Know Your Goals

Let me tell you one thing before we start: You must know what you are looking for in a mate. And you must know what you have to offer. Being unsure in either of these will make your dating experience frustrating and time-consuming. Moreover, you will frustrate the person you are dating: If you don’t know where you are going, they will not understand it, either.

Note down qualities you would like in your mate here:

Age
Marital status
Children
Nationality
Mother language / foreign languages
Race
Religion
Character traits
Skills & talents
Appearance
Alcohol / nicotine consumption
Profession
Income
Hobbies
Sports activities
Social behaviour
Other important

A Word about Compromises

Mark the ones that are essential to you, and do not compromise these. Others you may be willing to compromise, others you may find not so desirable after all. You may change the requirements for your desired mate in the process of finding your best match. Just make sure you are not compromising the qualities that are really significant to you, as you will probably regret it later in your relationship.

Find Out Who You Are

Also, make a list of qualities which best describe you. Be honest to yourself and to your prospective date about them. Cheating will be discovered, you can be sure about that. Once you have been honest about positive and less positive characteristics of yourself, identify those you can change in order to be more attractive to the other sex. Out of these, find the ones you are willing to change NOW. Do not set your goals too high, as this will only cause frustration. Aim at small, realistic goals. Reaching them will make you feel better and enable you to tackle the medium-sized goals a little later.

Practical Tips for a Personal Ad

Now you can write a good description of yourself and your target person when filling out a personal profile. It does not have to be a list. You are free to be inventive. But keep in mind that great poetry may be hard to understand if the other person has to read a machine-translated version of it. In a personal ad, try to be simple and to the point. It is worth the effort to write a few well-chosen words about who you are and who you are looking for, as this will get others interested in you. If you rely on your photographs alone and ask others to write to you in order to get any information about you, chances are that others will be contacted first. In a sense, the same is true for the pictures you include in your profile: Make some no-nonsense pictures that show you dressed nicely in good daylight. Let them see your face. The cathedral you may be posing in front of is of minor importance to your prospective date. Smile at them. You want to make them fall in love with you!