It’s customary at the start of a blog to tell people about yourself: catch their attention, explain why they should spend time getting to know you. But that’s all I’ve been doing for the last four weeks, since I first put my dating profile online. You may be a finalist on the Apprentice, you may be an X-Factor sensation – hell, you may be Lady GaGa – but I’m telling you, until you sign up to a dating website, you don’t know what selling yourself really is.
You start out (in my case, at least) thinking that you’re quite a cool, attractive-ish chick in her early 30s, with plenty to recommend you to the opposite sex. But when you actually have to lay it all out there, you discover that it’s quite hard to put in words what, if anything, makes you uniquely appealing. Everyone, it transpires, likes “going out”, “trying new things”, not to mention the ubiquitous “chilling out on the sofa with a DVD and a glass of wine”. Nothing new there, my friend.
So you try to be witty and individual, until you discover that what you thought were fascinating quirks – I love cheese! I collect corks! - sound a bit creepy. Plus, the five hours of sitting-at-laptop (and subsequent screenglare headache) rather dulls the romantic instinct. I’ve not yet met anyone who finds CV-writing sexy.
Most sites also include a compulsory questionnaire, which feels a bit like having to tell a student doctor your embarrassing medical history. Typical passionkilling questions include: what’s your income? how much do you drink? And my personal favourite – do you want to have children? (because asking that always goes down well with a guy on a first date). It’s like facing a tag team of Jeremy Paxman, John Humphrys and Mrs Merton. You can duck a question with a ‘don’t mind’ or an ‘ask me later’ but, as the sites keep telling me, the more questions you answer the better your chance of a match, so unlike real-life flirting, it doesn’t pay to be coy.
I am only beginning to learn the rules.
