While eHarmony.com purports to give a scientific basis for compatibility and love, the fact is, there is no science of love, as the alleged components have zero predicative power for how long any relationship will last nor how satisfying that relationship will be. Furthermore, all the scales and scoring methods used by eHarmony offer no guarantee that the couple will even click. But then, the whole premise of eHarmony – that love is something we approach rationally – is questionable.

What eHarmony does do quite effectively is market our delusion that, in affairs of the heart, our prefrontal cortex is in control. The truth is, our emotions reside in older, more primitive regions of the brain. What eHarmony does is get us to buy their service by flattering us. But really, what they are peddling is false advertising.

If there is any science in this matter, it is in the common sense observations that three things form the basis of adult sexual relationships –

• Sexual attraction and desire. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that schwing! In other words, all the things often deemed as shallow when judging potential partners do matter, which means they aren’t so shallow after all.
• Intimacy. How do we become friends? This question is probably harder for heterosexual couples then gay or lesbian ones, since males and females in our culture have different understandings about what makes for friendships.
• Security operations. Harry Stack Sullivan identified this factor in the 50’s and is probably least discussed, though it’s often the most powerful. It includes all those things that make us feel safe in a relationship. What our parents taught us by their interactions (which explains, for example, the uncanny ways children of alcoholics find and fall in love with each other). The values that bolster our self-image (e.g. the woman who declares she couldn’t marry a man without a college degree). The imagined approving or disapproving voices of family and friends with regard to our choice of partner (e.g. Mom sneering, “I don’t believe you’re going out with that slut.”). Our fears of loneliness, on the one hand, and engulfment, on the other. Our unresolved issues from childhood. And God knows what else.

How can any quiz figure out those things that are at the heart of the matter?

What connects us is not science, but our stories, and most often the stories of our loser –ness.

There is nothing rational about LUST. But commitment is a rational process. Some people do not commit before they marry, but, for the ones that do, it is a rational, thought out act. Only the very dumbest act on lust alone.

Having officiated at 100 weddings and counseled couples before and after, I have to disagree about how well thought out the process is. But you're right insofar as saying few do it out of lust.

More often it is out of loneliness or the delusion of fixing their parents' marriages by doing it better or some other unnamed and unidentified emotional process. People get connected for a whole range of conflicted and conflicting reasons. Or to add a religious twist to this, marriage, for many people, is an earthly form of salvation... or at least they expect it is.

sad but true, rev. sad but true. but that's not what THEY would have you believe.

AAAAAAALLLLLLLL You need is LUST. Do her while its fun, dump her when it isn't.

I know three people who have tried eHarmony and were unsuccessful. So the ads may be misleading. And breaking relationships down to a science seems misguided.

But then again, the romantic notion of the chance meeting is not entirely promising for folks who don't go to bars, aren't particularly religious (and therefore not prone to meeting potential mates at church), and don't work with many attractive men/women. Marriages have been arranged for thousands of years. eHarmony is just the modern version of this, however ineffective it might be.