14. Creating Your Own Dating Profile | Consonance (Gleichklang)

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Creating Your Own Dating Profile | Consonance (Gleichklang)

Up to now, you have been engaging with yourself and your ideas about partnership and relationships. You have gained a realistic picture of your search criteria, reflected on past baggage, and left it somewhat behind. You have identified suitable platforms that have made a positive impression on you and where you believe you could be in good hands.

With that, you have now reached the point where you can actually begin your online partner search.

In the following two chapters, you will learn how to create an effective profile and what the best search and communication behavior is. You will also learn how to best protect yourself from potential dangers such as romance scams and sexual assault.

This chapter shows you how to best present yourself in your profile when looking for a partner.

Honest Self-Presentation

Present yourself as you are. Partner search is not a job application, but a getting-to-know-each-other. It is about people finding each other who can build a shared future together.

It is a gain for all sides when profiles are honest. After all, no one wants to start a partnership with another person that is not viable from the very beginning.

For online partner search, an authentic self-description is therefore central. While fantasy worlds may be constructed for pure online flirting and virtual communication, this is impossible for a partner search. Because here, life is meant to take place not only virtually, but also in offline reality. If virtual dream worlds are built up, they burst at the first meetings outside the internet. At the latest, they burst when it becomes clear in a relationship that there is no fit for a shared life.

Sharabi and Caughlin (2018) examined the effects of misrepresentations in online partner search on the course of direct encounters:

• People who had made misrepresentations were evaluated more negatively by the other person after the first meeting. Even if misrepresentations may facilitate the possibility of a first meeting in individual cases, they ultimately have a negative impact.

Grossly false information in particular is an absolute no-go. Retouched photos and completely false age information typically lead to negative reactions from the other person when a direct meeting takes place.

So stick to the truth. If you create a distorted picture of yourself, you run the risk of remaining in a purely virtual world and blocking the success of your partner search. But if you present yourself as you are, you have a good chance of meeting a person who likes you just the way you are.

Naming Desires for Change

An honest self-description does not exclude naming characteristics that may be attractive to other people as goals for change.

But here too, it is important to remain honest. You should only name goals for change if they are serious and realistic:

• For example, you can write that sports have been neglected in your life so far, but that you have just started jogging daily. You can explain that you have neglected certain interests or hobbies for a long time, but would like to reactivate them together. Likewise, you can describe wishes for social commitment or a sustainable lifestyle as goals that you now want to tackle or would like to take on together in a relationship.

It is even expressly recommended that you not only limit yourself to describing the current state, but also include a future vision in your profile description that is just as much a part of who you are as the present.

It is best if you start implementing your goals for change immediately.

Trustworthy Information

The more trustworthy a profile appears, the more interest people have in contacting the person behind it and communicating with each other in a trustworthy manner.

Trustworthy information is information in dating profiles that is authentic and immediately creates an impression of trustworthiness when read.

A particularly striking example of this can be links to one’s own external blog or other external websites that report about the person.

If information can be verified using independent sources, it is perceived as more reliable. This in turn is valued as an advance of trust.

People who give such an advance of trust are perceived as more likeable. At the same time, people tend to respond to an advance of trust with trust and the transmission of trustworthy information.

Therefore, if possible, incorporate trustworthy information into your profile. You achieve the highest degree of trustworthiness when you refer to further sources of information, such as your personal homepage, articles or books you have written, or a CV available online.

However, understandable security concerns and the desire for anonymity may conflict with this. In that case, you can also gradually increase the level of trustworthiness over the course of the getting-to-know process.

It All Begins with the Free-Text Section

Certainly, for many, everything begins with the photo. This tendency is currently being further reinforced by dating apps. Content-wise, this is unfortunate because the photo actually says almost nothing about the characteristics, relationship models, and goals of a person that are truly relevant for cohesion in a partnership.

On platforms for serious partner search, on the other hand, the free text plays a major role for most members. It often contributes significantly to whether interest arises and whether contact is sought or reciprocated.

