Integrity in Dating: Profile Advice What Is Lying?

Integrity in Dating: Are You Guilty of Lying in Your Dating Profile?

Now that we are fully in the Facebook Age and the Internet Dating Matchmaking Industry is a mature business well out of the early start up stage of the early days of cyberspace and web dating, a whole host of issues now face singles seeking love online.

Core Characteristics of Integrity and Lying.

Integrity and Lying.

Integrity in Dating can cover anything from the topics of not overtly lying in your profile in such areas as your age.  But Integrity in Dating also includes actively and concertedly misleading other singles looking for love and reading your dating profile.

Now mind you, I have a corporate professional background in Sales and Marketing from San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the land that brought us HP, Steve Jobs, Apple, and The Woz.   This is the land which coined the phrase, “Vaperware,” for the software that SV Sales People would sell to corporate businesses before the software engineers had even designed and developed it.  So with that as the environment that spawned my professional formation, I’d like to say that I am fine about people taking a favorable view of themselves and extolling their virtues in your internet dating profile.  I do not expect nor remotely recommend that you reveal your warts.  I describe to singles attending my Internet Dating Workshops and Online Dating Seminars that your internet personals ads can portray you in your most favorable light.  However I am specific that looking your best is one thing.  Overtly lying is a whole other thing.

Integrity in Dating:  Lying in Your Profile

Integrity in Dating:  Lying in Your Photos

So what is lying and what is not lying?  I’ll be addressing some of the overt lying topics in future posts in this series covering Integrity in Dating.  However, today I’ll be covering some more of the Inadvertent Miscommunication.

During the live dating workshops these sort of war stories from the trenches of computer dating in the 21st century.

• What about the ones who say they are physically fit?
• How active do you have to be for the singles who say they want someone who is active?
• How active is active?
• Oh right they work out 6 days a week?  What are they, an Olympic Athlete?
• Why do they put they like hiking but they don’t even own a pair of hiking boots?

A number of phrases have surfaced which you will see in contemporary internet personal ad profiles.

• Active Lifestyle
• Physically Fit
• Young-Looking
• Young-at-Heart
• Energetic
• Vitality

In the past, when singles wanted to communicate that they wanted someone who was slim, trim, and quite fit  they would say things like, “Height weight proportional.”  Now “Active Lifestyle” and “Physically Fit” are the catch phrases.  So just bear that in mind when you read those phrases in another’s profile.  And do be a bit careful when you consider using them in your own profile.  Often it is the singles who are over 45, 50, and 55 years old who are striving to communicate that they are good looking and live an active and engaged life so that you know they are not couch potatoes living a sedentary life.

There really are quite a variety of ways to communicate that in your profile.  What I recommend to singles to do is to actually talk about what they really do with their time, their evenings, their weekends.

Hiking

OK, apparently every single out there online from the age of 19 -119 years old is a hiker who likes hiking.  Who doesn’t like hiking?  Many singles at the dating sites, they aren’t meaning it to be overtly lying.  They really do think of themselves as liking hiking.  But when was the last time you’ve been on any kind of a hiking trail? And what do you really mean by hiking?

Where I grew up in the Northeast hiking to us were outdoor nature walks in the woods.  Think Herrontown Woods in Princeton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey.  Hey, we simply didn’t even know or live near anything resembling a mountain or any serious elevation.

Then there are the hills of San Francisco, and the mountainous areas of Northern California and hiking trails with actual elevation, Angel Island, and “switchbacks”  of the Los Altos Foothills Trails near Palo Alto on the San Francisco Peninsula.

There are differences.  And it’s not that you were specifically meaning to mislead your Prospect Date.  Just they are quite fit, hike for half day and full day hikes at an intermediate to advanced level and you were just wanting to get back to taking walks in nature this time with someone because you really do enjoy the outdoors.

These are the kind of things you can position in your dating profile by saying something like, “I used to really love walking in the woods trails where I grew up and want to get back to that.  Do you enjoy hiking?  I’m not a moutaineer, mind you, but a hike and lunch on a Saturday afternoon would be fun.”

Notice how you kind of set the parameter of expectations.  You establish boundaries of the kind of hiker you are.  Interested and enjoy it.  Want to get back to it.  Don’t expect me to be able to keep up with you quite yet for half day hikes or full weekend outdoors adventures.  This way you both manage expectations (Yes, one of those Marketing World terms from Product Marketing) and avoid overtly lying to your Prospective Date.

The Phenomena of Hiking in an Internet Dating Profile

It’s a residual from the early days of online dating profiles was that the matching feature which feeds singles “Possible Matches for You” do so based on the database of who you are.  All the characteristics, interests, hobbies, activities, and personal attributes which you clicked off in all the check boxes and pull down menus contribute to the data file of YOU.  Those are stored in a database.  Then the Internet Matchmaking Sites sort and filter the data to offer you potential matches based on your interests.

So from the early days of internet dating, singles learned the tactic of clicking just about all of the “Hobbies” and “Interests” check boxes.  That way they your profile would cross the path of more singles.  Your profile would automatically be sent to more singles as a “Possible Match for You.”  So this is more of not really overtly lying.  But certainly you are leaning towards perhaps a little too favorably positioning yourself.

Rather than checking off simply every single hobby in the profile form, which would actually make your profile look more generic, strive to represent yourself and who you are a bit more accurately.  That way you will attract Prospective Dates who are attracted to the person you are.  You want to avoid the sea of sameness in all the “likes to hike, likes to walk on beaches at sunset” generic dating profiles.

Do put your best foot forward and avoid overtly lying in your dating profile.  You increase your chances of finding lasting love online when you do.

Happy Dating and Relationships,

April Braswell

Midlife Online Dating and Relationship Expert

As seen in Dating for Dummies, 3rd Edition

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