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Neil Clark Warren

Hailed by Time and USA Today as a 'must read' author, Dr. Neil Clark Warren is one of America's best known relational psychologists. He has more than 30 years of experience and is the author of numerous books, including the bestseller, Finding the Love of Your Life. In '00, he founded the Web-based relationship service eHarmony.com. Dr. Warren earned his divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he was also a counselor and adjunct faculty member.


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Neil Clark Warren

Neil Clark Warren

Tavis: Dr. Neil Clark Warren is the founder of eharmony.com, the fastest growing Internet relationship Web site in all of America. Since 2001, eharmony.com says it's produced 6,000 marriages. Dr. Warren is also the author of several books about love and relationships, including his most recent, 'Falling in Love for All the Right Reasons. He also holds a divinity degree from the Princeton Theological Seminary. He's not the founder of the company only. He's also the pitchman.

Dr. Neil Clark Warren: Laughter--what an important part of a healthy marriage. Humor is just one of the 29 dimensions we use to match you on eharmony.com.

Woman: He made me laugh, and we just got each other.

Man: We laugh every day.

Second woman: It's amazing. It really is.

Third woman: He makes me feel good all the time, just hearing him laugh.

Warren: Experience the joy of true compatibility. Log on to eharmony.com and get your personality profile, a $40 value, yours free.

Tavis: Dr. Warren, nice to have you here.

Warren: So nice to be here, Tavis. I--

Tavis: I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Warren: Can I just tell you that all the people at eharmony are so jealous of me today because I get to meet you.

Tavis: Well, I'm delighted to have you on the program. Let me apologize to all the folk at eharmony. I said over 6,000 marriages. I should have said over 50,000 marriages.

Warren: 50,000.

Tavis: That's a lot of marriages.

Warren: That's a lot of marriages. I have to tell you that we have the great thrill, every time we read one of those stories, you know? People say, "I'd given up hope that I'd ever find my soul mate, but I found my soul mate," and they tell the story, and I cry sometimes.

Tavis: I just wanted to say, I actually love you as a pitchman. There've been any number of companies over the years whose CEO or founder thought he could do the pitch thing. Some have done it successfully, others have not. But you're really good at this thing.

Warren: Well, that's kind of you to say. I have to tell you, I often think to myself, you know, I'm kind of old, and I've been married for all these years, and people kind of say to themselves, "Maybe that guy is trustworthy." I'm just an old Iowa country boy, you know, who has his roots from the same place you do in Indiana.

Tavis: Midwest. Yeah, sure.

Warren: So I want to be--I want to be the most trustworthy person on earth not because I just seem to be, but because I really am.

Tavis: Well, I think it's significant, though, when you're trying to put people into the most difficult thing oftentimes for us to find our way into, a wonderful, long-lasting, loving relationship, that trust factor--not unlike in a love relationship, I suspect--is terribly important, and, in fact, you've been married, what, 40-some years?

Warren: 46 years.

Tavis: 46 years.

Warren: Yeah. And I have to tell you, Tavis, my wife and I didn't know the first thing about how to get married. I mean, we were so lucky. You know, we went out here to Pepperdine University, and all I knew was I was supposed to be taller.

Tavis: Ha ha ha ha!

Warren: And I was. I was a little bit taller, and then, the second thing I knew was I should be a little older. Now, you know, that's kind of passé. I mean, there are a lot of women marrying younger men and so forth. And the third thing I was taught when I was a kid was if she's not a member of your religious group, she should be willing to switch. And she did. She switched to mine, then I switched to hers, then we switched to another group, so none of those 3 was all that important. We feel so lucky to have been married well for 46 years.

Tavis: What is it about eharmony that allows you guys to register 10,000 to 20,000 new registrants each day?

Warren: Oh, it's incredible. It's overwhelming. You know, when we started eharmony, Tavis, I know you believe me on this, we never dreamed that it would go like this. Never. We have 7.6 million people on our site. And we never dreamed of this. But there's a big, aching, hungry void out there among--100 million single people in the United States alone. 100 million, and most of these people would love to be married if they could be married well. And so when we put our commercials out there on radio and television and simply say, 'This is how we think it's done. We've got a matching model that we studied for 40 years, and we think we know how to do it well,' people really do respond.

Tavis: I want to get to the wonderful story of how eharmony works. You guys are obviously doing something right to have married that many people, getting new registrants every day at the levels I just mentioned. Obviously, you've got a formula here, a strategy here that works. Before I get to that, though, let me flip it on you if I might and ask the reverse. Where is it written, who says that one has to be married to find happiness? I mean, part of what drives the whole eharmony philosophy is that you can be happy in a love relationship, but is that for everyone?

Warren: No, absolutely not.

Tavis: OK, just want to ask.

Warren: I've got to tell you a very interesting thing that I've found some of the happiest people on earth are single. But if you want to be married, then, you know, sometimes you're not so happy until you are married, but if you can be happy and be single, you know, that's safer because I tell you that somewhere between a half and 3/4 of all people who get married the first time aren't very happy with their choice. And we're trying to change that, but if you can be genuinely happy inside yourself and be single, it's OK. And just one other thing, Tavis, and that is, I always say to people, if you're not happy now as a single, you're not ready to get married.

Tavis: Mm. All right. Well, I'm ready then 'cause I'm happy as a single. Ha ha ha! And my mama is sure 'nough ready.

Warren: Well, I'm here today. You know, she called me.

Tavis: Did my mom call you and tell you that?

