Can You Pause an eHarmony Membership?

Only customers in New York State can pause an eHarmony membership. They do it by contacting Customer Care and saying how long they want the pause to last, and a pause does not change any payments still due. If you live anywhere else, there is no pause, but you can hide yourself in Data & Settings while you take a break.

The pause option exists for members in New York State. If that is you, contact eHarmony's Customer Care and tell them how long you want your membership paused.

Know what a pause does and does not do. It pauses the membership. It does not change payments that are still due, so a pause is not a way to stop paying for the time you are away. Read your billing situation before you assume a pause will save you money.

Outside New York State, there is no pause button. What you can do is hide yourself.

Go to Data & Settings and use the Profile Visibility slider. It makes you invisible to everyone except the members you have already been in contact with. New people stop finding you, and the women you are talking to can still see you.

Hiding is not the same as pausing. Your membership carries on as normal while you are hidden. It simply stops the site from putting you in front of new people until you switch visibility back on.

Because most members cannot pause, a break on a paid plan uses up time you have paid for. Two weeks away are two weeks of Premium you did not use.

That is no reason to skip a break you need. It is a reason to plan it. Pick the day you are coming back before you leave. A break with a clear end date costs you a couple of weeks, while one that drifts on because you never quite came back can quietly use up the rest of the plan.

A break is hardest on the conversations you already have. A woman who writes to you and hears nothing for two weeks does not wait around. She assumes you lost interest and turns her attention to someone who answered.

So close things off properly before you go quiet. Reply to everyone who is waiting on you. Tell the women you like that you will be away for a while.

If one conversation is close to a plan, set the date now, for the week you are back, so it does not have to be restarted from nothing. A short message covers it: you are away for work until the end of the month, you would like to take her for a drink when you get back, and does the Thursday after work for her?

Some men want to step away from eHarmony for a different reason. Nothing much is happening, and logging in has started to feel like a chore.

A break will not fix that by itself. Two weeks away changes nothing about a weak first photo or an opening line that sounds like every other man's. Most men who get little from dating sites are not unlucky. They are doing a few fixable things badly.

So if this is that kind of break, use it. While you are hidden, replace your weakest photos with a clear, recent shot of your face and a few that show how you actually live. Rewrite your page in specific lines that sound like you talking. Then come back visible, with a page that has a real chance of a different result.

When you return, switch your visibility back on and pick up the conversations you parked. Reply to anything new, and write to the women who have been active recently, since they are the most likely to answer soon.

For the conversations that went quiet while you were away, do not apologize at length or explain your whole month. One light line that picks up where you left off works better. If you were talking about her trip to the coast, something like "Back from a month of work chaos. Did the coast live up to the hype?" reopens things without making your absence the topic.

Some of those women will have moved on, and that is normal. The ones who reply are the ones worth your attention, so put your effort there.

Then keep things moving toward dates. Keep your messages short and specific, raise the idea of a drink early, and ask for her number within a handful of messages. That is how you make the rest of your paid months count.