Dear eHarmony: It's Over, And It's Not Me, It's You. - KITTY

Hi, I’m Debbie Downer. Some of you might know me as Negative Nancy. I have a couple of new adventures to tell you about, but first, some business.

This has been a dateless, actionless, winkless week for me. Obviously, I’m fiercely combating the inactivity in my dating life with copious amounts of mac and cheese (both lunch and dinner yesterday), chocolate, champagne and – thank GOD – hot yoga.

I saw Six-String this weekend. It was impromptu. I’m getting the feeling he’s not much of a planner, which is why I’m not much of a thinker that it’ll go anywhere. We went to a great show on Saturday night, slammed some street meat and then got entirely too little sleep. It was our third “date”, if you can call it that. I like his beard.

In the last couple of weeks, my Match profile has had ZERO activity. Like, for example, one of the last people to have viewed my profile is a creepy-guy in cute-guy disguise. In 15 days, it appears that he’s visited my profile over 18 times. The last exchange we had was over a month ago, when I still thought he was cute, and it went a little something like this: He winked; I emailed; he emailed and asked me out; I emailed back a yes I’d like that; and he never replied. Fun. Yet he kindly visits my profile no less than three times a week as if it’s a Facebook status update and I’ve somehow changed something, look different or can’t see the fact that he’s actually stalking me on Match.com. For the record, it’s actually not possible to secretly stalk someone on Match.com.

So I re-joined eHarmony. I’m unsubscribing this week. For those of you who don’t know, I reluctantly joined eHarmony about a year ago prior to meeting my most recent ex. I met a guy on the site – yes, one - but the night we were supposed to go on our first date, I cancelled on him in favor of a first date with my most recent ex, the one who broke my heart, who I had just met the weekend prior. Talk about a life-changing decision.

As it turns out, eHarmony is still a social hub for semi-special-needs gamers who don’t use spell-check and are all about the height of your average garden-gnome. Or they are missing teeth. I’m serious. I wish I could publish some photos without totally exposing identity.

I’ve come to this conclusion, and tell me if you agree: Match.com is like being set up by a friend - not a close friend, but an acquaintance; and eHarmony is like being set up in an arranged marriage by your parents who really don’t know you because you’ve lived at boarding school since you were six.

It’s a double edged sword, this online dating thing. Most popular dating sites have this function that I like to call the “Diet Button”. Why? Because it makes me want to go on a diet. It has the ability to – at once – throw a big sopping wet blanket over the warm fuzzy you get when you come across someone who you actually wouldn’t mind sitting across a dinner table from for an hour. So you boldly send a wink. Or perhaps you spend a few minutes carefully crafting a little witty-but-don’t-worry-I-didn’t-try-too-hard email. And BAM. Rejected. And without reason! It allows users, without knowing more than 500 words about you, to let you know they’d rather not know anything more about you, thank you very much. Ouch. It feels about as good as a cold, hard jab to the jugular followed by a pat on the back. Which is the worst kind of hug. It feels like being dumped before you ever went on a date.

But, see, I’ve been on both the giving and receiving ends of the Diet Button. I only use it if someone has sent me an email, a wink and perpetually tries to IM me. At that point a restraining order might be necessary, and no Diet Button will ever fix that amount of crazy.

eHarmony has a feature called “Close Communication”. I don’t know why, but my conscience is far less guilty closing communications with people through eHarmony than through Match. I think it’s because I don’t have to look at them ever again. They’ll never come up in searches. And they can’t reach out to me ever again. Out of sight, out of mind. Plus, it gives me multiple choice options for why I’m no longer interested, one of which is the ultimate evasive cop-out, “Other”. Which really means, I prefer communicating with men who have their canines and bicuspids intact and don’t wear Sketchers, thank you very much.

To give you some perspective, I’ve closed 258 of 276 “compatible matches” on eHarmony. I haven’t logged into the site in over a week. Either I’m just generally incompatible with humans or I need to terminate my relationship with eHarmony.