Tough Love: Women, The Top 3 Things That Turn Men Away From Your Online Dating Profile

3.) Listing Your Demands/Pet Peeves/Dislikes of How Men Treat You Online

Example from a real profile on Plenty of Fish (Yes, this is from a real profile. Verbatim)

Is it too much to ask ... I want a normal boyfriend. 

No.. I will not meet you for s*x 
No.. I do not want to meet you and your girlfriend 
No.. I am not interested in what you 'have' and what 'size' it is 
No..I do not care what kind of car that you drive 
No.. I will not respond to you if you do not have a pic or will not send me one 

.. And lastly If I do not respond to one of your 22 messages...it is safe to say I am not interested. To the above ... 'Kick Bricks' .. And/or 'Rocks' 

This is an instant turn off. I usually see this kinda thing from the more attractive women on online dating sites. The get bombarded with emails and notifications from guys loathing over them. Chill out honey. We get that you are annoyed with sooo many guys chasing after you. Oh poor you. But sorry, we don’t need to hear any of this. We understand that busted, creepy guys are hitting on you cause that’s just what guys do. Spare us the list of your no’s and give us a list of your yes’s. It’s more enjoyable to read and will not make you come off like a ____ (fill in the blank)

There's no need to remind us how sexually driven and douchey the male race can be. We have these thoughts everyday, just not all of us actually come out and say them to you.

2.) "Convenient" Angles/Lighting in Your Pictures 

Women take a ton of pictures these days so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise of how crafty they can be about which pictures they chose to post in their profiles. They can be very deceptive on how they present themselves. Guys come away from a profile thinking they look like someone else. Don’t believe me?

In 2009 authors Jeffery Hancock and Catalina Toma did a study that focused on the accuracy of photos displayed in online dating sites. The authors had current online dating participants come in person and allow the researchers to take a real time photo. That photo was then matched up next to their current dating profiles. Independent coders were then asked to judge the accuracy of the online dating profile pictures compared to the real-time photo. The coders discovered that 14.8 percent of male photographs were deemed inaccurate, while 48.1 percent of female photographs were rated inaccurate when compared to their real-time photo. The results showed women are three times as likely to have discrepancies in online dating photos than men. The authors attributed the large number of female discrepancies to the fact that men put more emphasis on a woman’s looks when searching for a potential date. The women are dealing with the pressures of living up to a desired self.

While the pressures of living up to the physical desires of what men want can be strong, women have to resist the urge. It will just lead to bad dates. Just listen to Tyler who I interviewed while running online dating focus groups at Rutgers.

“I went out with this one girl once, I talked to her and she seemed cool. But it was the same thing. The angels of the pictures, she listed her body type as one thing and she was bigger than that body type. And it’s frustrating to me because I show up and I’m not attracted to her at all. Now I have to feel like the a_ _hole for going through with this date. If she was just up front about it, we wouldn’t have been going through with this whole charade of now being on a date and me not calling you and all that other stuff.”

Ladies, make sure your pictures are an accurate representation of what you truly look like. The only person you're fooling in the long run is yourself.

3.) Cliché’s

 Hey, we are all guilty of using clichés but online dating profiles take it to the next level. Women, how unoriginal can some of you be? If I read the term “Live, Laugh, Love” one more time I am going to stab my eyes out with a pencil. You really think no one else is using this phrase as their headline? As soon as I see that I’m thinking you aren’t witty enough to keep up with me. On a deeper level, the cliché’s don’t give men the ability to start a conversation with you.

Life offline often imitates life online. In other words, men have to initiate the conversation regardless if there's mutual interest expressed or not. So how are men supposed to start a conversation with you if your profile is chalk full of cliché’s?

 “Oh, you like long walks on the beach? Me too! We should go for a walk down on State Beach sometime.”

See? That line is creepy as hell. Every girl is going to think the guy is a psycho because that’s how he started a conversation. Well, what were his alternatives?

“Oh, you like to snuggle up on the couch with a glass of wine under a blanket on Friday nights and watch movies!?  On Thursdays I like to sit on my lazy boy chair, crushing Budlights while I watch the Bruins game and dream about how I can improve my fantasy football team. We should watch TV together sometime.”

Yup, not getting a response back on that one either.

Women, give us something to work with here. Cliché’s are both a turn off and a dead end street to starting a conversation for men. If you are specific about what your interests are we can be specific in our opening statements to you and not throw the dreaded cliches back at you.