September 25, 2000

Counselor's new website aims to delete divorce epidemic
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___DALLAS--Could an Internet matchmaking service be the answer to America's surging divorce problem?
___Christian counselor and author Neil Clark Warren thinks so, and to prove it he's launched a new website called eharmony.com. He chose Texas as the place to introduce the new service, although the concept already is gaining nationwide publicity.
___His premise is simple: Most failed marriages were doomed from the start because of incompatibility. If there were some way to help men and women better assess compatibility before marriage, there would be fewer divorces.
___Some of these concepts were outlined in Warren's best-selling books "Finding the Love of Your Life" and "How to Know if Someone is Worth Pursuing in Two Dates or Less."
___For example, a major component of the website is helping single adults identify their own list of "must-have" and "can't stand" traits in a potential mate. Warren offers 50 possibilities in each category, and participants are required to narrow the list down to 10 of each.
___When asked to do this, both men and women typically respond that they couldn't possibly come up with 10 traits they can't stand or must have in a mate. But what they find, he said, is that narrowing the list of 50 to 10 is hard work.
___Taking a hard look at questions such as these is what's missing from most dating experiences that lead to marriage, Warren said. The result, he added, is overlooked areas of incompatibility that grow more serious as time goes by.
___"Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that most marriages that get into deep trouble were in deep trouble the day they began," said Warren, who has been a counselor 33 years. "More technically, the selection factor is undoubtedly the most critical factor in producing this horrible national dilemma we have going on."
___That dilemma has produced a society in which 70 percent of all people have experienced a divorce within their immediate families, he said. It also has created a climate in which an African-American child born in the United States in the 1980s has only a 6 percent chance of surviving to age 17 with both biological parents still in the home, and a white child has only a 30 percent chance.
___"There is no other problem in America that is coming close to the devastation that this marital breakdown is causing," Warren said.
___The trend toward divorce could be slowed by facilitating better marriage matches, he believes, but making good matches is more difficult today than perhaps ever before.
___Americans are more demanding in their relationships than ever before, he said. "Fundamentally, we have become so differentiated as persons that finding somebody who matches us is a tremendous challenge."

NEIL WARREN

___Left on their own, the average American male or female faces an uphill struggle to find the right mate, Warren said. "Most people have a pool of candidates that is quite small. For example, if a given person has a true pool of candidates of 100 persons, that's a lot."
___From that pool of 100 potential mates, the field gets reduced quickly by applying just a few filters, he explained.
___"Most Southern Baptists are going to want a very evangelically oriented person, somebody who really takes God seriously and personally, somebody who recognizes the importance of Jesus in their lives, somebody who prays, somebody who cares about the souls of others," he said. "By the time you have narrowed down your candidates to someone who meets those criteria, you've probably lost 50 of the 100. Then you need a match in intelligence. You were down to 50, now you eliminate another 25. Then you take any other issue, like ambition. What we know is that those whose ambition levels are different are not going to be happy. Now you've eliminated another half of the 25."
___Through his years of research, Warren has identified 250 traits and values on which he believes couples need some level of agreement. These relate to personality, personal interests, values and beliefs, and communication style.
___What's happening in society today, Warren said, is that out of all these critical areas of compatibility, people are getting matched on only four or five dimensions. And those tend to be dimensions that don't offer much glue for a long-term relationship, like appearance and social status.
___Only after the wedding do the other areas of incompatibility surface, "and they don't know what to do with that," he said.
___Through eharmony.com, Warren hopes to offer an easy way for singles to avoid this trap.
___"Our goal is to build a data bse of about 3 million people in the next 30 months," he said. "And then for instance, if you were single we would try to find you 10 to 25 compatible persons within your geographical range."
___The number of actual matches found for each person will vary, depending on their personality profile and restrictions placed on how large a geographic area they are willing to draw from.
___Once the matches are made online, a participant may find out more about a select group of those. From that group, the participant chooses three to six individuals to begin communicating with anonymously.
___Each step of the process includes support from Warren and other professionals involved with eharmony.com--support such as advice on how to talk with a potential date, what questions to ask and what to look for in the other person's answers.
___Only after five stages of electronic communication have been completed will either participant know the name or see a photo of the other person.
___If both parties desire to have further contact with each other after that point, information is provided on how to do so. While the first five electronic encounters are guided by eharmony.com, those beyond that threshold are not.
___Warren acknowledged there is some risk in connecting people who may ultimately meet face to face. But eharmony.com has built in several security precautions, he said, including a mechanism to screen out emotionally unhealthy individuals and those who appear to be fabricating answers to the questionnaire.
___"We eliminate 20 percent of all persons who apply to us," he said. "We catch liars. And we try to eliminate the persons who suffer from emotional health deficiencies."
___Although it's only been in operation a month, eharmony.com has been well-received by the Christian community in Texas, Warren said. It also has been endorsed by Focus on the Family and other evangelical groups.
___"The reason we want the Baptists behind us is their values are like ours," he said. "We are totally biblically based. We stress premarital sexual abstinence and the value of long-term commitment."
___While helping people find a date or a mate is nice, the big goal is much larger, Warren said. "We want to get the divorce rate lowered by 10 percent in the next five years. That would affect 8 million people in one generation.
___"The greatest goal of all would be to try to reduce the divorce rate to single digits in the next 20 years," he added.
___"If we could get the divorce rate down to single digits, it would be the greatest single social revolution in the human race. It would change America fundamentally."
___Both he and his wife, Marilyn, are so passionate about this cause that they quit their jobs in California to devote full-time to starting eharmony.com. A former psychology professor at Fuller Seminary, Warren had run a clinic of 15 full-time counselors. Mrs. Warren was an administrator with the Huntington Public Library.
___He closed his practice in May, and the couple relocated temporarily to Dallas. From this Texas base, they have been speaking in churches across the state about their vision.
___Their immediate goal is to get 20,000 people using eharmony.com. Then they hope to take the project nationwide in December.
___Though Warren is affiliated with a Congregational church in California, he feels quite comfortable with Texas Baptists, he said. He has spoken in a number of Baptist churches and is available for other engagements in the next month.
___Speaking inquiries should be directed via e-mail to neilwarren@eharmony.com.

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