Online Dating Guide & Blog

When I talk about what I think makes for a good first email, one thing I’ve argued in the past is that you shouldn’t be talking about yourself in one of these emails. As I’ve said, your profile is the place to talk about yourself, not your first email.

In this article I want to use an example to show why I think talking about yourself is a mistake. Also, I’ve been contacted by some men recently who complain that they [...]

Filed under: dating advice

I have a friend named Kate Houston who I have talked about from time to time on this website. She runs a really unique service: she helps people write great online dating profiles in really unique ways. I like her work because she helps people “market” themselves instead of just “talk” about themselves…and I think there’s a big difference! You can see some examples of how she’s helped people at her website TrySweetTalk.com.

Recently, Kate was interviewed by the TV channel [...]

Filed under: dating profiles

A reader recently wrote me with a very unique situation that was leading to multiple unsuccessful first dates.

In many cases, failed first dates can be a mystery: did she not like my personality? Was he not attracted to me? On the other hand, sometimes we know exactly why we are seeing failed dates…we just don’t know how to respond to them.

In this case, my reader knew exactly why he was struggling on the first dates but wasn’t sure how [...]

Filed under: dating advice

I’ve discussed writing first emails a good deal both on this site and in my free dating guide. One thing I’ve discussed in these areas is that I’ve never liked is the “form” email: where the guy writes one email and then plugs each woman’s information in to make it appear personalized.

Recently, a reader wrote me asking if I would review his general approach to writing emails. In this case, he was using a form email but I could tell [...]

Filed under: online dating guide

I was recently contacted by a reader asking that I review his first email style and when doing so I was reminded of what I talk about in my guide:

Sometimes the most important thing to do when dating online is to just come off as normal!

Perhaps more than anywhere else in life, normal can be exceptional with online dating. I say this because of the weirdness that can go on with online dating. Having a guy just write you a [...]

Filed under: dating advice

Some time ago I wrote an article discussing women making the first step in communication with online dating sites. My argument was that women should be encouraged to kick off the process, even if that only entailed some online “flirting”.

In that article, my main focus was sites like Match.com where the communication is started by one person by writing an email. However, recently I had a reader ask me a question regarding women making the first move with sites [...]

Filed under: online dating services

A reader writes in the following question:

Hello, your site has been very helpful, but I still have another question.
I read the article on why woman may not respond to emails, but I have a related issue. What do you think it means if women that I email view my profile soon after, meaning they theoretically have read them, and then do absolutely nothing? This happens a lot to me and is quite frustrating.
Thanks for any insight you may [...]

Filed under: dating advice

I cover my approach writing first emails with online dating in my post First Contact Email Examples. In that article I also give some examples of how I would write some first emails based on several random dating profiles.

Filed under: internet dating

When I first started this site, one of the things that bothered me most about the online dating advice I had been finding was that everything had the same answer: be more confident.

I found this advice very hard to take and I actually gave up on acting confident. I think occasionally I might have been successful at appearing confident but I was consistently successful as not portraying who I really was…the gains weren’t worth the sacrifice.

At any rate, I discussed [...]

Filed under: personal experience

From time to time I see online dating safety advice offering this as a suggestion: bring a friend with you on a first date.

I understand the need to be safe but I really dislike this suggestion. Mostly because I had a woman bring a friend on a first date with me and it really hurt the odds of having another date (there wasn’t one). Admittedly, I found her approach as annoying as her actions…so I guess a full story is [...]

Filed under: personal experience

First date conversations are a tricky thing: we all realize how important they are but sometimes we still don’t prepare while other times we put so much emphasis on having “good” conversations we actually create problems for ourselves.

In one of my very first articles for this site, I had given tips for first date conversations based on what worked well for me. I wanted to touch on the points I made back then as I still see them as valuable. [...]

Filed under: dating advice

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

I recently read an article AskMen.com that covered five mistakes men make early on that scare women away. I think this article is well worth reading regardless of how you are meeting women. I also wanted to offer my take in this area, but specifically for online dating.

Most of my thoughts revolve around one idea: not coming off as strange or the stalker-type. Appearing strange or appearing like someone who might stalk the woman is [...]

Filed under: dating advice