If you’re making these introductions in an online dating community or sites like craigslist personals, this doesn’t make the task any easier. You’re likely to be a perfectionist about these things, or at least that’s the hope. While working over an email to make it perfect can also make it seem artificial and overwrought, you don’t want to dash off the first thing that comes to mind. You want to take your time, if nothing else because you don’t want to reply immediately to an email introduction from someone else – this reeks of desperation.
A Good First Impression
Remember:
besides your profile picture and a few sentences your dashed off on your
profile template, this is the first impression this person has of you. You want
to sound reasonably intelligent and you want to be presentable. Use proper
grammar and proper spelling. Studies show that women find an inability to
write properly to be off-putting. If you can’t spell and make a sentence
properly, you just don’t look particularly smart, even if you are. This shows
one of two things: laziness or lack of education.
In the first
case, you might be perfectly able to learn proper spelling and grammar, but you
just don’t want to take the time to learn them, or use properly what you’ve
learned. This is the equivalent of the guy who doesn’t take the time to brush
his hair or teeth, clean up his car for a date, or put on deodorant.
Besides the
unsightly nature of what you’re presenting, you’re telling this woman a whole
lot of things about your personality and attitude towards life. Since most
people who can’t spell know how to use a spell check, you are showing complete
contempt for your audience, which is the woman you’re trying to impress.
In the second
case, you are showing you don’t have the ability to learn good writing. This is
worse, of course, because studies show that women like intelligent men.
Educated and intelligent people (not
always the same thing) are more interesting and stimulating to talk to,
while (often more importantly) they tend to be in a higher economic class.
The upshot being, you don’t want women to think you can’t express yourself well. Good spelling in an email introduction might be less important for men (getting a letter from women), but it’s still a good idea for our female readers to express themselves well. Compare an email introduction for Internet dating much like a letter of introduction on a resume: you want to impress.
Be Yourself
It’s somewhat
elusive to “be yourself” without being too much of yourself. You want to
present the positive side of your personality, but you want that side to be
unmistakably you. Sure, you want to impress the person on the other side of the
email, but you don’t want to be impressive by making up stories about yourself
or your life experiences.
Don’t lie about
your job or salary. Be honest about your expectations from the relationship.
It’s better you avoid all talk of these things until sometime later in the
relationship. If you don’t feel comfortable discussing these subjects with
someone who is pushy to know about them, they aren’t the right person anyway.
Here’s the other
side of the coin: don’t give away too much. First, it’s a safety
and security concern to give away too much personal information to someone
you hardly knows. Beyond that, though, you don’t want to tell this person your
troubles, worries, feuds, and grudges.
This is stuff
they’ll find out later, after they get to know you and have some affection for
you. Most people are not going to gain affection for you if you tell them about
your problems with your ex, your divorce, your troubles at work, or your
exploits in bed, beyond the most passing reference to it. It’s better you avoid
these subjects altogether in an introduction. Be brief. Describe yourself. Give
a positive image of yourself. Don’t volunteer too much information.