I want to talk to you today about one of the most misunderstood things in online dating. And that is the dating profile itself. Most people, when they sit down to write a dating profile, are trying to do the same thing and that it to appeal to as many people as possible, put their best self forward. They try not to be too niche, not too specific, keeping it light and open and broadly likeable. I understand the impulse entirely. It feels like the sensible strategy. Cast nor net wide, to catch as many possible matches as you can.
However, there is a problem here. A profile that is designed to appeal to everyone is a profile that resonates with almost nobody. In a medium where resonance is the mechanism, where the only reason someone reaches out is because something in your words touched them in a specific, particular way, being broadly appealing is the worst thing you can be.
What I suggest the women I work with create instead is a Mirror Profile and it works on a completely different principle. A Mirror Profile is not a marketing exercise. It is not a way to get the most matches. It is a way to find your right person. I want you to write something so genuinely and specifically yourself that the right person reads it and thinks,
“That is just like me. How does anyone know me this well?”
When someone reads your profile and feels seen by it before they have even met you, they are not responding to a performance. They are responding to the real you and that is the beginning of something meaningful.
Let me walk you through how to build one.
The first step is the one most people skip entirely. It is to get clear on your Intention. Not your list of desired qualities in a partner, your Intention. This is the felt sense of the relationship you are moving toward. What does it feel like to be in the best relationship of your life? Not what does it look like on paper but what does it feel like in your body? Take the time to sit with that before you write a single word of your profile. Your Intention is your North Star.
Every decision in dating from what you write, who you respond to, how you assess what you find, will be guided by it. This is something I help every woman I work with create at the very beginning of the Calling In The One Programme. It is one-to-one coaching and goes deep and clear, because without your Intention you are sailing through dating without a compass.
The second step is what I call The Facets of The Soul. This is another point at which many profiles fall down. People write their hobbies, “I enjoy travelling, cooking, walking the dog, spending time with friends.” All those things are real, but hobbies are not the mirror. The mirror is your interior life, the particular quality of who you are underneath the hobbies.
The facets of your soul include things like how ambitious are you and in what direction? Are you a risk-taker or a nester? What does emotional intimacy mean to you? Are you someone who processes out loud to know what you think or who needs to go quiet to think and then communicate? What are your values, specific ones that actually guide how you live? What does love look and feel like at its best, for you?
These are not easy questions. They require you to actually know yourself and the process of knowing yourself, of really being honest about who you are, rather than who you think you should be to be acceptable, is itself part of the interior work that the right relationship will ask of you.
It is also, not coincidentally, some of the most important work we do together in Calling In The One, really getting to know your feelings, needs, necessary ways of being, your desires and what is most important to you in life and a relationship.
The third step builds on all of this. It is The Keys to Your Heart. This is a very powerful detail in a profile and one that is often missed. The keys to your heart are the things without which you can barely breathe. They are things that make you feel most fully alive, enraptured. It might be music that goes straight into your feelings. It might be the particular quality of light in late afternoon. It might be a n excellent discussion with someone you respect. It might be being closely held.
Whatever it is, please include it because the right person will read it and feel something move in them. The wrong person will read it and feel nothing. It lets the filter do its work.
Once you have your facets and your keys, write from them. Not as a list but in your own voice, as sentences, as an invitation. Start with I am, I believe, I feel, I love, I wonder, I need. Write toward the person you are looking for, not about what you want in them, but about who you are, in a way that makes it possible for the right person to find themselves in your words. Next, turn those statements outward.
Ask the questions you genuinely want to know the answers to. What puts fire in your belly? What makes you feel most alive and fully yourself? What would you do with a completely free afternoon? What can’t you live without? These questions when asked in a profile, signal emotional intelligence, genuine curiosity and a real interest in who someone is rather than just what they look like.
A word on photographs. Your main photo should be high resolution, uncluttered and genuinely you, at your current age, not you performing or obscuring reality. The best profile photographs are the ones where something in the image invites a question, a moment of contact, a reason to reach out. It might be something in your surroundings. It might be an expression. It might be something particular enough that someone can start a conversation with it.
Your dating profile is not an advertisement. It is a self-disclosure and the difference is everything. An advertisement tries to appeal. A self-disclosure trusts that the right person will recognise you and there is real courage in that, in being specific, in being real, in writing the profile that not everyone will respond to, because you have written it for the one person who will.
The full Mirror Profile framework is in the Dating with Clarity guide, which is free and available on my website. I take you through every step, including the dealmakers and the intention-setting, in detail. I also have a weekly newsletter if you’d like to continue this conversation by email.
It’s my heartfelt wish that anyone reading this finds true, committed joyful love!
With love,
Heather
My name is Heather Garbutt and I send you my love and wish you every success in the search for your true love. If you would like guidance on attracting, true, committed and healthy romantic love, contact now me on Heather@heathergarbutt.com.