Writing a personal ads for practice or real

When writing a personal ad, you need to consider where you’re going to place your ad. If writing it for a newspaper, keep in mind that you have to pay per word, so being succinct is an advantage. If you are placing your ad online, you don’t have to worry about a per-word charge.

But no matter where you’re advertising, writing a personal ad requires the same kind of discipline that you would use so as not to break the bank — pithy and succinct beats wordy and rambling every time. Stop sweating. This is an exercise to limber you up, not a performance piece. You don’t have to send the ad anywhere, but writing a personal ad does a bunch of cool things for you:

• Makes you admit that you’re really ready to start looking to date
• Allows you to be specific about the kind of person you’re looking for
• Forces you to look at who you are (and that’s really, really, important)

When you write your personal ad in your dating notebook, think about the following:

• Who you are
• Your assets and your liabilities
• What your mom loves about you
• What your friends criticize
• Your favorite thing to do (no, don’t put that in the ad just yet, thank you very much; I mean your favorite thing to do vertically, with your clothes on . . . in public)

When you describe your perfect companion, try to get beyond the physical description and age to the person’s soul and consider these qualities:

• What is the person like?
• What do the two of you enjoy together?
• What do you talk about when you’re alone?

Other things that you might think about are

• Sex (come on now, no giggling) — your sex and the preferred option for your date to be (in other words, are you straight or gay?)
• Age range
• Race, if it’s an issue
• Educational background
• Work
• Geographic proximity (don’t start with long distance unless it’s preferred, and then you need to think about why you opted for distance rather than closeness)
• Height and weight
• Religion
• Smoking preference

You should also think about whether you’re looking for:

• Friendship and whatever else
• A mate
• A date
• A discreet nooner
• Commitment
• Kids
• Marriage
• A prom escort
• Permanence

These lists are only the beginning of sorting through who you are and what you want, and writing a personal ad is a cool short cut. In writing your practice ad, allow yourself to be honest and creative (not with the facts, with your thoughts) and specific, as well as flexible. This exercise should be fun and really helpful. You don’t need a book to tell you how to write the ad, just the ability to write out who you are and what you want.

Using personal ads for advertising

In the age of disco, the Cold War, and Johnny Carson, (a mere 30 years ago), personal ads were considered sleazy, sexual, and sometimes perverted — a backstairs way for people to manage what they were ashamed to admit to. These days, personals — both online and offline — are one of the most common and accepted ways for people to meet one another. By spending a couple of hours reading through the dating ads in whatever newspaper or magazine you normally read anyway or at popular dating Web sites such as Match.com, eHarmony.com, or any of the specialized dating sites, you can get a really good idea of who’s looking for what.

Are personal ads completely accurate? Can they be useful? Good questions. If you believed everything that was written, you’d believe that all women are raven-haired, svelte, emerald-eyed owners of their own antiques importing businesses, and all men are handsome, chisel-chinned CEOs looking to settle down with a wife and kids after taking long romantic walks on the beach on their private islands.

If you’re already feeling outclassed, if you’re not skinny, or if you don’t own your own business, not to worry. Having done some research on the personals, I can assure you that people are not necessarily very accurate in their self-descriptions. (If you don’t believe me, just spend a little time in the cookie aisle of your favorite grocery store, or — even better — think about how you described yourself in your yearbook.) But that’s not the point of this exercise.

What this exercise does is help you figure out how many people are looking to connect, how they describe themselves, and what they’re looking for. If nothing else, this exercise helps you realize that you’re not alone, that lots of seemingly normal, happy, fun people are out there looking. Once you’re ready, you can hop right on out there and answer — or even write — an ad if you wish.

The practice in how to become a charming person

Charm is simply the practice of making someone know that you feel good about them without embarrassing them or asking anything of them in return, and it’s really, really seductive. It’s being a fancy maitre d’ at a French restaurant without the tip — making someone feel that they are the most important person in the world to you at that moment.

• Charm has to be sincere. Charm is its most potent when you believe what you’re saying.
• Charm must include eye contact. If you’re good at eye contact and vocal warmth, it’s almost impossible to lay it on too thick.
  
• Charm may include compliments. What to say is relatively easy: Figure out what would feel the best to you if someone were making you feel good. This technique doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, but it works more often than not, and because you’re tuned in to the other person (a large part of the charm experience), you’ll be able to adjust accordingly.
  
• Charm is done lightly and pleasantly.
• Charm isn’t sexual; it’s just warmth.
• The trick to charm is to be selfless: You’re not asking for anything here, not even feedback. Charm is independent of response (well, almost independent; all of us like to feel appreciated, but with charm, being appreciated isn’t the point). The difference between charm and flattery is that flattery has an agenda — I’ll give you compliments so that you’ll give me what I want. Charm is a way of being, rather than a tool to achieve something.
• Charm at its simplest just says, “You’re terrific; thank you for letting me bask in your glow.” Who among us isn’t going to respond to that pitch?

