Writing A Good 60+ Online Dating Profile

Nearly everyone stalls at the same spot. Not the age, not the photo. The empty box that says tell us about yourself. You look at it, everything you type sounds either like showing off or like a job application, and you close the laptop and say you will do it tomorrow.

There is a way round it. Stop trying to describe yourself, because almost nobody does that well and the ones who do tend to sound rehearsed. Answer questions instead. You have been answering questions about yourself in kitchens your whole life and you are perfectly good at it. A profile is only the written version of that.

The questions people here actually ask

What part of the country are you from? Start here, because in Ireland it is the first question anybody asks and it opens everything else. Where you grew up, where you have ended up, and whether you ever intend to go back.

What did you work at? People are far more curious about this than you would credit, and it says more about you than any list of adjectives could.

What has you occupied now? The garden, the choir, the walking group, the Active Retirement, the shed, the grandchildren on a Tuesday, the crossword you have never finished. Particulars. Always particulars.

Where is everybody? Whether the family are up the road or in Sydney shapes your whole week, and it is a perfectly normal thing to say.

Have you been away, or would you like to be? A few days in Kerry, a bus trip, a fortnight in the sun, or the one you keep threatening to book. It tells people how you like to spend your time and gives them an easy thing to ask about.

What can wait

The marriage. Not because anyone will think the worse of you. Everybody at this age has a history and the ones who claim otherwise are the ones to watch. It is that a long paragraph about it reads as though you are still in the thick of it, and that will put people off before they have got to anything else. A line is plenty.

Politics. Nothing to be gained. Leave it until you know each other well enough to fall out properly and enjoy it.

Money. Yours or anybody's. It has no place on a public page, and mentioning it draws precisely the wrong sort of interest.

How much to give away

A fair question in a country where everybody knows somebody. Your surname is not shown and neither is your email or your phone. Your first name, your county or town, your photo and whatever you write is the whole of it. Most people settle on naming the county rather than the village, and that is a sensible middle. If you are still uneasy, put up a good profile with no photo, get the feel of the place for a week, and add one when you are ready.

Then leave it be

Read it once, fix the typos, put it up. The urge is to keep tidying, and tidying is how a profile ends up sounding like nobody at all. A bit rough and recognisably you will always do better than smooth and anonymous.

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