Stop Being Boring: How To Spice Up Your Online Profile

“Hi! Thanks for checking out my profile! My greatest loves are my faith and my family. My interests are X, Y, and Z. Message me if you want to know more!”

My eyes began to glaze over about the tenth time I read a variation of that same profile. "Is that really the best she can say for herself?" I think. "That she gets along with her family and is into X, Y, and Z?" That’s the first thing she wants her future husband to know about her?

Of course, being CatholicMatch, it’s important to indicate how much our faith is a part of our life. And it’s good to know you get along with your family. And I’m as interested in the first Adams administration as the next man, so there’s nothing wrong with X, Y, and Z. The thing is, with the exception of your faith, these probably aren’t what we’re looking for. Oh sure, we want to know if we share certain interests, but that’s not really the vital point.

Remember, we on CatholicMatch are looking for someone we might like to marry some day. We’re looking for that very special person who will mean more to us than anyone else. A comment about how much you like your family and a brief rundown of your interests tells us almost nothing that will help in that regard.

What we’re really looking for is personality: a sense of who this person is and what they’re like to talk to and be with. Aside from shared values, that’s really the most important quality in a match: how we will get along personally.

Don’t Remind Me!

Each of us has a unique personality. There is no one quite like you on the face of the Earth. Trouble is, most of us try very hard to hide this fact. We shy away from exposing ourselves too openly, especially on a public forum, and we retreat into the protective boxes that society has assigned to us (“Here’s your box; you’ll be millennial Catholic #3”).

But one place we can’t do that is on CatholicMatch. Here we’re looking for someone who will know and love us better than anyone in the world, and the only way they can do that is if they see us as people and not as types. Our aim in creating our profiles ought to be to express what makes us unique; what is different about us? What makes us special? Why should a prospective match want to talk to us instead of someone else?

“Greatness,” so Las Vegas magicians Siegfried and Roy inform us, “is he who reminds you of no other."

Think about what makes you unique and try to bring that across in your profile. It’s great that you love your family, but lots of people love their families; it doesn’t really tell us anything about you personally. It’s nice that you love your job as a nurse, but this isn’t a resume; there are lots of nurses out there, and lots of them love their jobs. I’ve even seen profiles where the girl spends half the time talking about her dog. Again, it’s great that you love your dog, but we’re not looking to date him.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t include these things on your profile: you certainly should if they’re important to you. The point is that they can’t be the main thrust of your profile, because they don’t really tell us much about you as a person. When writing about yourself, the emphasis should be on your personality: the things that make you uniquely you.

You’re Not a Boring Character: Don’t Act Like It

I recall seeing a review of the first Star Wars prequel in which the reviewer demonstrated how boring and flat the characters were by challenging his friends to describe them without mentioning what they looked like, their occupation, or what their role in the story was.

This, I think, is a very helpful guideline. Take a moment and think about how you would describe yourself without mentioning your faith, your family or friends, your occupation, or any specific interests (i.e. say “I’m athletic,” not “I like soccer”).

Describe the kind of person you are: your personality, your style of talking or tackling a problem, your sense of humor, and so on. Be as specific and detailed as you can. Write it all down on a separate sheet of paper or in a separate file. Don’t worry about making it pretty: just get it down.

Then, after you have what you consider a good description of your personality, take that and add in any specifics about your faith, family, friends, and so on that you want your prospective one-and-only to know about you. Use what you wrote down about your personality as the core and build an interesting profile around it.

So, a good profile might look something like this:

I’m lightning in a bottle. A very compact, very tough bottle; like one of those little flasks you bring along on camping trips, only cuter. I love God, I love people, and I love life! There’s just so much to do that half the time I don’t know where to begin. I’m a triple threat: I dance, I sing, and I tell jokes. I’m also a bookworm and a complete nerd; I confess that I’m seriously addicted to superhero movies. I love meeting new people. And old people for that matter; I’m just a people person. I’ll literally talk your ears off if you let me (there have been incidents…). Oh, and I’m always up for trying new things and exploring new places: I love camping and the out of doors (not so crazy about the bugs though).

I know I’m probably sounding kind of nuts at this point, and I am in a way, but I’m very serious when it comes to my faith and the things I believe in, like right and wrong, freedom, truth, and justice. I’m a staunch, traditional Catholic: my faith is my life. I love the Mass and I say the Rosary everyday (love you, Mom!). I even wear a mantilla, if you can believe it. I’m looking for someone who knows how beautiful the faith is and who wants to share this great, crazy adventure called life with me. I’m very sweet and I don’t bite (well, not much), so don’t be afraid to message.

As an aside, not everyone has a talent for writing. If you don’t fancy yourself a wordsmith, there’s nothing wrong with having a more literary friend or family member write your profile for you, just as long as it’s an honest representation of your personality. Ghostwriting is a perfectly respectable practice, so don’t feel like you have to write the profile yourself if writing isn’t one of your skills. As a bonus, trying describing yourself to someone else, especially if they already know you, could help you get a handle on how to describe your own personality.

Someone out there is scrolling through the various profiles on CatholicMatch, looking for someone just like you. You don’t want him to pass you by because he had no idea that you were you.