How Do You Start a Conversation on eHarmony?

Every new conversation on eHarmony begins with a Like and a personal message. You Like something on her page, such as one of her answers, a hobby, or something the two of you have in common, and you add a quick message with it. When she Likes something of yours as well, you have a Match, and your Matches show up in the Messages tab.

The mechanics are simple. You find something on her page worth reacting to and Like it. Then you write a short message to go with it. That Like and message are your opening.

A Match needs both of you. It happens when you have each Liked something on the other's page. Once you have one, the conversation lives in your Messages tab, and that is where it carries on.

So you are not sending a message into the void and hoping. Your opening is attached to one specific thing she chose to share, which is a real advantage if you use it well.

Most men Like the first thing they see. That wastes the best part of the system.

Read her page first and look for the detail with a story in it. A trip she mentions in passing. A hobby that is a little unusual. An answer that shows a bit of her humor or a strong opinion. Those are the things she is quietly hoping someone will notice.

Skip the obvious ones. If every man who writes to her Likes the same line about loving travel, your Like disappears into the pile. A Like on the small detail tells her you actually read what she wrote.

Keep it short. One or two lines is plenty. The job of the first message is to get a reply, not to introduce your whole life.

What works is a small, playful take on the thing you Liked, then something easy for her to answer. That shows her a bit of your personality and asks very little of her in return.

A few examples of the tone:

• Her page mentions a mountain trip: "Important question. Were you the one leading, or the one asking how much further?"
• She says she is always late: "I appreciate the honesty. I will plan to arrive ten minutes after the time we agree."
• She loves a particular show: "Bold choice. Convince me in one sentence why I should start it."

What to avoid: compliments on her looks, a plain "hey," a long paragraph about how much you have in common, and anything that reads like an interview question you would send to every woman on the site.

eHarmony does a lot of work before you ever write a word. The matching algorithm puts women in front of you who share things with you on paper, and her page tells you plenty about who she is.

None of that writes your first line. Two people can be a great fit by every measure the site uses and still have a dull first exchange that goes nowhere. What decides whether she replies is whether your message is fun to answer.

That is good news. It means a man who writes well has an edge that has nothing to do with his score.

When she replies, the aim is a date, not a pen pal. Keep the exchange light and quick, and do not let it drift into a week of polite questions.

A useful habit is to know where the conversation should end before it starts. The final message you are working toward is something like "Sounds good. My number is this, what is yours?" Everything before it should make that line feel natural.

So bring up the idea of meeting early, as a light suggestion rather than a request. Something like "if you turn out to be good company, we should get a drink sometime" in your second or third message plants the idea without pressure. A few messages later, ask for her number and suggest a day.

A few habits kill conversations on eHarmony before they start.

The first is writing an essay. A long first message feels like homework, and she has to decide whether to match your effort before she even knows whether she likes you.

The second is asking a string of questions. Where are you from, what do you do, what do you like to do for fun: that is a form, not a conversation, and she has filled it in many times already.

The third is waiting too long to suggest meeting. The longer a chat runs without a plan, the more likely it is to fade out. Aim to reach the number stage within a handful of messages, because the conversations that drag on for weeks usually end in silence.