How NOT to Respond to a Personal Ad
Dear Men of the World,
Please stop responding to my online personals ad. While there is a lot that I enjoy about online dating, it is very depressing to have my stereotypical notions about men’s social incompetence, egotism, and their obsession with their penises reinforced. Seriously. I’m getting carpel tunnel syndrome just from clicking the delete button.
But I know there are great guys out there in the online dating world who want to meet me, whom I want to meet, but who are just diabolically bad at responding to a personal ad.
So if you’re a great guy and you want to answer my online personals ad (which is, I know, very compelling and attractive because I am a highly desirable woman), please I’m begging you, follow these 10 simple guidelines to making online dating fun again:
1. Do not use the phrase “well hung�? or in any other way indicate the size or shape of your penis. Unless my personal ad specifically requests such information, you may rest assured that I genuinely do not care. Also, don’t send me a picture of your penis. I will not be dating your penis. Ew.
2. Do not ask for a picture unless you send one. And don’t only send a picture and write, “Send me a pic and we’ll see where it goes!�? Part of the glory of online dating is that it’s about who the person is, rather than just what they look like. I’m hot, trust me, but how about a conversation first?
3. Do tell me what you liked about my personal ad. Be specific. Be complimentary. Be charming. Be polite. Wouldn’t you do that in real life? Consider it the online dating equivalent to opening the door for me. Make me feel special.
4. I put some effort into my personal ad so that nice guys like you would respond. Do the same for me, wouldja? Ideally we’ll go from online dating to 3-D dating, but to get that far, you need to capture my attention. Say something that makes me go, “OooooOOOOoooh!�? or makes me laugh. And I mean make me laugh in the good way. Talking about your penis will make me laugh too, but it won’t cause me to write you back.
5. While I appreciate that you own your own car, have a job, and do not live with your parents, those really are the bare minimum requirements. Instead of distinguishing yourself from the losers who don’t have a car, a job, and an apartment, tell me what sets you apart from all the guys who do. I did not post a personal ad in order to attract losers, I posted it to attract the very best. Are you the very best? Then tell me about it.
6. Be single. Seriously.
7. The sentence, “I like music, books, movies, and having fun,�? is completely meaningless. I mean, you’re telling me this because you’re unlike all the other guys, who don’t like music, books, movies, and having fun? Ferchrissake tell me which music, books, and movies, and tell me what you do for fun. Warning: if it’s tractor pulls or demolition derbies, I won’t be writing back.
8. Don’t be creepy. Specifically, don’t send me a 12 page autobiography where you outline the ways in which your mother shaped your ideas of how a woman should treat you. (I mention this because I really did receive such an email.) My personal ad is not an autobiography, it’s a tiny précis. Online dating goes in baby steps, just like real life dataing. Also, don’t beg, as in “PLEASE GIVE ME A CHANCE I KNOW I CAN GIVE YOU THE CARING AND LOVE YOU NEED.�? While you’re at it, never write in all caps and don’t use run-on sentences. God I hate that.
9. If I don’t respond, don’t write again!
10. Never, ever lie. I will find out about it eventually, and when I do, I will never speak to you again. If finding a way for me never to speak to you is your goal, the best way to do that is not to write to me.
I can’t guarantee that I’ll respond to you even if you do follow the guidelines, but I can guarantee that I won’t laugh at you, snort derisively, roll my eyes, or forward your message to all my girlfriends with the note: “Biggest. Loser. Ever.�?
Promise.
– Emily Adams, 9/11/2006
© Copyright 2007 Associated Content.
12:37 pm | Finding Romance Online
Survey shows more singles are looking to the Internet to find a date or start a relationship, and they are succeeding.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a recent dating trends survey finds that 76% of singles nationwide who use Internet dating sites have met someone special, with 58% of those respondents saying they have turned an online connection into a relationship that has lasted for several months to more than a year.
Love@AOL in conjunction with Opinion Research Corporation commissioned this national poll of over 4,000 unmarried men and women to look at how singles date and relate - whether online, on-the-go or on-the-job. The survey also looks at male and female perspectives on dating and Valentine’s Day, and ranks the best and worst cities for dating.
“Our annual survey shows that more and more singles are looking to the Web to find a date or start a relationship, and they are succeeding,” said Josh Stevens, General Manager, AOL® Personals and head of the Love@AOL service. “No wonder, since singles find it easier to use online personals services like Love@AOL to find a breadth of romantic relationships, from last-minute dates to long-term love.”
Looking for Love?
The Internet beat out several other traditional meeting spots for dates. The survey found that 16% of singles met their last date online, besting more traditional meeting places like work (15%), bars and dance clubs (11%), school (8%) or coffee houses and bookstores (3%). The leading way to meet a date continues to be through friends and family, with 21% of singles saying that was how they met their last date.
Internet romance looks even better to those in a time-crunch. Eleventh-hour love online took a sharp upturn in this year’s findings, with a 24% increase over last year in the number of singles who turn to online dating sites to find a last-minute date.
Singles who use online dating sites said the biggest
advantages include:
– Meeting someone with common interests (73% )
– Meeting someone who lives nearby (73%)
– Safe communication exchanges before meeting (66%)
– A lot of people to choose from (62%)
© Copyright 2008 Business Wire.
11:49 am | Staying Together in an Age of Divorce
Given one wish in life, most people would wish to be loved — to be able to reveal themselves entirely to another human being and be embraced, caressed, by that acceptance. People who have successfully built an intimate relationship know its power and comfort. But they also know that taking the emotional risks that allow intimacy to happen isn’t easy. Preconditioned on the sharing of feelings, intimacy requires consummate trust. And today trust is in short supply.
Although trust in a partner means different things to different people — dependability, loyalty, honesty, fidelity — its essence is emotional safety. Trust enables you to put your deepest feelings and fears in the palm of your partner’s hand, knowing they will be handled with care. While feelings of love or sexual excitement may wax and wane over time, ideally, trust is a constant. When you have it, you have it all. The challenge for most of us is not to let the specter of deception in love interfere with finding the intimate connection we want and need.
The tendency to lump all your past failed relationships together also can undermine present and future bondings. You can’t realistically attribute a failed marriage to a breach of trust when there never was trust — or the potential for it — to begin with. The issue in this case is bad choice of partner, not bad faith. Still, it can feel like betrayal, so it’s important to examine the causes of poor choices — and how to avoid them.
You may find that some of your expectations don’t stand up to such scrutiny, that you can let go of them. The ones that still seem reasonable to you are worth fighting for in the name of intimacy. When Judith Wallerstein told Margaret Mead how upset she was over her early findings on children of divorce, Mead reportedly said, “There is no society in the world where people have stayed married without enormous community pressure to do so.” Now that the pressure’s off, you can take it as an omen–or a challenge. John Patterson, whose parents and sister are divorced, has made his choice about his marriage to Kass: “When most people say `I do,’ they regard it as `I did.’ They take it for granted that love will be easy. I intend to work at it.”
Caryl S Avery, May 1, 1989
© COPYRIGHT 1989 Sussex Publishers, Inc.
11:20 am | 