Warren: No, no, she didn't. But she might have called me. She would love to have--how many of your family is already married?

Tavis: I have 9 brothers and sisters, and most of them either are or have been.

Warren: There you go.

Tavis: I'm the only one that hasn't gone that direction yet.

Warren: And have you often thought that you'd like to be married?

Tavis: This ain't about me, Dr. Warren.

Warren: Ha ha ha!

Tavis: It's not about me. It's getting real hot. Whoo! Getting hot! Getting hot in here! Getting hot in here! Ha ha! My mother's loving this. It would not surprise me to know that either my producer's mother, Neal Kendall, or my mother called and had you booked on this show. But I digress. That said--'cause we're both 40 and not married yet--that said, tell me what the philosophy is. What is the strategy? What makes eharmony work?

Warren: Here's the philosophy, and that is this: that in order to be married well, you need broad-based compatibility. That means that you're just compatible over a lot of different areas. For instance, I didn't have any idea that the woman I married needed to be about the same intellectual level as I am. I didn't know that. But I was at the University of Chicago taking my doctorate, and I had to give a battery of tests to a whole bunch of people. Gave the battery to Marilyn. I might as well, right? I mean, she's available. And I found out she's just a little bit brighter than I am, but we're just about the same--same area. You need to be with somebody who has about the same energy level as you do. You don't want somebody who's just on the go all the time like you are, and then somebody else who just wants to sit on the couch a lot. You need somebody who has about--a very similar spiritual orientation. And we go on down, we have 29 of those dimensions, and when you get those 29 dimensions right, you just know in your heart that you found your soul mate. Now, one of those dimensions is mutual chemistry. That's very important. But you get those 29 dimensions, you have broad-based compatibility.

Tavis: Is it possible then--I assume it is, I don't know--to have every other category, the other 28 categories, fall right in line, but when you meet this person, there's just a mutual chemistry lacking?

Warren: Exactly. I got to tell you that mutual chemistry by itself doesn't make for a very good marriage. I mean those marriages last about 6 or 8 months. And then all of a sudden you say, "Wow. There's no undergirding dimensions here."

Tavis: There's no there there.

Warren: There's no there there. But on the other hand, if you have 28 dimensions match and you don't have chemistry...whoa. I say let that be a great friendship. In fact, I wrote an article not too long ago that said something like "Love minus chemistry equals friendship." and you ought to let it be a friendship. You need to have that chemistry. You just want to touch the other person's skin, hold their hand, have your arm around them, be with them a lot and hold them, and they feel the same way about you.

Tavis: What if I said to you--as I will now--that this ain't the way it was supposed to be. "I wasn't supposed to be online trying to find my soul mate, the woman of my dreams."

Warren: Yeah. Well, I would say there are 2 answers.

Tavis: You didn't find your wife that way.

Warren: No, I didn't.

Tavis: My dad didn't find my mom that way.

Warren: No. I doubt that he did 'cause there wasn't any...

Tavis: Yeah.

Warren: Only 5 years ago, I didn't know anything about the Internet. But I gotta tell you something interesting, and that is that it's become so much harder to be married well in this day and age. My folks got married in 1915, and they were married for 70 years. And I promise you that they didn't know the first thing about it. But they did--it wasn't a complicated society. There was no television. There was no radio. There was no daily newspaper. There was nothing to complicate their lives. Then Marilyn and I got married in 1959. And you see, it was a lot easier even then than it is now. Today, there are 250 cable channels! I mean people have so many ideas and opinions and values and preferences and all that. And if you get with somebody whose opinions and ideas and values and preferences don't match very well with yours, then it's hard.

Tavis: Is there a particular thing, or things, that you all have found that, to your point, distract people from finding the right mate, keep them from finding the right mate?

Warren: Yes.

Tavis: Things you come into pretty regularly?

Warren: Yeah, well, you know, you put--you talked about the title of my book: 'Falling in Love for All the Right Reasons.' An awful lot of people want to fall in love because of external reasons. They just want to fall in love with somebody whose nose shape is...whose coloring...whose height is the right... And all those things are all right. I mean, they have important meaning. But you need to really fall in love with somebody because their heart is right, because their soul, their spirit, is right, because you just like being around them. You feel so good about yourself when you're in their presence.

Tavis: Tell me right quick in 30 seconds. I go online to eharmony.com, which I may finally have to do, what's the process right quick?

Warren: You take a 436-item inventory, and you'll think to yourself, "Oh, I could never take that many questions." but you'll love it because it's all about you. And then you'll get a personality profile of you that's all free, and we do that to try to help you get to know yourself. And then we begin--we ask you, "Within what geographical range would you accept a match?" and after you tell us that, we begin to say, "Well, we have these matches for you." and then you carry on a correspondence with those people through about 4 stages. And then the ones that you want to meet, you meet. And by the way, I should tell you, you know, you are watched by a particular group. I mean, you're African American. We have about 500,000 people on our site who are African American, and unfortunately--I think it's unfortunately--there are about twice as many women as there are men.

Tavis: Whoa! I gotta get going, Doc. Gotta get going. I got some work to do. Twice as many. I'm about to log on to eharmony.com right about now and get my match on. The new book: 'Falling in Love for All the Right Reasons: How to Find Your Soul Mate' written by the one and only Dr. Neil Clark Warren of eharmony.com. Doc, nice to have you on.

Warren: It's so nice to be here.

Tavis: All the best. Up next, actress Amber Tamblyn. Stay with us.