Dear Abi,
I'm straight-ish woman in her early thirties, and I live in a large European capital. I’m newly out of a terribly codependent LTR, and I want to start dating again. I’ve decided to get online and take it slow, but I’m wary of the barrage of useless messages and unwarranted dick pics - do you have any tips for writing a dating profile in a way that will attract the good ones and scare away the bad? Which site would you recommend?
Thanks!
Testing The Waters
Dear Testing,
First thing's first: useless messages and undesired penile self-portraits will happen, and while online dating can be an extremely worthwhile experience it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that you can avoid the bad entirely. That said, your instinct is correct: there are a few things you can do to lessen the impact they’ll have.
Don’t rely purely on receiving messages - be sure to seek out profiles you might be interested in and sometimes make the first move yourself. This is particularly important if you think you might want to include women in your online dating search.
When things come in that don’t interest you, simply delete them and move on. Don’t engage, don’t reply and don’t get annoyed; just separate the wheat from the chaff.
The standard tips for online dating also still apply, of course. Make sure you get plenty of detail into your profile - fill in all the sections and consider your answers carefully. Use good spelling and grammar, and do a bit of editing before you publish it to to the world. You’ll also benefit from putting some effort into picking a good photo of yourself to use as your main profile picture - go for one that you feel shows you as you want to be seen. Nothing else will be of more use to you when searching for the right people.
As for which sites to use - despite the prevalence of dubious idiots, OKCupid and FetLife are still the best places for hopeful daters from alternative communities. None of the big dating sites like Match.com or Harmony are set up for non-monogamy or kink, and you’re unlikely to have a lot of luck on them if you’re looking for a non-traditional relationship.
**********
Dear Abi,
Mid twenties straight male. I really want to fuck my new boss. We never used to work together, but have to work closely ever since I changed departments a month ago. She's been dropping signals since I started. It's probably really unprofessional for both of us, but is there any way to discreetly say that I'm interested? She's hot, but I don't want to lose my job over this.
Yours frustratedly,
Fucked or Fired
Dear Fucked,
You should be very, very careful here. If you’re misreading this one, you stand a chance of making her feel deeply uncomfortable - not to mention the risk to your own job security.
Do you like her? I don’t mean as a relationship prospect or whatever, obviously - god knows I’m a keen proponent of casual sex - but as a person. You say “she’s hot and I really want to fuck her”, but you don’t say “she’s interesting and I really want to be friends with her”.
If you can imagine getting on as mates - well, then befriend her. Chat to her over the water cooler. The next time you have work drinks or a meal after hours or whatever, make an effort to talk to her and hang out. Maybe get a coffee with her sometime. If a sexual relationship is going to develop, it’ll come out of something like that.
If you don’t think that will work out, you probably need to drop this. Post-meeting trysts with your sexy boss in the copier room before strutting back out into an office full of people who are none the wiser make for great fantasies, but the reality is usually a lot messier than that - and, as you say, it’s difficult to instigate such a thing safely.
**********
Dear Abi,
Do people really fuck in airplanes? I mean I know all the pop culture references. But it sounds really awkward and cramped and hard to pull off discretely. What are your thoughts on the subject?
Sincerely,
Not In The Club
Dear Unclubbed,
People fuck everywhere. Places in which Abi has fucked include: a WI meeting hall, the gent’s toilets in a dodgy youth hostel in the middle of what is effectively London’s red light district, the back office of an evangelical Christian community centre and a bus stop in Trafalgar Square (though not any kind of aeronautic devices). I am quite, quite sure that plenty of people are fully paid-up members of the Mile High Club.
In the interest of scientific rigour, I posed the question to my Facebook friends. The resultant thread (which ran to some hundred or so comments and caused me to lose a couple of hours to giggling) included such choice gems as “I had a wank in a pedalo. Does that count?”, “I got a blowjob on a Northern line train once” and “I don't think I've even done it on the top bunk of a bunk bed”. Only one person was willing to admit to being a Mile High initiate, however, so maybe it’s not as common as all that.
Ask Abi is a bimonthly sex advice column written by Abi Brown. Email your questions to [email protected] or tweet them to us @fuck_dotcom. Abi is a freelance writer and general pen-for-hire devoted to genre fiction, social justice and M.A.C lipstick. Follow her on her website or @see_abi_write.
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