Home: seeking and finding, pt. 1

seeking and finding, pt. 1

My darling, sexy angel,

You've often asked me how I found you. (Usually, we have just finished a "passionate" encounter, and you're marvelling at how lucky you are ;-). So, in response, I decided to write a brief description of the ways in which I found you online.

Hmmm. Okay - it's not so brief, so I'll post it here in parts. (Gawd, I'm a wordy bastard sometimes...) Who knows, maybe some of our readers will find the information interesting, or useful. If there's enough interest, I'll post the rest of it, too. Readers, if you want to see more of this, let me know, okay?

Advertising myself

1. Write an honest profile. This is a pretty straightforward piece of advice, but I'm constantly surprised by the number of people that oversell themselves, or undersell their baggage.

2. Write an intriguing profile. When planning your profile, try to appeal to her curiousity. Don't put everything into the profile, but give enough information that she's likely to want to ask questions, or make comments.

3. Have respect for women, and show it in your profile. This is a real key for me. I like women, and I appreciate them for what they are, and how they behave. I respect their different perspectives, and don't expect them to behave the way I do, or the way I want them to. And when I write an online profile, I try to communicate this to the reader.

4. Know what I'm looking for in a woman. This should be a no brainer, but it's not, sadly. Too many guys are out there just looking to score, and the anonymity of online dating brings them out in droves. I wasn't looking to score, I was looking for a partner, and a loving relationship. I always kept in mind what I wanted in a woman before I started writing my profile.

5. Identify some make or break components of what you are looking for. For example, I don't have any interest in women that can't hold their own in a coversation, so I said so in one profile. On the one hand, it shows that you aren't desperate, on the other hand, it shows what your values are.

6. Know your competition. This is another truism. I knew I was competing against a huge number of men for each woman. Typical online dating services are much more populated with women than they are with men. It's in my best interest to log on anonymously and look at what kind of ads you are competing against on your service of choice. Once again, this helped me determine how to write my profile, so that I stood out.

7. Show some class. There's no need for crudity, or overly-suggestive text in the profile. Too many men think that a woman looking to meet someone online is only looking for sex, and the IQ of their conversation drops through the floor. If I was only looking to add notches to my bedpost, or if I was desperate (which can sometimes be the same thing), this might be sufficient. But if I wanted to attract a woman to be with for a long term relationship, I had to show class. Simple rules - don't brag about previous relationships. do talk about now - what I'm looking for, where I'm hoping it will lead, and what I could bring to a relationship.

8. Don't put lewd pictures in your profile and don't put pictures of body parts in your profile. I could NOT believe that guys had actually posted pictures of their "equipment" online. Did they really think that women would be attracted by that? It shows NO respect for the women, and that's going to be a turn off for many of the women that I wanted to attract.

Approaching women online

1. I realize that, vanilla or kinky, an available woman is going to have many, many potential suitors - usually at the same time. My opening line had to catch her attention. On many services, you may only get a few sentences to get her interest before she decides that someone else is worth a chat.

2. I always read her profile before trying to contact her. I don't mean just look at the statistics, I actually read the text that she's written to describe herself. If there's no text, it meant that odds are she's not going to respond when approached.

3. I would read her whole profile, and think about whether I was a match with her or not. Some services have several different areas to enter text on a profile. I always read all of the text before chatting. Important information may be gleaned, and you may find out something that indicates that the two of you won't be a match. Besides, she went to all that trouble to write it, I can at least read it before I try to chat with her.

4. Approach with a reference to something in her profile. Many men online will just use opening lines like "Hey baby" or "R U there?". I try to be a little bit more topical, and catch her attention by referencing her profile. It shows that I'm interested in HER, not in just any available female.

5. Try to make her laugh. Frequently, I'd make a witty comment on something in her profile, or ask a question in a funny way. I look at the world at a bit of a slant, so it's not hard for me to find something funny to say about most profiles I've seen. If I could get them to laugh, then most of the time they'd give me a chance.

6. Sometimes, I'd try to make her think with my opening line. Or I'd tell her that she made ME think with something she wrote in her profile. Once again, this is something that many guys online won't do, so I'd try to strike up an intelligent online conversation. It set me apart from the crowd, apparently, because I had a lot of very interesting chats.

7. Whenever possible, I'd try to chat online with women, rather than send emails. Most services allow email conversations, but I found that it's better (and often much cheaper) to make initial contact via online chat. It's more interactive, and gives you a better idea of who you're dealing with. I'd often see (and show) more honest reaction via chat. After all, anyone can take four hours to craft a careful response to an email, but the spontaneous responses in chat show more of the real character of the person.

8. It took me a while to realize that, in the world of online dating services, the guy is the one that has to make the approach and spend the money. It's a chauvanistic thing to say, but it's been my experience. Women have the choices, men have to make themselves seen. I would initiate chats with women that seemed interesting, but I'd have to be prepared to keep them online by spending more credits. By going online, I widened my circle of prospective dates, and it was worth the money to establish and prolong the conversations.

9. Be patient. No one is going to rush into anything. By not expecting things to hurry along, I was more often pleasantly surprised - which is better than being disappointed. I always tried to remember that the woman I was chatting with has to be made to feel that she's going to be safe before they even agree to meet me for a vanilla date.

That's it for today, angel. There's more, and I'm hoping that my readers will post comments to let me know that they want to read the rest. It was a long process to find you, angel, but every time I see you smile, I know that it was worth every step of the journey.

Neko

posted at 10:14 AM :: Comments (7)
filed under musings

comments on this entry

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Add your comments:

Remember your personal info?

Note: Abuse the comments and you will be spanked!

Want to read more? Visit the archives »