Like most things, charm benefits from practice. So where do you start? Any place. Practice on your mom, your cat, your neighbor, your dad, your boss, your teacher, the cop on the corner, the 2-year-old next door. You will also be amazed at how charming people will be in return, the smiles you will glean, the fun you will have.

In short, charm is a butterfly’s touch on a flower petal, the breeze of a hummingbird’s wing: The key is easy does it. Charm is fun and potentially a very profitable tool in interpersonal relationships, and it’s crucial to dating. So practice and enjoy.

Ask yourself these question before making friends

Adult friendship is based on caring about someone because of, rather than in spite of, their warts, and the best way to have a friend is to be a friend. You don’t have to be perfect to have a friend or be a friend. Just be flexible and loving and honest. If you’re getting the idea that friendship is a great potential basis for romance — bravo! — you’re right. The only tricky part is chemistry.

Take out your dating notebook and answer yes or no to the following questions to find out whether you’re ready to be and have a friendship with another adult. Keeping a notebook lets you see what you’re doing, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. Haven’t started one yet? Not to worry. You can buy a spiral notebook or a three-ring binder and start one now. Make this exercise one of your entries.

• Expectations:
• Am I able to separate who I am and what I want from who my friend is?
• Do I accept that my friend is not just like me?
• Tolerance:
• Am I as tolerant of my friend as I would like him/her to be tolerant of me?
• Do I apply the same standards to myself that I expect of my friend (in other words, do I have the same set of rules for myself and my friend)?
• Availability:
• Am I willing to put myself out for my friend (that is, the relationship isn’t all about convenience)?
• Do I have the time and energy to invest in being and having a friend?
• Honesty:
• Am I willing to be my true self?
• Am I willing to say what I feel?
• Openness:
• Am I willing to be vulnerable and intimate and share my feelings?
• Dependency:
• Am I able to stand on my own?
• Empathy:
• Am I able to look at a conflict from someone else’s point of view?
• Perspective:
• Do I like something about my friend other than the fact that he/she likes me?
• Can I be a bit unselfish and less self-centered?

You can see from this list why friendship is such a good basis for dating and just about any other kind of relationship. If you answered yes to most or all of the questions, you’re great friend material. If you aren’t capable of friendship, you might think about working on that before you take up dating. Friendship isn’t easy. It is important, and it doesn’t even have sex to heat things up. Friendship is truly a uniquely human and undeniably valuable exercise in being our most basic and terrific and honest and self-reliant selves. Time spent making friends is always time well spent. When you do launch your dating self, you’ll have your friend to commiserate or share the joy.

Are you good enough to become a friend?

A friend can be an important part of your life, but not the totality of your life as it was when you were a kid, so don’t try to take over your friend’s life or let your friend take over yours. (Just because your best pal hates your hair-do, thinks your career is in the dumps, or isn’t as fiscally adventurous doesn’t mean you need to change hairdressers, go looking for another line of work, or choose a different investment counselor.)

If you’re old enough to date, you’re old enough to be self-reliant, and the same characteristics that make a good friend make a good potential date. Not to mention, our friends sustain us while dates often come and go. Don’t be discouraged; just understand that making friends is important whether or not your dating works immediately. Who couldn’t use the practice in building and maintaining relationships? Friends grab our heads as well as our hearts, and most of us have heads that are a lot harder to fool than our hearts.

Friendships employ less chemistry and much more sense. Good friendships are also based on give and take, without preordained roles of what one should do. You might expect your date to pay for your meal, but you certainly wouldn’t expect a friend to; similarly, you would never expect a friend to read your mind, even though you may expect your date to (“If you loved me, you’d know”). A good friendship is based on reality, not fantasy; equality, not dominance; and rationality, not romance. The healthier both participants are, the better — and healthier —the friendship will be.

Making friends

Making friends is one of the most difficult and worthwhile experiences of human life because it requires time and effort and patience and understanding and acceptance and honesty. Many people confuse friendship with acquaintances, and they’re not the same at all. Acquaintances are people you hang out with; they’re convenient but interchangeable. Friends are people you actively seek out, people with whom you have something in common, and the link is deeper and stronger. It is very possible for one to become the other, and everyone who becomes a friend had to be an acquaintance first. (Friendships can be downgraded, for example, when two people move apart geographically or emotionally or situationally — changing jobs, marital status, and so on. Of course, this section focuses on getting friends, not losing them.)

