Life, Love, and Internet Dating by Douglas Alan Weiss

Author:Douglas Alan Weiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633934344
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2015-11-24T16:00:00+00:00

Every Internet dating site has its own way of presenting personal information. Some give you a large word count and many different places to talk about yourself, your interests, your idea of a great first date, and so on. Others are a bit stingy, and as you can see, I like to write. A limit of 1,500 words is too restrictive for me. So on at least one site I had to practice a great deal of editorial brevity, picking and choosing precise words and phrases.

I ended up rewriting and editing my profile five times over forty-five days. Yes, that’s a long time to be noodling. It reflects how I write. I tend to do just a little review as I go along and then take several editing passes. Colleagues who know me never bother with my first drafts; they know I will relentlessly revisit whatever it is I am writing until I have it exactly where I want it. And even though this wasn’t a creative writing assignment, I wanted it to be right.

Eventually, I settled on a format and the general outline. I began with a few sentences about my outlook on life. Think of it as a version of this book expressed in about fifty words. Then I tried as best as I could to say some things about myself—what I did and did not enjoy. You may think this odd. Why not just say what you like? I found that, sometimes, you need to say what you are not looking for.

I had spent some time working in Washington, DC. Being exposed to government, especially Congress, did not fill me with optimism, much less profound respect for some of our country’s leadership. So I made it clear in my profile that I did not enjoy political debate and preferred to limit my civic engagement to helping people in my community. That told the reader a lot about me and scared off those who find it pleasing to argue about politics. In another sentence I mentioned that I don’t watch much TV, but that I do listen to radio and gave some examples of what I liked. The couch potatoes got fair warning—we are not going to be simpatico. Finally, I described the special someone I was looking for. Not in a literal sense—color of hair and eyes—but their qualities. I was giving the reader a way to hold up a mirror and ask, “Does that look like me?” It must have worked, because I noticed a dramatic uptick in people who commented on my profile. Success! I had improved my chances of finding someone closer to my ideal by taking the time to paint a better word picture of myself as others see me.

Of course, you never know when people hold up that mirror if they see Alice in The Looking Glass or Cinderella’s evil Queen. We are all biased in one direction or another. Assuming we are reasonably objective, our self-image should reflect the way others see us.

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