Note to Discerning Beachys:

The following post was sent in by an Discerning Reader known only as Shlipped Beachy Girl. Due to my personal lack of experience in using e-harmony, I cannot stake my professional reputation on the effectiveness of the tactics and practices suggested in this post. However, I felt that I should pass them on to all those Beachy young people that may need a little additional help in being led to that special companion. Regards, HBB

 

This is a guide that will match all the Beachys that are desperate looking because they’ve had no success at CBS or Hillcrest or the Fellowship Meetings. This guide will direct you through the dangers of Internet dating for the Beachy. You need absolutely no money. That’s right! This is a bargain! It is completely free, unless of course you are so grateful you wish to us at the Beachy Complex a free-will offering, once you are finished with the wedding. All you need is your local library’s computer, or possibly your more liberal cousin’s computer and the Beachy Stalker Manual Beachy Directory…you know, the red book that your Mom and Dad bought from church and keep rifling through every time a mysterious name is mentioned.

 

This is the Guide in Five Simple Steps, provided to you ABSOLUTELY FREE as a Public Service by the Beachy Complex, just to show us how much we appreciate you reading our blog.

 

1.         Sign up and fill out your profile. Fill it out honestly. Any Beachy can recognize another Beachy anywhere through any medium, by mere word use or mild reference to all things categorically Beachy. E-harmony is no different. Sure, its parameters and social helps assist you in putting your best foot forward for even the most blundering and socially inept Beachy, but the Beachy part still comes through, even though you would normally forget to say “hi” and “what’s your name” before a proposal for marriage came bursting up from the depths to which it has been suppressed. Be sure to check out the Icebreakers and memorize them if you can. You see, e-harmony is for Beachys. It just helps you put things in order of progressively serious relationing and it might make you appear as though you had some good manners for the first time in your life!

 

2.         Put some pictures on if you please. You need to look like you could pass for a Beachy or anything else for that matter. If you are female, don’t post a shot of the big bonnet. Don’t put your Beachyness all right out there, because it will increase the rate at which you are rejected by all those non-Beachys out there and even though you don’t want to date the non-Beachys, it will lower your self esteem to have so many rejections on your profile.

 

The point is that you have to look like you could be a lot of things besides Beachy. You could be BMA (gasp). You could be Brethren or conservative Mennonite. Even though you still want to be Beachy forever, you have to look like you could be all those other more racy things. It adds to the opposite-gender appeal.

 

3.         The final thing you need to do is set your filters correctly. (a) Broaden your age allowance. Anything 10 years your senior or your junior will work. Maybe your match might have a brother or a sister that is more suitable. You can never tell. (b) Make sure you allot your potential match some drinking flexibility. Some Beachy youth do drink and are honest about it. Others lie. But really, most Beachy youth who drink quit when they are older and more responsible. The novelty wears off, you know. Just because someone has drunk a little and is being honest about it, doesn’t mean he/she won’t later amend his/her ways and be a good Beachy. Beachys just don’t have a sustained culture of drinking and if the match turns out to be an alcoholic…well, there is time to discover that, although it is somewhat rare. (c) Your filter for long-distance relationships should reflect Beachy flexibility. Beachys are the world experts at long-distance relationships. In fact, only long distances can break up the propensity (oops, that is a very big and complicated word) for ingrown communities, although we aren’t as nearly as bad as the Amish. (d) Finally, and most importantly make your Religion filter very narrow. Only accept matches that are categorized Mennonite. And then let Mr. Warren go to work for you.

 

4.         DON’T SIGN UP FOR A MEMBERSHIP. No, do not spend a dime. Simply load your profile, like bait on a fishing hook, because that’s what it is. e-harmony works so that you will get matched and you will get an e-mail once you get matched. You may have to wait quite a while before you get a match because everyone seems to find CBS and Hillcrest and Mountain View quite successful for the matching up, but there may be someone out there living is some remote community in Wyoming, that really wants to get married. And you just have to be there to catch him or her.

 

5.         Once you get a catch match, check it out. Read everything he/she has written. If he/she sounds Beachy, he/she likely is. If you don’t know what Beachy sounds or looks like, just go with your gut. If you mostly agree with the match, he/she is Beachy. If you disagree with half of the things written or preached about in the profile, that person is not Beachy or Mennonite or Brethren. If the match seems agreeable to you and if you’d like to give it a shot, then congratulations! But no! Do not sign up and pay the money. Just look at the place the person is from and get out your stalker manual Beachy Directory. Generally, most Beachy hubs are not in large cities, so you can track this match down really easily. Most likely, all you have to do is call up your cousin who lives in the same community and she will know of the one or two people who are marriageable in the extended Beachy-Mennonite network in that particular area, and whose name matches the one you have found on e-harmony. Isn’t that harmonious? Now, get to work and save some money for some tripping because gas prices are high and you’ll need it. I know I said it was completely free but maybe this is the catch. But if you are a good Beachy you will know how to get around the catch. Somehow you’ll find a carload of people going to the location of your match sometime in the next month.

–Schlipped Beachy Girl