Dealing with depression

If you feel incapable of moving off the couch; if you’re not sleeping well or your eating habits have changed; if you feel sad most of the time, it’s hard to concentrate, and you’re noticing your body doesn’t feel well, you may be depressed. First get a physical to rule out any treatable underlying condition.
If you get a clean bill of health and still feel really lethargic, it’s time to make an appointment with a psychiatrist. Depression is the most common and untreated illness in our world, and that’s literally a crying shame because it is a very treatable condition. Medication and talk therapy can change your life and give you back the person you used to be.

Taking yourself off house arrest

A wounded animal seeks shelter, but animals don’t have to date, just mate. As far as we know, animals don’t have to worry about job descriptions, well meaning parents who nag, and a few extra pounds that don’t look terrific in a bathing suit. Animals don’t get hurt by misunderstandings or insecurities, animals don’t feel self pity, and they don’t have TV as an anesthetic. In other words, animals don’t become couch potatoes because their true loves didn’t come along. Although seeking shelter is fine if you’re a four-legged forest creature, if you’re a human, you need to get out and about. After all, we humans are usually not very well-served by hibernating. We sulk and obsess and analyze and feel more and more cut off.

Therefore, bunkie, if you’re spending most of your time in front of the tube, hoping the good fairy of dating will come and hit you upside the head with an inspiration stick, you’re wasting time. Get off your butt, turn off the tube, and get out of the house.

Sulking is not sexy, and it’s not productive. Your vocal cords will seize up if you don’t use ’em, and your social skills will shrivel. When you’re feeling sorriest for yourself is when you most need to use your gumption rather than wishing you’d inherited straight teeth, a crooked smile, and a charm gene — and when you most need to get out of the house. Take a walk, take a course, take a hike (literally). The more sedentary you are, the less you feel like moving, and the less you move, the less you feel like moving. Emotionally, you can experience extreme sludgyness.

If you’re not working, get a job or do some volunteer activity. If you’re still in school, join a club. The point is to get out of your cave and visit the rest of the tribe. Doing so will change your perspective, clear up your skin, and keep you from brooding and thinking only about yourself. This isn’t a way to get a date; it’s a way to get a life. Even if you’ve broken your leg, unless you want to be in a wheelchair the rest of your life, you’ve got to move that leg and re-energize the muscles. True, it won’t be much fun to begin with, but it’s the only way. Don’t put yourself in the prison of your loneliness. Nobody but you has the key. Following are a few ideas you can use to get yourself out of the house and meet new people:

• Make a plan to be out at least three days or nights a week — that’s less than half the time — and to talk to at least three new people on each outing. I’m not talking about picking somebody up; a simple “hi,” or a conversation about garbanzo beans or the weather will do.
• Try going to new places, take a different route, or check out a new store. Shake up your world a bit. What do you have to lose? Only your sadness.
• One of the best ways to make the transition from lonely to lovely is volunteer activities. Because you’re not getting paid, you feel more in control, and because what you’re offering (basically yourself) is valuable to someone, volunteer work is a great way to build self-confidence.

A note here about online “relationships.” These relationships still count as house arrest. Face-to-face is the way human beings relate best, and if you’re using your PC for your social life, you’re literally keeping others at arm’s (or at least keyboard’s) length. It’s not healthy or productive. If you’ve got flesh-and-blood contacts and want to fill in some of the spaces between seeing each other with online friendships, fine, but don’t substitute e-mail for emotion or mistake online for alive.

When you get out of the house, you discover that you’re in charge and valuable. You’re wanted and needed, and you’ll feel a lot more loving toward yourself, which is the beginning of allowing other people to love you. Before love comes like, and liking is what friends do for one another.

Be prepared

Dating is anxiety-provoking, exciting, common, and individualistic as well as potentially straightforward and simple. The best way to have a good time dating — not just on a date, but throughout the whole process — is to be relatively sane and happy before you begin. Notice, I did not focus on any particular date because you have surprisingly little control over that. After all, there is another person involved and lots of imponderables. I don’t say this to scare you, only to prepare you for what you already know in other situations:
Life is full of surprises, and even with great preparation, things can go wrong, and sometimes, with absolutely no preparation at all, things can go astonishingly well.
The point is not to throw up your hands in frustration, but to realize you do the best you can with what you’ve got and be prepared to go with the flow a bit, which gets us back to my first point: your initial state of mind and welfare. The happier you are, the more ready you are to date. If your life feels terrific, but you’d just love to have a special someone with whom to share it — in other words, if your motivation is more focused whimsy than desperate need — you’re prime dating material. If you’re unutterably lonesome, desperate, miserable, or need cheering up, this section is definitely for you. I’m gonna get you in shape to date. Just as an athlete prepares for an important event or the opening of the season, I’m going to coach you about how to prepare yourself to Don’t go there, even if you’re tempted, even if it seems logical; the disaster is predictable.