When I was at school an older friend of mine gave me advice about romancing girls:
“If there’s a girl you really like, go talk to her. Respect whatever interests her and make her feel you chose to spend time with her, putting aside all other distractions, and – if you can – either make her laugh or be intrigued to find out more about you. Ideally both. If she believes you are genuine, then she’ll definitely let you put your hand up her school blouse.”
It seems charming now. An innocent boyhood dream.
Being in your 30’s, the way of meeting girls shifts. You can’t spend 6 weeks beforehand being bashfully caught staring at the cute girl who wears black eye-liner and mid-thigh length skirt from across the classroom. You really, seriously, cant.
Life horizons extend into a widescreen land. It makes finding someone to have a relationship with tricky.
Gone are the days of the classifieds with GSOH. Speed dating? So 2000s dear. Friends with benefits? I wrote earlier about a documentary about
Dogging and how difficult
that is to arrange and that is with folk happy to wear homemade animal masks who
want to do dogging together. And successful dating is much more complex than finding an unlit lay-by with some strangers dressed as badgers in stockings.
You can develop an illicit office romance. It has the advantage of letting you assess at close quarters their prospects of holding down a job. The disadvantage is nothing is a secret inside the internal emails zooming between workmates if the relationship bombs. You can be introduced to a friend of a friend at her wedding. The upside is a pre-vetting system. The downside is realising what your friend actually thinks your type is nothing like her new husband – got the message!?
You can create a profile on an online dating service. This appears to be perfect solution for the busy singleton looking for love on the mean streets. Select preferences from a series of drop-down menus, add a bit personality and the computer regularly sends you details of suitable dates based on your selections which you can ponder at your convenience. The reality, though, is practically Blade Runner-esque.
For a start deciding on dating someone who could end up being the most important person in your life can be done using a mobile phone. There is a lot of people on the
datingbase [
heh, heh]. Too many, perhaps. Where people would only perhaps meet a small number of potential beaus, online dating can look to set you up with another account holder anywhere within a 75 mile radius to your location – by default! And everyone wants to go out with someone hotter than who they’ve just seen on the screen.
Anyway, all this preamble brings me to last weekend, when a friend of mine let me delve very briefly into online dating. Despite me only venturing onto the platform for the time it took me to drink my latte, it was enlightening into how glaringly bad men are at it. I am discussing men here only because they were the only profiles I saw, given my friend's search orientation on the site. In reality, what I am saying more or less applies across the board.
As I swiped past dating profile after scary dating profile the site had selected as potential life partners for her, I began to not just fear my friend will never find a man to go on a reasonable date with but for the very future of humanity if there is no more procreation.
So, men with online dating profiles, here are my 8 simple hints for dating my friend.
ONE: Your profile is not supposed to be baited a trap in woodland
TWO: Make you’re profile picture a clear, identifiable photo of you dressed and happy
THREE: Consider your profile information as a personality CV and you want a date interview
FOUR: There is too fine a line for you between creating mystery and creepily withholding information so do not attempt “enigma”
FIVE: Be honest with yourself about the type of person you are compatible with
SIX: Do not try to set up a date purely on someone’s profile picture
SEVEN: Really: look past the photo and read the attached profile
EIGHT: You’re more likely to get a date if you demonstrate you spent time choosing a person rather than selecting them
Men, like women, are attracted initially by what they see. Which is the profile photo in this case.
The profile photos are mainly a disaster.
I guess you want to be seen at your best and cleanest but this seems to be a concept beyond most of the profiles I saw. Blurred, half faces staring back from bathroom mirror reverse selfies, photos where the face is so far away as to be indistinguishable, and chronically pulled faces were swiped by like passenger faces pressed against the windows who are doomed to travel in the economy carriage on a hurtling ghost train.
And honestly, what are you guys thinking when your online dating profile picture is a group shot? Which one are you? It comes over as the account is run as a team event and that’s off-putting.
I mean, who thinks a selfie photo showing you what you’ll see if you look down from on top of him in bed is appropriate when your “ideal first date” is
“a coffee in a non-chain coffee house and chilling”? TAKE A PHOTO OF YOU DRINKING A COFFEE! See advice TWO.
And this leads me onto profile pictures which do not match the profile information.
One profile picture was a professional appearing shot of a man dressed in a commercial pilot’s uniform – golden loop lapels on his shirt and captain’s cap under his arm. With a profile photo like that as an introduction you’ve got to mention you are a pilot in your profile information. I mean, you have to. Have to.
Or you could be like him and in the field “Profession” – input
“Professional”.
But maybe there is no drop down selection for Commercial Airline Pilot. So best mention it in the ‘free text’ box at the end. Mention you are pilot. Women probably like pilots and according to your photo, you are a pilot. I would mention it first chance I got on a dating site if I was a pilot.
