Cheeky Online Dating Advice For Separated Men

A wishful thought: we’re all just one click away from a hot date.

Newly separated? You immediately think Online Dating. An easy way back in, right? No strings, no attachments. Be who you want, liberate yourself. Just select a few photos, compose a carefully constructed set of life-affirming, cheeky-chappy descriptions. And away you go.

Not quite.

What does it mean to re-package and re-arrange the goods in your shop window? First of all, you have your status: Sep-a-rated. Do you have any idea of the emotional arsenal this broken word hurls across cyberspace? It is the non-starter you never knew; the perception is that you are damaged goods. Many women won’t risk touching you. And you simply won’t get to play with them.

I received very specific advice from female friends: “Don’t just leave it like that. When they see separated on your profile you have to say something about your emotional state. Women are very suspicious and wary.”


So much for meeting halfway, then. Parking separated magnificently at the top of your profile, apparently, is already a white elephant. Perhaps there should be online dating coaches to prepare you beforehand, teach you about the faux pas symbols (‘L’ on forehead?) before you throw them around.

Either way, online dating is what it is. A some time, bitter-sweet and sanitised love leveller bringing people together and giving them multiple second chances.

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I have seen dogs with more style than men, although not many dogs have style. Cats have it with abundance. -Bukowski

If anybody knew anything about style, it was the Barfly. Let’s be better than dogs.

Anyone who can play the online dating game probably will try. Common sense says you have to try and normalise your own profile descriptions to stay within the cat’s-in-hell chance of getting anyone interested. Weird is out. Yet it works both ways, right? Lie as you would be lied to. Do as you would be done in. We all have pasts, for goodness sake. But we should try to represent ourselves with panache and a modicum of style.

What baggage are you sharing with the group? Is that really you in the photo?

Of course, no-one gets looked at if there’s nothing to look at. This ain’t the 80s, or Horse & Hounds wants twinky for snuggles. But stop. You can’t post the cheesy photo from ten years ago, taken before you let yourself go to pot. You aren’t losing those pounds any time soon.

So come stylishly clean. You look the way you look. And you have a history, so what? Forward you must go, like a born-again horny shark. There was always going to be some sort of poke-in-the-eye deal to accept at the outset, like having to reveal your true age. Get the profile ready. And spell-checked. Teachers especially like this. Remember, it’s shop window dressing designed to get them inside. Don’t discount too soon. Less is more.

Don’t try and fill your word allocation with all your pearly gems. Self-indulgent boring, especially for us English, is not the game. To complicate: less is definitely less—I’ve had my alarm for high maintenance women set off by the profile of the woman-who-knows-she’s-attractive-and-can’t-be-asked-to-complete-a-profile. If we have instincts and alarms, so do the viewers of our profiles.

Has your profile content gotten past the friendly fire of hysterically laughing friends? Is there a cliché audit team on standby? Do you have sufficient distancing from your old self to know what you think you are doing? Chances may be, it is phase three of Catharsis with a Stranger. Just don’t let the stranger be you before you start.

Photo by tvol.