Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Sexting

Interested in sexting tips?

The brain is our biggest sex organ. Technology affects every part of our life so it should be no surprise that dating is one of them. We are finding our date-able partners on-line and flirting plenty via e-mail. But if you search "sexting", you are going to see it's been tried and hung in the court of public opinion.

Obviously no sexual activity, including sexting, is appropriate for minors. And yes, these messages and/or pics are easy to forward around. But why would you be sleeping with someone you can't trust with something that simple and private. If you can't trust him enough to send him a pic, maybe you shouldn't be sleeping with him at all. Yes, the guy is out there that will secretly video-tape your encounter, but come on, are you worried about that when you are in bed with your partner? So, when we are talking about this, let's assume you have done the screening, he has made the cut, and you are not playing with the perverted jerk who is electronically exploiting you.

My guess is these tryers and hangers of the sexting game have not been in the single world for a long time (and, uh, I also venture to guess they are not having a lot of bedroom fun in the married world either). Sexting is hot, fun, and if done well, torturous foreplay. At it's lightest it can be flirty fun. At it's heaviest it can be the equivalent of phone, or maybe more like cyber, sex.

Imagine your partner is in the middle of a busy typically troublesome workday and he receives a text from you telling him that your mind is lingering on some detail of last nights sexcapade. Very sexy.

This game is just like everything else in life, know the players, establish the relationship and what is appropriate or not, and act accordingly. I think it the initial "testing" to see if you have a partner that likes to play most compares to phone sex. Throw a little line out and see if he bites and, if so, how hard. If you are dating a person who thinks sex with the lights on is edgy stuff, take it easy and be careful not to offend. But even the guy who is having sex with the lights on is having sex. Try thinking "romantic" when you are pre-sexting him, send him flirty messages about his kisses (Your kisses are addicting. Wanting you.) and see where it goes.

You can have big fun if you find a playmate and make it part of your sex-game.

12 Hot Sexting Tips


  • Text a memory of your last encounter, or one that was particularly hot.


  • Text a message telling him you are thinking naughty thoughts and ask him what he thinks you should do about that. This takes him to a sexual place, imagining what he wants to do, not just what he's done.


  • Tell him you are aching for him. Take it a step further and tell him, in detail, what you are fantasizing about.


  • Take a sexy pic of yourself in lingerie (or 5 until you get it right and have one you like enough to send!), send it to him and ask him why he is making you (or sometimes it's hot to say "her", as in "Why are you making her") wait.


  • Take a nude pic of yourself (or 30, you're going to need a glass of wine) and tell him he is on your mind. Don't be too critical. Remember, all women are beautiful and he finds you very sexy. If this is scary, you can always take one without your face in the photo.


  • Take a picture of your bed and write something like, "Waiting of you to join me." You could prop lingerie on it. Or two champagne classes. Or rose petals on the bed.


  • Send him a pic of something only the two of you would know is sexual. For instance, if you made love on the picnic table out back, send him a pic and tell him you cannot wait to picnic again.


  • Snap a pic of a sex toy or lube.


  • Buy a pair of sexy panties (or do this with the pair of your own he lusts the most after), take a pic of them without you in them and tell him you are wearing them right now.


  • Find out what one of his fantasies is (hot cop, sexy nurse, Princess Leah, french maid, school girl), dress up and send him the pic.


  • You can up it all the way and take a short video clip of something you might normally do in private.



Sometimes the hottest, sexiest things are the ones that don't show or tell much, but send his mind racing. Letting his own imagination fill in the blanks will allow him to spark a mental image that he finds incredibly exciting.

Have fun with it, be creative. Notice what words or pics make your partner particularly excited (everyone has a hot button) and use them. But, just like all thing sexual, if you use sexting too frequently, it loses the titillating naughtiness of it. So be careful to make it infrequent enough that it continues to be a surprise. There is something very enticing to us about the forbidden. If you can send him something that he feels he has to hide or sneak to the bathroom to look at, you are playing a hot sex-game that will have him looking for ways to get back to you asap.

Sexting is modern day tool that you can use to increase desire, all day foreplay. Part of creating and keeping a hot sex life is to keep the burners on low all the time. If you have to start from cold, it never gets as hot. So keep your foreplay fun and thread it into his day. He won't be able to get enough of you!

