Here’s a tale of a friend’s experience with eHarmony… not so harmonious after all.

Like many other women, I too wanted to find love, settle down, have kids, the whole shebang.  I’d heard average things about Tinder so I thought I’d give eHarmony a go because:

1. It’s a paid service, and
2. The questionnaire takes approximately 86 years to fill out (all the better to find your ‘perfect match’).

So surely it’d filter out all the guys that were only DTF, right?

After chatting to a few men via email, I came across a guy named Nick.  He seemed normal enough, had a decent job, spoke highly of his family, etc.  He asked me what I was passionate about, so I began to tell him my family, friends, work etc. (fairly standard), and he informed me he was passionate about men’s rights against women.  I asked him what he meant by that and he said ‘Violence against men from women’.  I thought ‘Hmm OK, fair enough,’ and decided to not delve too deeply into that one.  He then sent me a novel of an email telling me how his ex used to bash him (he was a 6’6 huge fire fighter according to his pics) but that was OK, because her new partner murdered her last week and “SHE DESERVED IT!”

Stick a fork in me, I was done!  Needless to say, I blocked him and went on a break from eHarmony for a while.  Clearly their filtration system wan’t as fine-tuned as I had anticipated.

I then came across Dave.  We met for coffee one afternoon and again, he seemed nice enough, appeared to have nice friends, nice family, decent job and told me he was looking for love and was sick of games, etc., (tick, tick, tick).  I still wasn’t entirely sold, so I decided to remain in contact as friends.  However, I began to get drunken calls and texts from this 30 year old MAN at all hours of the night for months to come.  I was too old for that shit so I stopped responding.  This didn’t stop Dave though!  I began to hear from him almost every week for the next 2 and a half YEARS.

I guess I was beginning to think that there was something wrong with me because I just didn’t seem to like anyone and I thought maybe I was being too picky.  So when I received a happy birthday call from Dave and he said he wanted to fly up to QLD to take me on a date, I thought well, why not?  He’d been chasing me for years – surely he’d grown up a bit by now and I should just stop being so picky.

So he flew up for my birthday, took me out and I actually had a good time!  The next few weeks progressed quite quickly and he was flying me down to Sydney every weekend to see him.  He introduced me to his parents, friends, and told me he didn’t want me to see anyone else.  I’m not sure how conversations about relationships go these days, but I figured there were enough ‘signs’ to assume that we were exclusive.  He was still doing stupid drunken things, but I thought I could look past it.

I was down in Sydney for my best friend’s 30th and had invited Dave to attend with me to meet my friends.  He declined and said that he wasn’t drinking that weekend, which was weird considering he seemed to be drunk during most conversations I had with him.

So when I received a drunken call from him the morning of her party and he asked me to pick him up (in his car) from wherever he was, I went to ensure he was OK.  He reeked of booze but insisted that he was OK to drive.  I didn’t feel safe with him behind the wheel but there wasn’t a lot I could do, he was being very rude and basically threatened to leave me there if I didn’t let him drive.  His phone was in full view on the dashboard and suddenly it started vibrating with message alerts from Tinder!

Me: “So you’re on Tinder then?”

Him: “Well why do we need to put a label on us?”

I felt like an idiot.  It was pretty clear to me that I was looking at a very immature little boy who I wanted absolutely nothing to do with.   I turned to him and said “We don’t, let me out of the car”.  And that was that.  My friend came to pick me up from the middle of Oxford street and I was bawling my eyes out.  How could I have been so stupid?  I haven’t spoken to him since and yet he still tries to get in touch with me via every social platform in existence.

I can laugh about it now, but it was a good lesson to always go with your gut.  I didn’t have a good feeling about him from the start, and then started questioning myself and my own morals and beliefs.  I learnt to keep my head held high, stick to my guns and know what I wanted and it eventually came to me.  I’m now happily involved with someone I met organically and it’s officially the best feeling in the world!

If you have a story to share please contact me at claudsvscupid@gmail.com