A dating profile bio works best when it tells someone what you're actually like and gives them an easy reason to start talking. Mention a specific interest, a little personality and something you'd enjoy doing together. 'Love travel, food and having fun' says almost nothing unless you make it your own.
“Easy-going. Love travel, food and a laugh. Ask me anything.”
Gentlemen, this is not a dating profile. This is a written description of virtually everybody who has ever possessed a suitcase and eaten lunch.
And yet there it sits, beneath a perfectly respectable photograph, waiting for a woman to become interested in a man who has told her almost nothing. She knows he eats food. She suspects he enjoys happiness. Presumably he is equipped with legs and occasionally leaves the house. Romance has rarely been given less to work with.
Writing about yourself is oddly difficult. Say too little and you're invisible. Say too much and you risk resembling a man delivering his autobiography to a captive audience on the 6.42 to Euston. The trick is to show a glimpse of your actual life, what it's like being around you and what you're hoping to find — without making the whole thing sound like a job application with a possibility of kissing.
Describe a scene, not a personality adjective
Suppose you call yourself adventurous. What does that mean? You might climb mountains, or you might choose the spicy sauce at Nando's when feeling particularly reckless. Neither is necessarily wrong, but a woman has no way of knowing which man she's looking at.
Give her something she can picture. “I spend Sundays finding muddy walking routes that conveniently finish at a pub” tells her more than “outdoorsy”. “I make a heroic Sunday roast and an absolutely indefensible amount of gravy” is better than “love cooking”. “I once booked a train to Edinburgh because I fancied breakfast somewhere different” reveals a particular sort of spontaneity.
These details do several jobs. They distinguish you from the crowd, reveal what spending time with you might involve and hand somebody an easy first question. Would she rather open with “Hi” or “Right, what exactly qualifies as an indefensible amount of gravy?”
You haven't written a clever sales pitch. You've simply given another person something real to respond to.
The three ingredients worth finding room for
A short profile ought to offer an idea of your everyday world, a spark of character and a hint about the relationship you're interested in. You don't need one paragraph on each. You need all three somewhere on the page.
Your everyday world might involve restoring old furniture, taking your dog to the coast or trying every independent cinema in the city. Character appears in the way you describe it. Someone who writes “I can fix most things except the drawer in my kitchen, which has defeated me for five years” sounds rather different from someone who writes “ambitious, driven, successful”. The former sounds like a man you'd enjoy talking to. The latter sounds as though he's applying to manage a regional sales team.
Then make your intentions reasonably clear. If you'd like a proper relationship, say so without issuing a wedding timetable. If you're dating casually, be honest about that too. Trying to attract everybody by being deliberately vague tends to attract misunderstandings.
Do not write what you think every woman wants. There isn't a single opinion held by every woman, thank heaven. Imagine the arguments over curtains.
Stop announcing that you are funny
“Great sense of humour” is one of the least funny phrases in the English language. It has the same comic energy as a tax reminder. If you really are amusing, let a line in your profile demonstrate it.
You might say, “My greatest talent is finding an excellent restaurant. My second-greatest is accidentally ordering enough for a wedding.” Or, “I can make fresh pasta, although the kitchen generally looks as if an Italian grandmother has been burgled.” Both give a glimpse of humour without demanding applause.
But don't audition for the Edinburgh Fringe in your bio. A joke in every sentence makes the profile exhausting. Worse, some men use humour as armour: if every statement is a gag, she never gets to meet the person making them. Include one or two lively observations and let the rest sound like a normal, interesting human.
And avoid humour that depends on insulting women, mocking strangers or describing every former partner as mad. You may imagine yourself a fearless comic. She may reasonably conclude that dinner with you would be hard work.
A good example is specific without becoming precious
Here's a perfectly serviceable attempt:
“Usually found testing a new recipe, hunting for an old record or trying to persuade my nephew that the football team I support is character-building. I like weekend trips that aren't planned to the minute, proper conversation and a pub with a fire. Looking to meet someone who enjoys making plans — and occasionally abandoning them for a better one.”
It isn't trying to hypnotise anybody. You can imagine the man, ask him about the record collection and form an opinion about the football. He sounds warm without claiming to be a spiritual miracle.
Now compare it with:
“Alpha mindset. High value. No drama. If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best.”
Good heavens. That's not an invitation to a date. That's a warning label on an unstable appliance.
The strongest profile doesn't pretend to be irresistible. It makes the right person curious.
Write prompts as though you're answering someone in the pub
Apps that use prompts offer an opportunity, but only if you give them more than a shrug. “The way to win me over: food” is barely an answer. “The way to win me over: bring strong opinions about which seaside town has the best fish and chips” at least starts a conversation.