Need more help? Check out the newest writing guide for teasing your man's sexual side.


Top 1000 Books, Best Novels Ever

The top 1000 novels from any decade in any language? Guardian has done the work for us.

Novels are an excellent educational tool that allows us private peeks, cloaked as fiction, into the inner workings of a persons mind and thoughts so private they are difficult to own as autobiographical. For instance, Sons And Lovers by DH Lawrence was a work of fiction. In his real life this book destroyed his relationship with his exes, one of whom never spoke with him again (the portrayals were brutal!). I hear people say fiction is a guilty pleasure/waste of time. I disagree. I am not sure the core of any novel is true fiction.

There is so much to be learned about love from fiction....I don't intend that as a joke! If you want to get serious about seducing Mr Right, try reading yourself into the mindset of the lover and their beloved. These books are an amazing place to start, the best novels of all time!

This compilation of books is the definitive list as selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. This was originally published in categories – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel. I selected the Love category, for obvious reasons, but if you want to view the entire list go to http://www.guardian.co.uk.

The Guardian's Top 1000 Books


Love Category



  • Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier

  • Dom Casmurro Joaquim by Maria Machado de Assis

  • Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

  • Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

  • Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

  • Emma by Jane Austen

  • Persuasion by Jane Austen

  • Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

  • Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

  • The Garden of the Finzi-Cortinis by Giorgio Bassani

  • Love for Lydia by HE Bates

  • More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow

  • Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore

  • The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

  • The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen

  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

  • Vilette by Charlotte Bronte

  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

  • Look At Me by Anita Brookner

  • Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

  • Possession by AS Byatt

  • Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

  • Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

  • A Month in the Country by JL Carr

  • My Antonia by Willa Cather

  • A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

  • Claudine a l'ecole by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

  • Cheri by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette

  • Victory: An Island Tale by Joseph Conrad

  • The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette

  • The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier

  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

  • The Lover by Marguerite Duras

  • Adam Bede by George Eliot

  • Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

  • The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

  • The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

  • The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

  • Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald

  • The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

  • Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

  • The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

  • A Room with a View by EM Forster

  • The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

  • The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico

  • Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

  • Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide

  • Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  • The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe

  • Living by Henry Green

  • The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

  • The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

  • Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

  • Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

  • Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

  • The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy

  • The Go-Between by LP Hartley

  • The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  • The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

  • A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

  • The Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer

  • Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer

  • The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst

  • Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by WH Hudson

  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

  • Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley

  • The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

  • Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

  • The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

  • The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

  • Beauty and Saddness by Yasunari Kawabata

  • The Far Pavillions by Mary Margaret Kaye

  • Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

  • Moon over Africa by Pamela Kent

  • The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

  • Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos

  • Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence

  • The Rainbow by DH Lawrence

  • Women in Love by DH Lawrence

  • The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann

  • The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann

  • Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

  • Zami by Audre Lorde

  • Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

  • Samarkand by Amin Maalouf

  • Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

  • The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini

  • A Heart So White by Javier Marias

  • Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  • Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

  • So Long, See you Tomorrow by William Maxwell

  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

  • Atonement by Ian McEwan

  • The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

  • The Egoist by George Meredith

  • Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

  • Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller

  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

  • The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

  • Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

  • Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante

  • Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

  • Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov

  • The Painter of Signs by RK Narayan

  • Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

  • All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom

  • The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

  • Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

  • Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost

  • Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

  • Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson

  • Pamela by Samuel Richardson

  • Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

  • Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

  • Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

  • Light Years by James Salter

  • A Sport and a Passtime by James Salter

  • The Reader by Benhardq Schlink

  • The Reluctant Orphan by Aara Seale

  • Love Story by Eric Segal

  • Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  • At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart

  • I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

  • The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif

  • Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

  • Waterland by Graham Swift

  • Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki

  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

  • Music and Silence by Rose Tremain

  • First Love by Ivan Turgenev

  • Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

  • The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

  • The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

  • The Graduate by Charles Webb

  • The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

  • The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

  • East Lynne by Ellen Wood

  • Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates


Want To Read Thousands of Books For Free Right Now?


Check out this list of 22 FREE e-book sites!



