(Disclaimer: I swear I did not make this up. One of the emails below has been edited for length. Its content and formatting, however, have not been altered in any way.)
Alas, I fear my quest to find the perfect dating algorithm is doomed. They say the third time is a charm? Ha! Fie upon them, whoever “they” are. The third time has reduced me to a low-rent Don Quixote, forever tilting at compatibility test windmills.
Cowed by eHarmony’s puzzling hostility toward my wife, and ultimately frustrated with NoMoreDates.com’s “X” factor (though confident in my team-building skills should I pursue a career in HR at, say, Blue Shield), I’d just about given up. Then I read John Tierney’s most recent science column in The New York Times: “Hitting It Off, Thanks to Algorithms of Love.”
In it, Tierney probes the heated rivalry between researchers at Chemistry.com and eHarmony. It reads like a suspense novel. Chemistry.com lashes out at eHarmony for refusing to match gay couples. eHarmony reports Chemistry.com to the Better Business Bureau on the grounds that Chemistry.com’s “science of attraction” is, in fact, unscientific. Chemistry.com retools its advertising and attacks eHarmony for rejecting certain applicants. eHarmony credits its own science for the rejections, but refuses to reveal the details of its dating algorithm to the greater scientific community. Neither site has published any research for peer review.
Learning all this, I felt reinvigorated. Surely, there must be hope. Sniping at one’s competition, tattling on them to the government, hyping unverifiable data…these are the hallmarks of scientific progress. U-S-A! U-S-A! So I turned to a site that seemed to trump them both—ButterfliesAgain.com. Its founder, Dr. Joel Block, boasts a compatibility test (with the starkly efficient name of “Compatibility Test”) so effective that he hasn’t even bothered to get into the dating game himself. He simply licenses the test to other dating sites.
I sent him the following email:
Dear Dr. Block,
If you don’t mind my asking, how much do you borrow from the FIRO-B and CPI-260 assessment systems in your test? I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks & best,
Daniel Ehrenhaft
To which he replied:
ButterfliesAgain.com is a short, powerful and engaging COMPATIBILITY TEST that takes the guesswork out of romantic couplings. It is yours at NO COST.
Get the edge over your rivals! Consider this:
• The test will NOT cost you anything.
• The test will bring in significant income by raising subscriber volume.
• The test will raise your site’s ranking in comparison to other sites.
• A portion of our test-derived income will be used to promote your site.
The ButterfliesAgain Compatibility Test has been thoroughly scientifically evaluated with stellar results. It’s only credible rival is the E-Harmony test, and it is more engaging, with real-life vignettes, and 4 times as fast (Mine: 15-20 minutes, E-Harmony’s: 75 minutes)
In addition, I am available to bring my love/sex expertise to your site for consulting, answering subscriber questions and other promotional activities to be discussed, if desired. My new dating book will be out in the fall, and it is preceded by 16 titles on love and sex written during my 30 year career specializing in relationship issues.
This is your opportunity to become #1.
Sincerely,
Joel Block, Ph.D., ABPP
My first thought was: Hmm. Why did he send this from an email address belonging to somebody named Cori Kaplan? After that came the usual flood of emotion: anger, denial, grief… My fingers were poised over the keyboard—
But then I stopped myself. If I responded to him in my overwrought state, would I appear too clingy? Clearly there was no spark between Dr. Block and me. Somehow we’d misread each other. He wanted to change me; I’d posed questions he didn’t want to answer. Did I have a right to be upset? He hadn’t even had the guts to address me by name! No “Dear Daniel,” not even a “Dear dehrenhaft.” Okay… I’m not assigning blame. It wasn’t me; it wasn’t him; our relationship simply wasn’t meant to be. That pesky “X” factor had reared its head. Best not to walk away mad or ask what might have been. Best just to cherish the brief e-time we shared.
And Dr. Block did teach me something. It’s time to hang up my spurs. If there is a perfect dating algorithm, nobody is eager to say much about it, other than that scientists have evaluated it, often “with stellar results.” Beyond that, it remains a mystery. Could it be that none exists?
In my next post, I’ll address a cheerier subject: National Breakup Day.