Pick prompts that reveal different sides of you. One might show your sense of adventure, another how you spend a quiet evening and another what you value in a relationship. Three versions of “I love banter” aren't three personality traits.
Try reading your answers aloud. If you'd never say the words in ordinary conversation, rewrite them. If a sentence sounds like it came from a management seminar, release it back into the wild.
For example, “I value authentic experiences and meaningful connections” could become “I prefer a long dinner and a proper chat to a night spent pretending the music isn't deafening.” The second one sounds like somebody whose company you can already imagine.
You are allowed to be an ordinary bloke
There's a strange pressure to turn every profile into a highlight reel. You must be scuba diving before breakfast, building a business at lunchtime and flying first class to somewhere with palm trees by Thursday. Meanwhile, some of the nicest men I know are brilliant company on an unremarkable Tuesday.
If your life involves work, family, the gym, films and making the occasional curry, that is not a failure of marketing. Tell the truth with flavour. You might be the sort of person who remembers the barmaid's name, gives splendid birthday presents or always knows when a friend needs a lift. Those things count.
A woman's deciding whether she'd like to share actual time with you, not whether you'll improve the brochure for a luxury travel agency. The Tuesday-evening version of you deserves a place in the story.
Equally, don't disguise genuine ambitions. If you're training for a marathon or working towards a change in career, mention it when it tells us something interesting. Just don't confuse your aspirations with a requirement that your date applaud them.
Preferences can be clear without being a shopping list
It's sensible to know what you're looking for. But a bio packed with demands can sound like a letting agent's list of tenancy conditions: must be affectionate, attractive, independent, spontaneous, child-free, enjoy skiing, own passport, reply promptly and never eat prawns.
Some preferences matter deeply. Children, lifestyle, relationship intentions and distance may genuinely affect compatibility. Use the app's relevant fields where available, and speak plainly where it helps. Save the elaborate compatibility discussion for an actual conversation.
Describe the kind of relationship you hope to build, rather than issuing specifications for the woman who must build it with you. “I'd love a relationship with plenty of laughter, affection and shared adventures” sounds inviting. “No timewasters, no games, no drama” sounds as though you've opened the office to receive complaints.
The funny thing is that even understandable frustrations become unattractive when they lead the introduction. A stranger isn't responsible for what happened with your last twelve matches.
What to leave out, even if you're tempted
Don't post your phone number, home address or workplace details for strangers to see. You can disclose more as trust develops. Don't claim you're younger, taller or single if you aren't. These aren't little creative flourishes; they're the foundations of a very awkward first meeting.
Avoid cynical opening statements. “Why bother? Nobody replies on here” may accurately describe your mood after a discouraging week, but it doesn't give a woman a reason to begin. Take a break from the app if it's making you miserable. You aren't required to turn your disappointment into advertising copy.
And please spare us the exhaustive list of what you will not tolerate. You can have boundaries without placing them all in a public proclamation. The dating profile is supposed to begin an introduction, not resemble the terms and conditions of a budget airline.
How much should you write?
Enough to be recognisable; not so much that she needs a bookmark. App formats vary, so don't chase a universal word count. A few vivid sentences are often better than a long autobiography. If your platform gives you several prompts, use them to add new information rather than repeating your main bio.
Read what you've written and ask three questions. Could another hundred men paste this into their profiles unchanged? Is there something here she could easily ask me about? Would the woman who met me in person recognise the character on the page?
If the answer to that last question is no, something has gone wrong. A dating profile is not a casting call for a different version of yourself.
Ask a trusted friend to read it. Tell them not to be polite. If they laugh at a joke because they recognise you in it, splendid. If they say, “Since when have you been passionate about alpine trekking?” you may need to return to the drawing board.
An excellent profile doesn't promise excellent results
You can write a marvellous bio and still receive an indifferent response. People have wildly different tastes, circumstances and intentions; sometimes the app simply isn't showing you to the right people. That doesn't automatically mean your writing is a disaster, and it certainly doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.
What a good profile can do is remove the fog. It offers a warm, honest introduction and a few details that invite the right sort of conversation. Instead of trying to appeal to every woman in Britain, it gives compatible women a better chance of recognising the man behind the screen.
So retire “love travel, food and a laugh”. Name the place you want to return to. Tell her what you love cooking. Give her one example of what makes you laugh. Be a person, not a collection of stock phrases.
She doesn't need your entire life story to decide whether to say hello. She simply needs a reason to believe there is a proper story there.