Accentuate The Positive
Today I noticed a profile from a man who was a middle-aged virgin and said he was 'desperate'.
The word desperate was already off-putting. Any negative word is off-putting. Look for a positive word. A better word would have been keen.
Desperate evokes a series of images, which might be wrong, and irrelevant.
It means different things to different people. To me it suggested that contacting him was taking a risk because things could go from bad to worse:
1 A loser. A failure. Has never attracted a woman. A loner. No friends. Unattractive.
2 Deeply unhappy. Possibly a depressive. Could even be suicidal.
3 A man willing to pay for sex. His ad might attract call girls.
4 Somebody with no alternative - might become a stalker.
5 Too clinging. A million problems. Why has he never attracted anybody? Plain? Stupid? Poor health? Criminal record? Been in prison? Always lived at home? Mama's boy? Homeless? Would he want not just sex but money and a home?
6 Total submissive? No confidence? No ideas? No initiative? Can't study, hold down a job, organize a date at a romantic restaurant. Can't buy a bunch of flowers. No persistence?
7 No social graces. Low IQ. Possible mental problems.
All these ideas floated through my head - caused by just one word!
I was not interested in meeting him but was sufficiently curious to read down his list of attributes.
Under children I expected him to say none. I would have thought - obviously, no sex means no children.
But he had ticked on or clicked on no answer which comes up as 'prefer not to say'.
Why?
Too lazy to fill in the form?
Too evasive to answer the simplest question.
Hiding something - actually has adopted children - here my imagination runs riot. With no clues from him I run a checklist of every possibility to see what is possible or likely. He has had a sexless marriage and adopted children. Or married an older woman who already had children but didn't want sex.
He has been a priest. Or teacher. At a boarding school. A special needs school.
I have given you a lot of negatives. Now let me brighten up this blog. I would also like to reassure anybody who has included any of these three ideas (virgin, desperate, prefer not to say whether I have children) that they can re-write to create a more positive impression.
Desperate
As I said earlier, look for positive words. And positive thoughts.
For positive words, use a thesaurus.
Play happy music.
Imagine you are a GP (to any American readers - a British General Practitioners is a family doctor). Adopt a jolly bedside manner or the cheeriness of the doctor.
So let's change the word desperate. The doctor or adviser or counsellor says, 'So Mr Desperate, you have now decided to take action to solve your problem. Excellent. You are keen to meet a nice lady. What are you looking for? Who would you get on with? What can you offer her?'
I now see why some dating sites have done the work for you. They ask you to describe yourself, and they put hints in brackets.
They even ask why somebody would want to meet you.
Why would anybody want to meet a desperate man?
Why would anybody want to meet a virgin?
And how can he counteract the impressions I suggested earlier.
Here are a few suggestions:
I think you will see from this how a profile can be improved. Amazingly, after one nods one's head in agreement, thinking, well, this is common sense, this is obvious, often you go back to your own writing and find you have hastily written off the thought of the moment. Your first thought was not checked at the time. Nor later. There in your own writing, are all the errors which, when made by other people, were so obvious that you tutted and shook your head and wondered why they could not see.
Excuse me - I must go off and check what else I wrote today, giving the impression that I'm some negative, awkward person. When, of course, I am all sweetness and light. I ooze kindness. I am positive thinking, and the most intelligent, insightful and charming person you could hope to meet or read! Anybody would love to meet me.
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