Perception: eHarmony is a dating website meant for over-zealous fundamentalists who are looking to find a husband or wife as quickly as possible.

Reality: eHarmony is a dating website of targeted men and women from a variety of backgrounds looking for different types of relationships.

Here’s a list of the five best and worst things about eHarmony (in this man’s humble opinion, of course).

Top 5 “Pro’s” About eHarmony:

1) It’s respected.

People get the wrong idea about eHarmony thinking that creating an account means that in 30 days you’ll be walking down the aisle. Not true. What is true is that there are 1000’s of dating sites out there, and this is one of the most respected. The result is that, by and large, it has a nice size customer base. Why is this important? The more people who are on there the more people you have to choose from. Who wants to be on a dating site that only has 100 members? You won’t have this worry with eHarmony. It has millions.

2) It’s designed to be highly targeted.

Are you ready to sign up for eHarmony? Better grab a drink and a weeks worth of food. Why? Because their initial compatibility survey takes what feels like days to complete. But, I’ve found that — initially — it’s worth it. The matches that you’ll receive tend to bear a resemblance to someone you might just “happen” to find interesting in real life, at least in regards to interests, life goals, etc. After awhile it starts doing this thing called “flexible matching” where it gives you people that live hundreds of miles away from you, which is more annoying than really being a big problem.

3) It provides you with talking points.

eHarmony has this thing that they call “guided communication,” where you essentially go back and forth with one another by answering a variety of questions like, “Who’s the most important person in your life,” or “What’s your ideal vacation like,” etc. Once you go through this lighthearted interrogation session of one another, you’re free to move to “open communication,” meaning your standard messaging via their mail system, your e-mail, etc. Some people find this very restricting, but I like it because it automatically gives you things to talk about when entering into “open communication.” It’s like training wheels for getting to know someone, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

4) It encourages “frequent outs.”

Let’s say you’re moving along and you were kind of into this girl then she starts talking crazy out of nowhere (happens to me all the time). eHarmony will frequently prompt you - until you take your conversation off their site, of course - to consider if you “really” want to continue talking to that person. If not, after a couple of clicks, you make eHarmony the bad guy and they can never get in touch with you again. Nice. This applies to ladies who get crazy talking guys, too.

5) It’s easy to use.

This is particularly important. Have you been on MySpace lately? Uf! Some people have so much “bling” on their pages that it crashes my browser. A lot. So I just don’t go to the site. eHarmony’s site is easy to use and doesn’t require all of your computer’s processing power. Have you ever been writing an e-mail to someone when your computer crashed and, instead of going back and writing it again you just say, “Eh. Screw it.” Thus the importance of a finely tuned website.

Top 5 “Con’s” About eHarmony:

1) You’re shallow. eHarmony doesn’t care.

Let’s get real. I’ve heard it all before, and my favorite line of BS is, “Looks don’t matter to me. It’s what’s on the inside that counts.” Sure, we all want to be with a “good” person, but ultimately we have to be physically attracted to that person, too — especialy starting out! How you define attractive is relative, however. One man’s beauty is another man’s beast, so don’t think I’m trying to define what it means to be attractive. But, if you decide to “close a match,” or not talk to that person anymore, eHarmony asks you why you decided to do so. There’s no option that says, “Because she’s too skinny/big has red/brown hair,” or whatever. It just has a long list of other reasons and the ever-popular “other.” I find I use the “other” option a lot.

2) eHarmony exclusively picks your matches.

Don’t think that eHarmony is a democracy. It’s not. It chooses who it thinks you’d be good for and vice versa. There’s no browsing other profiles that eHarmony hasn’t matched you with. There’s no taking a peak at whom else might be in your city that you might click with. Nope. If eHarmony doesn’t match you, then they might as well not exist.

3) You don’t know who’s a paying member and who’s not.

So you’ve been paying for eHarmony for three months and just met a new “match” who you’re really into. You’ve been talking for three days and things are going really well when, out of nowhere, she stops talking to you. What happened? What did you do? Did you say something wrong? Maybe not. What probably happened is that her 3-day free trial expired and she’s decided she’s not going to fork up the cash for a membership. How do you keep the conversation going? Unless she’s given you her e-mail before her trial is up, your guess is as good as mine.

4) What do you mean I can’t subscribe?

After spending a decent portion of your life filling out their multi-hundred questionnaire, I’ve heard that eHarmony might deem you “unfit” for their website. Something about having dysthymia or something like that… evidently the questionnaire can not only find you your perfect match, it can also diagnose our mental problems.

5) What do you mean I can’t unsubscribe?

I’ve also heard that trying to get out of your eHarmony membership is like trying to escape from North Korea. I can’t attest to this, but it is something to be aware of. If it’s not working for you, then you should be able to stop free-and-clear.

Overall, I’d give eHarmony at least six months. It’s not for everybody, but it is for more people than you’d think. I’ve had a lot of success finding a lot of different types of women on there, not just the “marrying kind.” If you want details, just ask… :-)

Don’t forget… commenting on this post makes you eligible for the $300 Jason and I are giving away on Friday. A big thanks to him, all of you, and iwearyourshirt.com!

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