Last Friday Night

Last Friday night found me composing yet another online dating profile. It was either that or write a blog post and I was drawing a blank on a good topic to write about. There is an art to writing a good profile, revealing enough but not too much, sounding intelligent but not cocky, being honest but not sounding like a total dweeb who spends their Friday nights writing online dating profiles. A brevity and conciseness in your responses is key, as is highlighting your good points and showing no signs of your neuroses and hang-ups. It is best to leave blank those questions that, if answered, would reveal your utter lack of experience in the area of dating relationships. For a Christian dating site, you should avoid cliches as much as possible, but also strike a balance between emphasizing the required godliness of your husband and admitting that you do not demand perfection. An over-ask is almost as fatal as an over-sell. A hint of a sense of humour and a slight display of quirkiness and a degree of creativity in your answers helps.

With such a profile you will be certain to attract any number of men, some of whom will astonish you with their effusiveness and others who will delight you with their unintentional humour. Someone will write you from jail, another from a foreign country. There will be divorced men and widowers with children, single men who ask why you have never married yet, and men older than your father. There will be those who send you a form letter, slightly personalized, full of links and contact information, and those who ask you a simple sardonic question. There will be those whose profiles are an instructive sermon on environmentalism or their own brand of Christianity they are fully convinced of. Some will give you their Skype address, others their email despite rules to the contrary. Some will have obvious baggage from past relationships, others will emphasize their need for a submissive wife.

But you will continue to wait out your ten day trial period, because there is always the chance that there will be someone extraordinary in their normalcy and at the same time ideally suited for your quirks, someone truly fitting all your stated criteria and some of your unstated ones. On such slight chances you pin your hopes.