Zara wanted to meet new people and so decided to try dating sites. She recently moved to London and lives with a group of friends from University. Her greatest skills are baking cakes and Zumba dancing!
My main method of meeting someone thus far has been to know that I want to go on a date, and hope that the universe would pleasantly respond by presenting me with a tall, dark, handsome man who would love to take me out on a date and drink some red wine. Unfortunately, yet unsurprisingly, this approach hasn’t quite worked out the way I had hoped, so after a while of contemplating whether or not online dating was for me, I decided to bite the bullet and sign up to match.com.
So there I was on Sunday with a slight hangover wondering what to do with my day, and thought that it was the perfect time to log into my account and explore what it was about and the possibilities it has to offer.
I started by filling in my profile, and actually found it quite hard to know what to say. I had never written a ‘personal ad’ so to speak before, apart from in my CV, and I didn’t think that details about my work experience would be enough to attract the kind of man I was looking for!
I firstly had a look on some people’s profiles to see if that would spark any inspiration. I found that the ones which attracted me most to reading them were not too long, they were funny, and they told me some details about who they were and what qualities they wanted in their date. So many people had written, ‘I don’t know what to say’ or ‘I’m really new at this’ and it got a bit repetitive going through people’s profiles which all had the same summary. I realised that what you need to do when writing your profile is to stand out from the crowd, and so the worst thing you could do is to start it like a hundred other people do!
When I was seeking inspiration from other people on match, one profile really caught my eye. He simply had a list of 10 funny/unique bullet points about himself. For example he said that he was 6’2, so tall enough to carry a girl on his shoulders at gigs, and that he had cooked for a famous band! This was short, to the point, and also made him sound interesting and exciting. It grabbed my attention so much, that even though I hadn’t completed my profile, I sent him a cheeky wink anyway!
But back on track again I thought I would turn to Google and the match advice site to see if there were any useful hints and tips that would help me out. I quickly realised that the advice online was the same as what I thought, write an attention-grabbing headline that tells people who you are, make it interesting, and also write a bit about what you are looking for.
The problem still remained however – do I really know what exactly makes me interesting? Or fun? I thought that the best thing to do was to enlist the help of my friends. I asked them what they thought my best qualities were for both my looks and personality, and then tried to write something engaging and most of all a bit fun!
We came up with the short and sweet –
‘Cake baker, risk-taker and fun maker! A good time girl looking to meet a fun and friendly guy. If you like to dance, drink wine, eat good food, and have adventures, then I’m your girl.’
I thought this ok, but perhaps it was a bit cheesy, and it didn’t give much personal information away or tell my potential date what I was looking for. So I tried again –
‘A bit Australian, a bit Indian, a bit African, and a bit English, I love traveling and going to new places, red wine, baking cakes and cooking spicy food. I’m easy going, love to laugh, and want to meet a fun and relaxed guy.
I studied drama at Uni and work in online marketing in London. A fun fact about me is that my parents also set up a fresh curry paste business, so I help out with that and naturally have a lifetime supply!
I like to go to the theatre, hang out at the pub, sit in coffee shops, and listen to live music. If this all sounds good to you, then I’d love to hear from you.’
I still didn’t know how good this was, and part of me was thinking that perhaps a lack of capitalised mentions of EXTREME SPORTS and WILD ADVENTURES wasn’t going to attract the attention of millions of men. But then again, I don’t want to meet millions of men who prefer sporting holidays to the beach, think bungee jumping is fun, or love to camp in wild mountainous terrains, because all of that just isn’t me.
So now that’s all written I can move on to the rest of my profile, and in all honesty, even if my summary isn’t perfect, I can safely conclude that it’s a whole lot better than hoping the universe will be kind enough to send a tall, handsome man to my door!
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