Online dating is the major mechanism through which many people meet their respective partners. Yet, it has become apparent that like all things online dating doesn’t work as well as it could because many people who use it tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. Some of those mistakes are obvious ones, but there are many that it seems people don’t understand or realize.
For many men, one of the pet peeves with online dating is when women use photos on their profile that are deceptive. A common deceptive photograph is where there are only headshot photos taken from above. By photographing a person from above it can give the perception that they are thinner than they actually are, and by only focusing on the person’s head this will help the illusion even more. (There are even worse cases than this where women have used photos of other family members and passed them off as photos of themselves.)
Unfortunately, when this happens if the two people meet face-to-face or over a Skype session, it’ll be apparent what’s happened and the guy will feel deceived. However, what women don’t realize is that what upsets the men so much is not so much the fact that the women look different from their photographs on their profile , but the fact that the women took the steps they did to be so deceitful. For the guy it brings into question the woman’s trustworthiness and they begin to question what else she may not have been honest about. After this point, most men will not bother to pursue the woman any further and a connection that could have had some potential, vanishes. So as far as photographs are concerned, it’s best to have a dead-on head shot of your face and one that shows off your full figure.
All too often people will write very little about themselves on their profile. At most, there will be a sentence or two and what is written will be pretty generic and give the reader almost no idea what the person is like. Believe it or not, men do actually read the profiles to see what’s been written and get a sense of whether or not they would be interested in getting to know you.
It helps that what you write in your profile gives the reader a sense of your humor, whimsy, and what you would be like to just relax with and spend an evening out with. In a lot of ways, it should almost be a teaser for what it would be like to sit with you over a cup of coffee and chat. It’s fine to mention your family, what’s important to you in life, and what you do for a living, but if you really think about it,, that doesn’t give the person reading your profile a real sense of what you’re like.
If you’ve written a poem or there was an experience that changed your life, which you can provide some detail about, these may be effective ways to entice a reader. Also, if you have a funny story to tell about a past experience, that will give the reader an idea of what sort of humorous sensibilities you have. The more you do to make what you’ve written in your profile unique to you, the better the chance that the person who contacts you will be a better match for you.
Never ever lie about where you currently live. A very common scam on online dating sites involve women who post profiles claiming they live in Canada, the United States of America, or Europe only to later reveal they live in a different place. This is usually a lure to try and con the person out of money or to get them to help pay so they can immigrate to their country. Keep your profile up-to-date with where you live because otherwise the guy you’ve been chatting with, when you tell him you live in a different country, may think that you’ve been deliberately withholding that information from him so you can con him.
Asking someone you’ve been chatting online with for information so you can run a credit check on him is not a great idea. The message it sends to him is that what you care about is money and not him. It’s just not an appropriate thing to request and most men will choose to break off contact with you because of that.
While this development has obviously happened because of some people running scams so they can find people they can leech money from, asking for such a thing via an online dating site will cause most men to become quite offended by you. The better option is to meet him face-to-face to see what he’s really like. If after doing so a couple of times you find that he’s focused on your money and what you buy him than there is a high likelihood that he’s running a con. Really, all you have to do is trust your instincts and it’ll be obvious. If the person is genuine, you won’t have lost out on having the chance to get to know a great guy because you offended him by asking for a credit check.
One hard rule I highly recommend following is, for whatever reason, to never give or send money to anyone you’ve met through an online dating site. It doesn’t matter what a hard luck story they’ve told you, it’s a scam plain and simple and once you’ve given them money all they’ll do is contact you again and again to try and get more money out of you. Under these circumstances break off complete contact with the person and contact the owner of the online dating site to inform them of what this person is doing. A reputable online dating company will immediately terminate this person’s profile and do their best to block them from using the website. If the person persists in contacting you, go see the police and seek out their direction on the matter.
Lastly, be open and honest when you communicate with him. Don’t say you like something that you don’t or tell him what you think he wants to hear. Just tell him how you really feel about things and be yourself. Otherwise you’re just wasting each other’s time because eventually it’ll come out and by then you’ll have done damage to the trust that you were trying to build with each other. This doesn’t mean you have to reveal everything about yourself, but don’t lie. If you’re single, divorced, widowed, separated, or have kids, let him know upfront. That way he’ll know what your status is and he can decide if that’s something he’s comfortable with.
The key to any relationship is trust, and even though you may be meeting for the first time via an online dating website, if you want it to go anywhere, you have to proceed in an honest and forthright manner.
