Writing a Dating Profile in Your 30s and 40s

Write the profile for the man you are now, not the one a twenty-something would post. At this stage your history, your kids and your settled routine are facts she will learn anyway, so give each one a single plain line and spend the rest of the page on what your week actually holds. The aim is a page where the hard facts are visible and ordinary, neither hidden nor the headline.

Generic advice for younger men assumes a blank slate. A man of twenty-three has no marriage behind him, no children, and no mortgage, so his page is mostly jokes and travel photos, and nobody asks what happened before.

You are in a different position. A woman reading your page is often your age or close to it, and she has a past of her own. She is not looking for a man with no history. She is looking for a man who has dealt with his, who knows what he wants now, and who will not drag the last chapter into the next one.

So the job changes. A younger man's page tries to be exciting. Yours has to look reliable first and interesting second, and that is a better position than it sounds.

If you were married, or in a long relationship, one sentence is enough. Something like "Divorced a few years ago and happy with how I rebuilt." It answers the question before she asks it.

Leave out the reasons. Nothing about who left, who was wrong, or how long the process took belongs on a page she reads in ten seconds. A bio that mentions an ex tells her the ex still takes up room in your head, even when every word is fair.

The same goes for bitterness about the apps or about women in general. My coaching on bios says to stay positive and to describe what you are looking for, not your deal-breakers. A list of things you will not put up with reads as a list of things that already went wrong.

If you have children, say so on the page in one line, written the way you would say it across a table. "Dad to a nine-year-old who is better at chess than I am" does more than a paragraph about being a father.

The line has three jobs. It shows you as a responsible man. It gives her something specific to reply to. And it screens out the women who would have left in week two, which saves you both a month.

What goes wrong is the other extreme, where kids fill the first four lines and the man himself disappears. She should finish reading knowing that you are a father and also what you do on a Saturday when the children are with their mother.

A settled life is the strongest thing a man in his thirties or forties has, and most bios waste it. "Hardworking, loyal, family-oriented" is true of nearly everyone and describes nobody.

Use specifics instead. The trade you run, the Sunday ritual of cooking for your parents, the half-restored motorbike in the garage, the standing five-a-side game. Each detail shows a life with a shape, which is the quality younger men cannot fake.

This matches what the older-man material on this site keeps returning to. A man who is not waiting for a date to start his life is more attractive than one who is, and your page is the first place she can see that.

Some lines only work at twenty-five. "Looking for a partner in crime," "just here for a good time," and "love to travel and try new things" all sound borrowed on a man who has a mortgage and a custody schedule.

Do not try to compete on youth. Trendy slang, a backwards cap and a photo from a festival read as effort, and effort reads as a man uneasy with his age. Plain, calm and specific beats loud every time.

Original beats clever too. If a line could sit on a thousand other pages unchanged, cut it and write what is actually true instead. Run a spell-check at the end, because a typo on a page this short is the first thing she sees.

Your photos should look like you now. A picture from eight years ago, before the beard went gray or the kids were born, sets up a first date that starts with an apology.

Fit matters more than fashion at this age. A shirt that sits right on the shoulder and clean shoes in good condition say you pay attention. Outdoor shots in daylight make you look active and social, and one photo with friends shows that you have some.

Check the facts too. If the page says you run on weekends, there should be a photo of a run that happened this year, not an old one carried from the last app.

Read your page as the woman you want to meet, and ask three questions.

Can she tell, in one line each, that you have a past and what it is? Does she know what a Wednesday looks like for you? And does any sentence sound like it belongs to a different man?

If the answers are yes, yes and no, post it. If you have read the page so many times that you cannot see it anymore, hand it to someone who knows you and ask them what they would guess about your week. When their guess is close, the page is doing its job.