While a missing photo, which may be due to the fear of stepping out of anonymity, can still be conveyed at the beginning of a getting-to-know process, a missing free text can quickly convey an impression of a lack of seriousness and disinterest.

These considerations can also be confirmed by harder data. For example, an analysis of the influence of the free text on the matching success of 4,756 people seeking a partner by Consonance (Gleichklang)¹ yielded the following results:

• Members with free text achieved success more often than members without free text.

• Members with only a very short free text achieved success less often than members with a free text of medium length.

• Members with a long free text achieved success more often than members with a free text of medium length.

In the sample studied, it was shown that 41% of those without free text found a partnership, 56% of those with a free text of up to 725 characters, but 62% of those with a text longer than 725 characters.

With regard to text length beyond 725 characters, it was shown that up to a text length of 1,300 characters, the matching success increased significantly with increasing text length. After that, the increase in matching success slowed down up to a total length of 2,000 characters. From 2,000 characters onward, the matching success neither increased nor decreased with increasing text length.

Further data analyses showed that the presence and length of a free text are statistically significantly related to the number of messages received from other members. A free text, especially if it is somewhat more detailed, apparently increases profile attractiveness and the interest in contacting the respective person. Accordingly, people with a free text receive more messages than people without a free text. People with a longer free text (up to 2,000 characters) receive more messages than people with a shorter free text.

To have good chances of success in partner search, it is therefore important to include a free text, with a text length of approximately 2,000 characters being optimal and exhausting the full potential of the positive effect.

But even a shorter text is better than no text, and the majority of the effectiveness is already achieved at a text length of approximately 1,300 characters.

Content Is What Matters

Of course, it is not primarily about the length, but about the content of your free text. The fact that longer texts are more effective is certainly due to the fact that longer texts are richer in content.

The text should describe something authentic about you, your life situation, your wishes, hopes, dreams, and goals, so that the other person can gain a vivid impression of you. Life philosophy, ethical convictions, relationship models, and a description of the type of person you are looking for should be the central content. However, it also has a positive effect if biographical contexts and a resulting future vision are briefly addressed.

Particularities of your own life situation or the search for a relationship, such as the role of being a single parent, the search for an asexual relationship, interest in polyamory, desires to emigrate, handicaps, or illnesses, can also be addressed in the free text.

The text should absolutely express an interest in a real relationship. An invitation to the other person to get in touch with you is also helpful.

These are the main rules for the free text:

• Give the other person authentic information about your life, do not exaggerate, but be open and honest.
• Introduce yourself with your wishes, needs, and longings, but also with your fears, worries, and insecurities.
• Anything that is particularly important to you should definitely be addressed in the free text. If, for example, a shared vegan diet and lifestyle is central to you, you should express exactly that in the free text.
• Problems and weaknesses may be mentioned and can even generate interest and understanding, but they should not be overemphasized and shape the entire profile.
• Describe your desire for a relationship and describe the type of relationship and the way you would like to interact with each other.
• Make your own characteristics, opinions, and ideas clear, but also show room for change and flexibility.
• Complicated formulations and intellectual acrobatics are not necessary for your free text – even for people with a high level of education. Simplicity, directness, friendliness, signaling seriousness and interest, as well as the authentic presentation of your person, wishes, goals, and dreams are what matter.
• If possible, provide trustworthy and verifiable information, e.g., a link to a website or a project of yours.
• Write the text in such a way that you directly address the other person, thereby making it clear that you are interested in the other person and their life attitudes, wishes, needs, goals, and in truly getting to know them.

Some users of online matchmaking services initially only post a short, preliminary free text because they want to take more time for the text later. However, this is strongly discouraged, because in this case the very first suggestions lose a large part of their value. If other singles looking for a partner look at a profile that has no free text or only a very rudimentary one, some of them immediately lose interest in that profile. Quick deletion is not infrequently the consequence. So create the complete free text first and only then go online with your partner search.

