You’re an eHarmony dating service user and have a few matches and have taken a glance at their profiles. You see someone or something about him or her that peeks your interest. You want to get to know them. So you start the guided communication process.

What is guided communication? Well at eHarmony when you want to communicate with someone you can either try the Fasttrack feature or as most do use the Guided Communication.

How does this guided communication work?

Guided communication is made up of 4 steps.

1. You send or get sent Closed Ended Questions
2. You exchange Must Haves/Can’t Stands
3. You swap answers to Open Ended Question
4. You reach Open Communication

The first step is Closed Ended Questions. In this stage you select from a list multiple choice questions for your match to answer. When they answer your questions they send you their questions for you. These are used as icebreakers or sorts. Questions like:

If you decided to stay at home for the evening would you tend to:

watch TV

clean

talk on the phone

read

or you can type in a short answer

How organized are you?

I plan everything in advance

I usually don’t get caught by surprise

I like to just let things happen

I never know what I’m doing until it is done

or you can type in you own answer

The next stage is Must Haves/Can’t Stands. Before you send them the first time you have to select yours from the list. You choose 10 of each that fit what you are looking for best. Must Haves are things like:

Sense of Humor…

I must have someone who is sharp and can enjoy the humorous side of life.

Family Life…

I must have a partner who is committed to marriage, home, and family.

Can’t Stands are things like:

Pessimism…

I can’t stand someone who always sees the glass as half empty.

Rude…

I can’t stand someone who is belittling, impatient or hateful to people in any situation.

If you believe you fit with your matches Must Haves/Can’t Stands then you move on to the Open Ended Questions.

In this stage of the communication you can either choose from a list of questions or you can type in your own question. Answers are usually about a small paragraph or two. The questions you can choose from at this stage are things like:

Describe an interest you have that you would truly hope your partner could share with you.
Tonight you can do anything you want, no penalties, no reprisals, and the cost is unimportant. What are you going to do?

If after all this you are still interested in each other then you move onto Open Communication. The eHarmony service provides you with an internal email system. You can use this for as long as you like. Once you feel comfortable you can exchange external email addresses or phone numbers.

For those that just want to get to Open part as quickly as possible, eHarmony has a Fasttrack option. You click on this and if your match agrees you skip all the steps mentioned above and go straight to communicating via the internal eHarmony email system.

This should give you a basic understanding of the eHarmony online dating service.