Get A Calling Card

There is a good possibility that you will end up communicating with men that are outside your local calling area.  Local toll calls can be quite expensive.  A way around this is to get a calling card.  Costco has calling cards for 2.9 cents a minute, for local and long distance calls.  This compares to 10+ cents a minute from your local phone company.

Ask For His Telephone Number

In order to preserve your privacy, I would suggest that you not give out your telephone number to your eHarmony matches.  When you are ready to talk on the telephone with your eHarmony match, let him know in an e-mail.  Say that you don’t give out your number, but if he trusts you with his phone number, you would enjoy talking with him on the telephone.  If a man absolutely insists on calling you, I would close out the match.  He does not respect your need to feel safe and secure.

Ask Him When Is A Good Time To Call

When one of you eHarmony matches gives you his phone number, write him back and thank him.  Tell him that you are looking forward to talking with him and ask him when would be a good time to call.  When you receive his response, e-mail him back with the approximate time you will call him.

Conversation Topics

Before you call your match on the phone, review his profile and your correspondence with him.  Use the information from his profile and your correspondence to come up with a few conversation topics.  Write down four or five friendly questions that you would like to ask him.  Should the conversation drag or you get a little flustered, you can use one of your questions to help get the conversation back on track.

Give Him Your Undivided Attention

When it comes time to call your eHarmony match, try to minimize your distractions.  Don’t call him from your cell phone while you are driving.  Don’t call him from your home while you are doing the dishes.  Your match deserves your undivided attention.  Since you are calling him, try to be understanding if you catch him in the middle of something and he is a bit distracted for a few moments.

Call Him From A Good Phone

Try to avoid using a cell phone or cordless phone to call your match if you don’t have good reception.  Your match has been waiting a while to talk to you and I am sure he would prefer not having to struggle to hear what you have to say.

Keep The First Telephone Call Short

I would suggest you try to limit your first telephone conversation to 15 minutes.  The conversation will be long enough to get to know one another a little bit, but hopefully not long enough for either one of you to get bored.  You are much better off having a call be 30 minutes too short rather than 5 minutes too long.  Your goal should be to always leave him waiting more.

Ask Him If You Can Call Him Later

When you are ready to wrap up your first phone call, tell him you have really enjoyed talking with him.  Tell him you have a few errands that you need to take care of and ask if you can call him later.  This gives both of you a chance to think about your phone call and an opportunity to look forward to the next.  This will also let him know of your continuing interest in him.

Send An E-Mail After Your First Phone Call

If you had a successful first phone call, before you go to bed, send him a short e-mail saying that you enjoyed talking with him.  This accomplishes several things:

  1. It lets him know that you are still interested in getting to know him.
  2. In terms of the next communication, it puts the ball in his court.
  3. His response will give you a sense of his level of interest.
  4. It is a great way to encourage him to pursue you.

Find Out About Your Match

Use the phone calls with your match to try to lay the groundwork for meeting him in person.  What type of food does he like?  What activities does he enjoy?  You can use this information to help you select the venue for your first meeting and give you ideas you can suggest as possible future dates.

Video Conference With NetMeeting

If you are pursuing a match that is not in your local area, before anyone invests in a long drive or a plane ticket consider trying a video conference.  You will both need to have high speed Internet connections and at least one of you will need a webcam.  You can pickup a decent webcam online for around $60.  NetMeeting® is a video conferencing program that I have used.  It is part of the Windows® XP operating system and it can be downloaded for free for earlier versions of Windows.  You could also use NetMeeting to talk to each other for free, but my experience has been that the sound quality is not the best.  I like to chat on the phone while my computer provides the video feed.  I will warn you that setup can be a hassle if you have a router or firewall that need configuration changes.  To make the connection, you will need his computer IP address.  He can determine his IP address using the website    www.whatismyip.com.  You will need to enter his IP address in NetMeeting to dial him up.  It is a lot of fun and once you have bought the webcams, it is free.