Most people, when confronted with the blank text box of their new online dating profile, suffer a little writer’s block. How do you even start? Do you launch into a description of your personality, your life, your past? Do you describe your perfect match? Do you sprinkle some random facts and anecdotes, and leave most of it to the reader’s imagination?
The answer is, “Yes, all of the above.” There are many styles of profile writing and it’s hard to say which will be the right one for you. In this article we lay out the most common profile styles and discuss their pros and cons.
The Autobiography
In this style, you talk about yourself through your past. You talk about where you came from, list your achievements, and discuss significant events in your life, ultimately with a view to explaining how you ended up here, in this city, doing online dating.
This is a very common style, and for that reason alone some wariness is called for. It has the potential to be a little dry. Worse, it can seem needy; “Why are you telling me all this stuff already, I don’t even know you!” You risk giving away too much at the start, which means you’ll have no surprises for later on.
However, if done well, the autobiography can provide a deep insight. The things you choose to talk about will reveal a lot about what’s important to you. Also, by providing a lot of information you give your reader the chance to find commonalities, and hence an excuse to write or respond to you. Done well, the autobiography takes the reader on a little journey – a studio tour of your life. If you manage to engage with a very personal style, your reader may feel like they already know you (a little bit) before having met you.
Verdict: use The Autobiography sparingly – it should constitute no more than a paragraph of your profile. Tell your highly abbreviated life story early on in the profile and make sure you do so with humor and spirit.
The Self Portrait
Caring less about your past, you are instead more interested in talking about your current life. This style is a snapshot, a portrait, of the person you are and the life you lead right now. You talk about a range of likes and dislikes, you list the things you do for fun, describe your work, your favorite holiday destinations, your hobbies.
This style is also very common, and so, again, you need to be careful to make it stand out from the crowd. Most people’s lives involve a lot of ordinary stuff. Even the fun stuff is mundane if every second profile mentions it. This doesn’t mean to say that you shouldn’t talk about some of the “ordinary” things; just do so in an interesting way. Do you like to go out dancing? So talk about how dancing transports you and releases your passions. Do you work a dead-end job? Then laugh about it and talk about your dreams also. Do you love going to restaurants? What’s your favorite, and how does their most delicious dish make you feel?
Verdict: elements of the Self Portrait are valuable – perhaps critical. It’s important to show that you have an active life when you’re not trawling a dating site. Find the right balance between exciting, quirky, and mundane-yet-revealing.
Dear Santa
In this style you communicate your personality by describing the qualities that you appreciate in others. You talk about your ideal match’s personality, likes and dislikes, passions and dreams, and even beliefs. You reveal yourself through the person you want to be with.
This approach can be effective, but also demands much caution. The main danger is in seeming selfish and inflexible. It’s all about what YOU want, and to hell with anyone who doesn’t fit your predetermined requirements. Yet, done carefully, this approach will show that you’re a person who knows what they want and can afford to be picky.
This style achieves something even more important: done well, it suggests that *you* possess all of the awesome qualities that you demand in your partner. You deserve a loyal, brilliant, honest, beautiful, athletic, accomplished, family-oriented, and/or compassionate partner, implying that these are exactly the qualities that you are offering.
Another word of warning: if you use elements of this style, be sure to focus on what you DO want, and not on what you DON’T want. The latter will make you sound negative, whiney, and shrewish. Leave that stuff out.
Verdict: use this style sparingly, and only talk about positive qualities that, a) are absolutely essential, and b) you offer in return. It’s possible to exaggerate this style in a humorous way, but only do this if you’re naturally hilarious.
Once Upon a Time
In this style you don’t talk directly about your specific qualities, or even about the qualities you desire in others. Instead you offer a series of stories and anecdotes that convey these things. You pepper your tales with clues about your values, desires, history, and circumstances.
You might tell that childhood anecdote about your early morning paper round, and how that turned you into a damned-hard worker who *loves* to sleep in. Or
This style is tricky because it requires a little more imagination. However it can be very rewarding because, well, it shows that you have imagination! It also puts your fine qualities in the context of your interesting life, and so grants the reader a deeper insight into the real you.
Verdict: it’s a great idea to throw a very brief story or two into your profile. Highly recommended. However it’s best not to make it your whole profile; drop out of storyteller mode to speak more conversationally to your reader.
e-Therapy
Your reader is your therapist, and your computer chair is the shrink’s couch. You lie back and psychoanalyze yourself for the entire online world to see. You talk about your dreams and fears, you delve into your emotions, and most of all you do your very best to describe the type of person you are. This is a maximum-honesty approach. Rather than revealing your personality through anecdotes, achievements, and lists of likes and dislikes, you simply tell your reader about your personality.
The advantage of this approach is candor: nothing is hidden, nothing is ambiguous, and there is no need to read between the lines. This style works well for extremely forthright people; for people who really detest the idea of “playing games”. It’s also useful for people who have *cough* strong personality quirks that are best revealed up-front.
The problem with this style is that, like the autobiography, it leaves very little to the imagination. You describe your personality, and you *hope* that you describe it accurately enough to give your reader a sense of the real you. Unfortunately it’s impossible to describe a personality *perfectly* in only a few paragraphs, and so your reader may be left with a wonky, two-dimensional impression that doesn’t do you justice. Sometimes it’s better to give hints of your personality so that the reader is left free to imagine deeper depths – and to be excited about exploring those depths. The other danger with the e-Therapy approach is that it can make you seem narcissistic. Remember, your reader’s only experience of you is these few paragraphs. If you spend them performing a very serious self-analysis, they may think, “Wow, are you this into yourself all the time??”
Verdict: this is the style to use most sparingly. A line or two describing your personality is enough. Such a succinct summary of yourself can give powerful insight and demonstrate self-knowledge. Just be careful.
The Collage
This is not so much a unique style in itself, but rather a combination of other styles. The idea is to offer a selection of intriguing glimpses into your life, your passions, your dreams, and your quirks. You don’t tell your life story, nor do you give a complete psychological profile. Instead you offer just enough random tidbits–some fundamental, some minor–to pique interest and convey personality.
The things you choose to talk about may seem a little random: in one breath you’ll talk about one of your dream of becoming a psychologist and the next it’ll be your love of candied popcorn. The point is not to reveal everything; it’s to reveal a few delicious morsels that will leave your reader wanting more.
The collage can be a very effective style for a number of reasons. It will, of course, reveal a selection of qualities on which to build a connection. This selection will be an incomplete picture, and so you also communicate a lot in what you choose to talk about, and what you leave out. This style will demonstrate that you don’t feel the need to tell your life story to complete strangers in order to attract them. It also reveals you as a spontaneous, imaginative person who is capable of free-flowing thought, and of breaking the script.
The danger with this style is that it can take a bit of skill to make it flow well. Done poorly, it can sound erratic or stilted, and perhaps even a little fake. So if you choose this style then don’t try to fake a free-flowing style. Really do write it as a brainstorm, perhaps editing it a bit later.
Verdict: most of the best profiles are some form of collage. Dabble in the styles above, let your profile evolve as you have fun with it, and this is the style you’ll end up with.