Take your time with the free text. It does not depend on whether you start your partner search today or tomorrow. It can also often be helpful to discuss your own free text with friends, although the advice from friends should by no means be about positive self-presentation or distortions, but about an authentic self-introduction.

Some Special Topics for the Free-Text Section

The free text should introduce your person, your everyday situation, convictions, relationship wishes, and life goals. Below you will find some comments on possible further topics that may or may not be included in the free text depending on their importance to you.

Sexuality and Sexual Preferences

Sexuality in a relationship develops over the course of the relationship. Therefore, a reference to one’s own sexual preferences in the free text is not necessary when looking for a partner. Some people might even react rather negatively to it because it could be understood as meaning that the search for sex is more in the foreground than the search for a partner.

If it is important to you, you can certainly make more general statements about sexuality, such as that a relationship with sexual fulfillment is sought, that there is interest in joint Tantra courses, or that a sexually monogamous relationship or a sexually open or polyamorous relationship is sought.

If a sexual preference is rather rare and at the same time indispensable for you – for example, a pronounced inclination towards BDSM practices – mentioning it in the free text can also be appropriate and useful.

It is also helpful if the search for an asexual relationship without sexuality is addressed directly in the free text.

Sexual difficulties, fears, inhibitions, or dysfunctions can also be addressed in the free text if necessary. You should do this primarily if acceptance from relationship partners is very important to you and you feel internally relieved when you know that the other person is informed about this from the very beginning. Some people who would not be suitable from the outset may exclude themselves as a result.

In principle, if you want to talk about sexuality in your profile text, sexuality should not take up the majority of the profile text, but should only be an additional aspect. The focus should be on introducing your person, your life situation, basic attitudes, relationship ideas, and life goals.

Disabilities or Illnesses

There is no regulation that illnesses or disabilities must necessarily be mentioned in the free text of the profile. It is equally possible to talk about this only once communication has already begun.

However, the more strongly possible disabilities or illnesses, including mental illnesses, shape your everyday life or your current situation, and the more visible they are, the more sensible it can be to address them in the free self-description.

It is important not to reduce your person to the existing handicap or illness. Otherwise, the other person might get the unjustified impression that a relationship with you would be predominantly burdensome for them.

Instead, a composed presentation is recommended, in which the handicaps or illnesses are present but do not represent the focus of your partner search or the desired relationship design.

Beyond the handicap or illness, there is much more to tell about your person, your attitudes, your life philosophy, and your ideas about relationships. The description of the handicap or illness should not distract from this.

It is helpful if, when describing the disability or illness, you also talk about the possibilities for positive coping.

Furthermore, you can also express in your free text that you yourself are open to a partnership with a person with a handicap or illness. This can encourage other people to get in touch with you.

Appearance and Figure

The free text does not need to address your own appearance at all, especially if you also upload one or more photos showing you. However, if you feel the need to talk about your appearance, that is certainly possible, but it should only be a marginal aspect of the free text. Appearance, figure, and body type should not be placed in the foreground.

Stay authentic, describe yourself as you are. If you are dissatisfied with your figure or want to change it, you are welcome to communicate this in your free text as well. This may give you more composure and ease in dealing with your appearance in communication. It may also increase your motivation to actually work on a change.

You can also use the profile to name physical characteristics of the person you are looking for that are important to you. However, this can create the impression that inner values are neglected. This can reduce the interest of other people, sometimes even those who match the desired appearance. Therefore, you should either omit such descriptions entirely in the free text or limit them to the bare minimum.

Age

If you are already a bit older but feel younger, or vice versa, if you are still young but feel more mature, you can easily address this in the free text.

You can also name the age search range that is acceptable to you in the free text, although this can be particularly interesting if you can imagine a relationship with a person whose age differs significantly from your own.

Descriptions of how your age and life experiences have contributed to a special life philosophy or future vision can be particularly appealing.

