I’ll get right down to it. The irony baffles me: the number one quality most people are looking for in a potential mate is honesty, yet most people lie or stretch the truth in their dating profiles. Call me crazy, but I believe the energetics of this are real. I believe that if you lie and manipulate, then you attract liars and manipulators.
So this soapbox is about telling the truth in your profile (and in dating). I know you think that you are being judged unfairly and that you “have to” stretch the truth. I know you think everyone else is lying and you have to lie to keep up. I know you’re in denial: you wish you were like how you described yourself in your profile – and that’s kind of like the truth. All of these fascinating justifications sound a lot like a teenager trying to explain why she had to give in to peer pressure. Sorry, I am now going to be the stern, but loving mom who says, “No, you can be that kid who holds out and shows the other kids a better way.”
If you are still reading and you’ve decided you are going to be part of the new wave, the new generation, who practices telling the truth in profiles and on dates, I am going to give you some do’s and don’ts from Marnie Nir, our expert dating coach at Handel Group Life Coaching, on how to clean up your profile:
1) Don’t lie about your age.
If you lie, you can’t then wonder why you end up dating a liar. I know you think it gets you in the door, but the best-case scenario is you get in the door with someone who doesn’t mind lying. Yuck.
2) Don’t pretend you are something that you’re not, even if you wish you were.
Our favorite example is our type A, neurotic, fancy gal who painted herself as laid back. She claimed in her profile the perfect date was a baseball game and hot dog, when she doesn’t even like baseball or hotdogs. Another example of this is emphasizing your party side, like your all-nighters and favorite tequilas, when you are looking to settle down. Another obvious instruction– use a current picture that depicts how you look NOW.
3) Figure out what’s great about you, and say that.
People are shockingly bad at discerning what’s actually wonderful about themselves. Try asking five friends and take notes. List exactly what they said; it’s way more likely to be the truth than whatever you thought, or what you thought your potential date wanted to hear.
4) Don’t set traps.
If you want someone who cares about health and physical fitness, then don’t cutesy up your profile with talk of late night meals and baking brownies together (and then hate him later for his love handles!). The same goes for pretending that you are looking for something casual when you are actually looking for love and family.
If you are bringing in a certain type (lazy, unemployed, too young, too old, criminals, etc.), then check out your own profile and you will find what’s pulling that type to you. It’s a one to one correlation almost every time; something in your profile is the magnet for that type. And likewise, if nobody is responding to your profile, there is something funky happening. Double-check yourself. Are you really proud of yourself in your life right now? If that’s not a resounding yes, then do you really want to attract the someone whom you’d attract right now? Mostly, the truth is, whatever caliber you are in your own life right now, that’s the caliber you’ll attract.
I know, that’s the harshest truth of all, and now we aren’t talking about your profile anymore. We’re talking about your relationship to yourself, the most important one. The single best advice I can give on how to turn around your experience with dating is to learn to love yourself more. The best way to do that is to practice and develop what we call Personal Integrity®. When you honor yourself by eating, communicating, cleaning, sleeping, exercising, meditating (etc.) in accordance with your own highest ideals, you will find yourself attracting much more impressive potential mates. You know it’s true, right?
Please use the comment section to say if you are on board to be part of the new wave of honest daters, to declare a new promise you will keep to yourself to develop your own integrity or to ask a question.
Love,
Laurie
P.S.- Join an upcoming, live group coaching session via phone. We hold them on a variety of topics through the year.