter Open Communication with your match, where you exchange email-type messages. This is safe and secure – we don’t reveal your contact details to your match.

eHarmony Mail: If Guided Communication doesn’t appeal to you, you can request your match communicates via eHarmony Mail with you. This simply takes you both to Open Communication (see above). However, your match might prefer to stick with Guided Communication – they can let you know if this is the case.

Do your homework
With online dating, you get out what you put in. Make sure you review all your matches – look at their photos, read their About Me profile (which usually contains some great clues as to their character) and read their Personality Profile if they’ve made it public. You never know what might spark your interest.

> Wondering why your matches seem quite different? Read our article ‘Why are my matches so varied?’.

Communicate with as many people as possible
There’s an old saying; you’ve got to speculate to accumulate. And communicating on eHarmony is pretty similar. Yes, we send you matches based on deep-down compatibility, but it’s then up to you to get talking to them! Even if you’re not quite sure whether a match is right for you, you could gain so much from sparking up a conversation with them and finding out you have great chemistry.

We know it’s not always possible to communicate with all your matches – and some may not respond to you – but by having different conversations going you’ll gain confidence and get so much more from your subscription.

Don’t jump to conclusions
If you’ve initiated communication with someone and they don’t respond, don’t take it personally. There are any number of reasons that someone doesn’t choose to respond to you, just one of which being that they’re not interested. The fact is that if they haven’t taken the opportunity to get to know you then they’re the ones who lose out.

On a similar note, if you’ve exchanged communication with a match and they stop responding, don’t jump to conclusions. If the communication has been regular (once a day for example) don’t start worrying when it’s been more than 24 hours since they sent you anything. They may be unable to get online, they may be trying to work out what to say next…the possibilities are endless. Before you send them a prompt (Guided Communication), or another message (Open Communication) leave at least a few days so that they don’t feel pressured.

> For more about how long you should wait, read our article ‘How long should you wait for a reply?’

Be polite
If you receive a communication request from a match and you genuinely don’t think you would have any chemistry, then make sure you close your match. When you do this, you will be able to specify why you have closed them, choosing from a list of pre-determined reasons.

This will allow you to focus on the matches you’re most interested in, and will enable the match you have closed to move on to communicating with other matches. This process is especially important if you have already communicated with each other.

If you’ve got more questions, check out our help section on communication – it’s all there.