Children and Desire for Children

If there is a clear desire to have children, it makes sense to express this in the free text. The rejection of (further) children can also be named in the free text. If you are currently a single parent or your children play an important role in your everyday life, you can also describe this in the free text. After all, your children are a part of your life that will also play a role in a partnership.

If the children are already adults and no longer play a daily role in your life at your age, you may or may not mention them, depending on how you feel.

The topic of children should only be touched upon and by no means be at the center of your profile. In any case, you should make it clear that you have enough inner and outer freedom for a new relationship.

Religion and Spirituality

If you have a firm religious belief or are deeply involved in spiritual practices, it is a good idea to incorporate this into your free text. Also write about how much you would like to live out your faith or spirituality together in a relationship, or conversely, how open you are to relationship partners who do not share your faith or spirituality.

People who share your faith or spirituality will feel particularly addressed by your profile. Of course, on the other hand, this leads to people who do not share or reject your faith or spirituality having less interest in getting to know you further. This will be even more the case the more clearly you make it clear in your profile that you are looking for relationship partners with similar religious or spiritual orientations.

Income and Material Situation

Income and material situation should play no role or at most a very subordinate role in your free text. The inner fit between people does not arise from income.

Pragmatic-material relationship models may be quite common traditionally and successful in individual cases, but in general relationship satisfaction in such partnerships will be diminished.

The recommendation therefore is to free yourself from such materially bound attitudes toward love and partnership and accordingly not to let them flow into the free self-description.

However, many dating profiles do not follow these recommendations. Rather, profiles quite frequently show a gender-stereotypical thematization of income and material situation. For example, men more often describe their (high) financial situation or report on other status symbols. Such profiles reveal an attempt to impress the other person with one’s own wealth and to use one’s own wealth at least somewhat as an argument for a relationship with oneself.

It is better not to associate partner search with material aspects and to put only your own person and not your own possessions on the scale. Accordingly, it is also not advisable to emphasize the search for wealthy relationship partners in the free text.

Nevertheless, it may make sense to mention your own material situation in certain cases. This concerns, for example, people who are themselves financially destitute and who have already encountered rejection in their partner search because of their destitution. Describing your tight financial situation may reduce your own inhibitions about further contact. Of course, your own destitution should only occupy a small part of the free text, and your personal resources should not be neglected.

Previous Relationships

You can mention your previous partnerships, but you do not have to. The loss of a relationship through death or separation is information that may well interest other people. Processing and integrating the loss, reorientation, and your resulting future vision of a new partnership can be important parts of the description.

Relationship Complications

There are many internal or external complications that can make partner search, relationship building, or relationship design more difficult. The possible spectrum of complications is broad and can include, for example:

• Grief and separation processes, uncertainty about one’s place of residence, an upcoming move, professional changes, or a relationship situation that is at least unclear at first glance, such as living together with former relationship partners.

You should have overcome a large part of such complications by the time you start your partner search. After all, partner search only makes sense if you are also able to engage with another person and build a relationship.

However, in life there is rarely only black or white, but mostly many shades of gray. Moreover, our life situation and our ways of experiencing fluctuate. For example, grief may catch up with us right now, even if we thought we had overcome it yesterday.

If such internal or external complications exist, you should deal with them honestly from the very beginning. The free text is a suitable place for this. Some people may reject getting to know someone under such conditions. But others may recognize the situation, empathize, understand, and be able to deal with it.

Work, Training, or Studies

Work, training, or studies are formative factors in our everyday lives. However, your profile for partner search is not a job application. There is therefore no reason to focus heavily on your own professional activity or professional qualifications. Nevertheless, you can mention your current professional or educational situation. This applies all the more if you experience your profession or future profession as a calling, so that it expresses a lot about your person.

Most other people will be curious to know what you do. Still, be sparing and keep it to a brief mention or short description.

Not employed?

You can mention this and the reasons for it as well, including upcoming changes (“currently applying”, etc.). Equally, you can decide to focus your profile on other aspects and not give any space to your professional situation.