Or you could be like him and type
“I don’t want to say too much about me so you’ll need to just find out”. Find out you are not a pilot? To find out you dress up as a pilot when you play Microsoft Flight Simulator in your spare room? That you are the man behind a file the police keep labelled “The propeller killings?” I’d rather not know. See advice FOUR.
Men want to feel desired by younger, vibrant girls. They tend to see this as fuel of the id when out and about. But this is foolish when choosing someone to date. If you are a 45 year old man on a dating site, be realistic: don’t say you are interested in the age-group 18-23. Not only are you missing out on a far more meaningful relationship with someone more in tune with you, if an 18 year old did take you out on a date you’d probably end up getting your stomach pumped at the late night A&E because you thought you were getting a malt based drink when you asked for an Ovaltine and it turns out that it is an underground name for a new punk fashion drug. See advice FIVE
Men see photos of ferociously hot women and think: I don’t care what book genre she’s into or her real name – I’d go out with her. I’m a man and I will look at a picture of Eva Green and despite not knowing a thing about her private life. I would crawl over all your dead bodies right now with a dog-lead between my teeth if it meant there was a date with Eva Green at the end of all the dead body crawling. She might be a truly awful person – I don’t care. She might be dull as dishwater – whatever. A manic – I’ll live with it. Because this is a fantasy. It would require the universe playing a cruel joke on Eva Green should we end up next to each other long enough for me to say “Please go steady with me, Eva Green!” I don’t need to worry about what she is actually like, probably ever.
Men! Do not set up a date based on the profile picture alone. You are aiming to actually meet this person for real, so make sure you are going to like them enough to make it worth both your whiles. Read the biography and consider if this is someone you want to listen to as well as look at. See advice SIX.
Really – read the profiles. Many women put in a secret word somewhere hidden in theirs which if you repeat, then they will go out with you guaranteed and give you a blowie in the taxi. Well, OK, maybe not, but you won’t know if you don’t read and you might find it insightful for any prospective date. See advice SEVEN
Which brings us onto the profile information provided in the accounts I saw. This should be relatively straightforward as someone has edited the options on your behalf.
The drop-down menu options mean you almost can’t go wrong for the most:
I am looking for a relationship with -->
A female
Even the more tricky questions are covered:
Children -->
Open to future possibilities
Under “drink habit” you are protected from inputting the bald truth of: “alone, in bed, crying, with a copy of the 2006 Victoria's Secret Catalogue”:
Drink habit -->
Social
It is the ‘free text’ box where things can unravel. Most account holders I looked at didn’t put anything in their only chance to add something interesting and engaging about their worth to convince someone to give them a date. One wrote:
“Does anyone read these anyway?” and another, simply and perplexingly:
“Blaxploitation”.
Yes, people read these bios, because they want to enjoy a date with someone they can get along with! Ironically most of these biographies of artistic brevity do the trick. See advice THREE. And FOUR again while you’re at it.
My friend talked about her annoyance at the replies she would get. Some are simply
“Hi!” and others go for a series of cheap lines and low attempts at the ludicrous “
negging” technique. Online dating with a word processor acting as a buffer was supposed to take care of awkward introductions and scummy bar room chat up techniques for a seedy shot at a one night stand. It gives you time – hell, it gives you a chance to re-draft – an introduction tailored to the profile you are reading with follow up opportunities. See advice EIGHT.
Men seem to assume their account is designed to ensnare women. Which is why they get it so wrong. Women are not field hares and your profile is not cheese.
Some take the term “dating game” and it seems increasingly see it as a game: how many views, how many dates, how many this or that – what tactics to deploy? If you want a one night stand to add to the tally, then online dating is not the correct place.
The aim of setting up a dating profile account is to meet someone you want to spend time with and develop an intimacy between you both. This involves trust, confidence and sharing. This means the account must be truthful, thoughtful and open. See advice ONE.
Although I do think both sides of the gender divide are likely to be as bad as the other, I think it is important to remember the psychological theory of relationship fears suggest a difference: Men fear women mocking them and women fear men killing them. Whether you buy into it or not, it can be useful to keep in mind with online dating.
The negative aspect of this theory is that it explains why men will give little away apart from those trying to show they don’t mind making a pre-emptive fool of themselves and therefore often coming over juvenile or with a profile of overblown self-confidence as a defence. And it explains why women are not getting enough information or assuring enough responses to take a chance to meet with a man alone while feeling safe in their company.
The positive aspect of this theory is if both sides learn from it they can adapt to create more fulfilling and assured interactions through online dating. With a more human touch, men won’t be laughed at when it turns out they aren’t pilots and women won’t come armed with a friend armed with a tazer she got from the black market who will fire it at the first utterance of “going Dutch”.
The love you make is equal to the love you take, after all. And this can only be a good thing.
Anyway, that's my unqualified thoughts of online dating which gave me a reason to Google search Eva Green.