Some people want to look for relationship partners with the same, a similar, or even a completely different profession from their own. In principle, this is of course possible. The more strongly you make this wish clear in your profile, the less other people who do not meet this requirement will be interested in you.

A shared profession can certainly be bonding, and the wish is understandable in that sense. But make it clear to yourself that the majority of happy relationships do not involve a shared profession. So the same profession is certainly not a prerequisite for high relationship satisfaction.

Education and Knowledge

Place the emphasis on your interests and your need for intellectual exchange, but less on formal education. Describe what you are intellectually engaged with, for example, which books you are currently reading.

People with similar intellectual interests will find your profile particularly likeable if they recognize a match through your free text.

Need for Independence

Partnership relationships typically involve a high degree of shared time, but of course also activities that are not done together. If you move within this spectrum with your partnership model, you do not need to express this separately in your free text.

However, if you place a great deal of value on independence with many separate activities in a relationship, it can be helpful to mention this in the free text. This way, mainly people who have a similar need for independence in a relationship will feel addressed.

Family and Circle of Friends

Typically, people seeking a partner have a more or less large or small family and circle of friends. However, you do not need to go into this in detail in your profile text, unless there is a special constellation that can be expected to intervene profoundly in a relationship.

Taking on a caregiving role, for example, can be such a factor. But also if you are a pronounced family person and place great value on intensive joint contact with family or friends within the relationship, this is a factor that can and should be mentioned in the profile.

Some people will feel addressed by this, while others do not wish for closer integration into existing family and friend circles. It should definitely be clear that you have the space, time, and motivation for a partnership.

No Photo in the Profile

If you do not have a photo in your profile, you should state your reasons for this. It can also be helpful to indicate that you are willing to exchange photos in the course of communication.

Create Your Free-Text Section Now

You have already done the preparatory work for your free text in the first section by answering these three questions in writing:

• What is important to me in life?

• What should the person I am in a relationship with be like?

• What should my relationship look like?

Now take this text out again. You can probably even adopt a good portion of this text as a free self-description for your dating profile.

But check the length again and supplement the text with one or two topics mentioned above.

Also take another look at your already created text on how you want to live a relationship in the future and what you want to avoid, as well as your text on your basic assumptions and their questioning. Perhaps you can integrate one or two aspects from there into the description of your life philosophy or your partnership vision. Your already created reflections on your own core beliefs and their changeability may also be helpful.

Conclude your free text with a friendly, inviting greeting to make contact and a farewell with your first name. This comes across as more open and familiar than a pseudonym.

Photos in the Profile

In dating apps, almost exclusively the photo is looked at. With these providers, photos are therefore usually mandatory. Profiles without photos would have no chance anyway. Without a photo, you might at best experience some response if you take the initiative yourself – if possible – to contact other profiles and send them a photo via the chat function after a brief initial contact.

With matchmaking agencies and dating platforms, the role of the text is greater, so you can generally create a profile without a photo here, although there are providers that do not allow this. Some providers even require, similarly to some dating apps, that it must be a face photo.

It would be an illusion to believe that photos do not play a role in partner search. Photoless profiles achieve much less response even with serious matchmaking services than profiles with photos. In principle, you can assume that your profile without a photo will generate less interest in the decisive phase when other people first look at your profile than profiles where photos are already directly visible. The immediate availability of a photo can thus increase your chances of success in your partner search.

Nevertheless, there can be good reasons not to upload a photo. For example, you may work in a therapeutic profession and not want to be recognized by your patients. With some matchmaking services, it is possible to initially hide photos and only show them to selected people. This can be a suitable path for you if you have good reasons to forgo a photo. However, in this case, you should make it a habit to contact interesting profiles yourself, as few people will contact you. Moreover, with profiles without a photo, an informative free text is all the more important.

You don’t have a strong reason to forgo a photo, but you still feel uncomfortable being present with a photo on a dating platform?

This is understandable, and many people do not want to become generally known for their online partner search. But ask yourself whether it is really that risky or embarrassing to search for a loving relationship online?

When choosing a photo, there is an obvious tendency to upload a particularly attractive photo. Indeed, a particularly attractive photo may generate more immediate reactions. Nevertheless, such a photo selection is not recommended. The decisive factor in choosing a photo should be that it conveys a realistic impression. The photo should be current and not staged. All retouching should be consistently avoided. The more realistic the photo, the more confident and relaxed you can go into the first encounter outside the internet.

Many platforms allow uploading multiple photos. This is certainly sensible. Choose several photos that show you from different angles or in different everyday activities. If you find it difficult to choose or take a photo, you can also go to a photographer. But make the occasion clear there and explain that it is important to you to convey an authentic impression through the photo.

Additional Profile Information

Platforms also collect information to varying degrees through queries, which are then automatically displayed in the profile. Age and gender, for example, are almost always among these queried factors.

Remain honest in all your answers to these queries as well and strive to provide authentic information at every point.

The more strongly certain information is already directly queried and automatically displayed, the less you need to address it in the free text. You should therefore also tailor your free text somewhat to the platform. Depending on the platform you choose, you may need to shorten or restructure your already created free text somewhat.

Setting Meaningful Search Criteria

Partner choice is not an arbitrary process in which all other singles also looking for a partner would be eligible for a relationship with each other.

Precisely because partner search is highly selective, however, you should be careful not to push selectivity to the extreme so that ultimately no one is eligible anymore.

Decisive for the success of your partner search will be the right balance between the necessary consistency – that is, fidelity to yourself – and sufficient flexibility. Central preferences, needs, and values should be expressed, but unnecessary restriction of partner choice through fixation on unimportant, superficial, or easily changeable characteristics should be avoided.

You should therefore definitely avoid two extremes in your partner search:

Acting Out of Last-Minute Panic

There is no reason for panic or time pressure. Anyone can find a partnership, and the partner search may take time. You don’t need to be partnered by next month.

Some people find the right person within a few weeks, others within a few months, a few years, or even only after many years. In hindsight, this does not matter, because only the love happiness you find counts.

Do not believe that you will become happy if you enter into a partnership with a person you do not fit with out of last-minute panic. Irreconcilable opposites can lead to short-lived fascination, but they are not a basis for a lastingly happy relationship. Over the moon with joy and in the end deeply saddened or frustrated – you can avoid this danger if you act on the motto of not starting a relationship at any price, but taking the time to search for the person who truly fits you.

Partner by Catalog

You should think about what the person you want to have a relationship with should be like. You have already done that. Refrain from rigid specifications and exclusions that are actually unnecessary. Such exclusions can quickly lead to you excluding precisely the people with whom you would be happy.

Height, income, and status are good examples of characteristics you can do without if you instead focus on the fit of the much more important relationship models, values, and life goals.

In online dating, depending on the platform, you make the decision about which people can be suggested to you, or you filter out profiles yourself that you assume are not suitable for you.

Every restriction in the search or every rejection of a profile leads to you no longer getting to know people you could otherwise have met. The more exclusion criteria you use, the more exclusions will occur.

Follow the rule of parsimony, which protects you from excluding suitable people:

• Use exclusively meaningful and well-considered exclusion criteria to set exclusions only where they are necessary, but to avoid them where a superficial impression may be negative but getting to know someone could lead to a different evaluation.

Remain open to changing your own search criteria over the course of your partner search. Therefore, occasionally review your criteria and approach your partner search with a certain degree of willingness to experiment.

Dating platforms differ greatly in the number and type of search criteria you can enter to describe more closely the characteristics of the people you are looking for.

With matchmaking agencies, the search information entered is usually permanently effective but can be changed.

With dating sites, there are no permanently effective search criteria. However, you can search for suitable profiles using a range of filter criteria. Or there is a minimum number of permanent search criteria, such as age or gender, which you can then supplement with filter criteria.

Focus your search on inner values, relationship and life models, and less on more superficial characteristics such as place of residence or appearance.

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