Tuesday, April 14, 2009

22 Free e-book Sites!



Cruising around online I have found 22 free e-book sites. One site even offers free audio books and another is designed for those of us who might need a little larger print! I am a total book hound and a big fan of free stuff. Isn't the digital age wonderful?

www.AskSam.com/ebooks/ - A small selection of classic texts like Shakespeare, and assorted legal & governmental texts.

www.baen.com/library/ - Baen Free Library - A small library of downloadable science fiction novels, mostly the first in an ongoing series to get you hungry for more.

www.bookrags.com/browse/ebooks/ - BookRags.com - Small selection of free choices, and thousands more for premium members. Can be downloaded as PDF or Word documents.

www.Gutenberg.org - The first project for converting public domain works into a digital format; their selection now numbers over 5,000.

www.ManyBooks.net - Over 24,000 books to be read on your PDA, cellphone, iPod, iPhone and more.

www.Mslit.com - Over 60,000 e-books provided by Microsoft for their MS Reader.

www.NetLibrary.net - World Public Library: Annual membership, and access to over 500,000 works, is only $8.95 a year. They do offer some books for free.

http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/ - Oxford Text Archive - Thousands of texts in 25 different languages you can download as ASCII or DOC files, some do require permission of the original uploader, some are archived for preservation purposes only, but most are available and free.

www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_ebooks.asp?CurrentPage=1 - PlanetPDF eBooks - A decent sized collection of classic novels all in PDF format.

www.planetebook.com - is the sister site to Planet PDF offers more downloadable free e-books.

www.PocketPCbooks.net - A nice selection of e-books specifically for your Windows Mobile Device. They are mostly converted from Project Gutenberg. Every one needs to carry Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War on their PDA.

www.Bartleby.com - Internet site dedicated to providing students, teachers, and the intellectually curious access to information and books for free. They have the Bible, Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body, Harvard Classics, and encyclopedias are included here in this easy to browse, HTML only site.

sunsite3.berkeley.edu/Literature/- Berkeley Sunsite Classics - A selection of the works of 10 classical authors from Jane Austen and Thoreau.

www.Bibliomania.com - Over 2,000 classic texts, study guides, reference books, help for teachers, biographies, and more.

www.Grtbooks.com - Chronological collection of free-to-read online texts dating back as far as 200 B.C.

www.Infomotions.com - A collection of over 14,000 open access documents from full novels to Western philosophy.

www.ipl.org/reading/books - Internet Public Library - A directory of over 20,000 of online texts hosted at other sites.

www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper - The Perseus Digital Library - A large collection of classical texts broken down by the time period in which they were written and/or category of work.

www.ReadEasily.com - A site with e-books specifically with the visually impaired and elderly in mind. It allows you to change colors, fonts, and size to make it more legible.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ - The Online Books Page - Directory of over 35,000 e-books from all over the web.

www.scribd.com - Over 50,000 texts from books to magazines to articles to recipes.

www.arcamax.com - over 50,000 books by e-mail, sent a chapter a week.

www.questia.com - Over 74,000 books and 2 million articles for free, but you do have to register.

http://librivox.org/- Free audiobooks. The site is dedicated to making all public domain books available as free audiobooks.

By the way, smart is sexy. Have fun bookmarking!

If you are a writer and looking for the top, best advice from the best in the business, subscribe to The Writer. It has the most current information on both getting published and self publishing from the top agents in the business! Make your own luck!



If you're in the mood for a little extra but not-so-free fun check out this hot book for us girls.

Friday, April 10, 2009

How To Love Like A Hot Chick

I just read this book, "How To Love Like a Hot Chick: The Girlfriend to Girlfriend Guide to Getting the Love You Deserve", and I must tell all you dating girls to get it and read it!

Hot Chick: A confident, passionate, honest woman…You want to be around her to soak up those good vibes.

Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent are very funny and very real. The book is full of their own dating stories, both tragic and triumphant. I love the way they take the guilt out of the experience and point you in the right direction of FUN! That's what it should be about! They do have advice for younger women too, even on dating while you are a virgin. But for the women in their late 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, come on girls! Let's have a good time out there. Jodi and Cerina remind you that dating is a short time in your life and you nee to get out there and make some memories that will have you blushing. It's your heyday...make it worth reminiscing.

In a fun way, How To Love Like a Hot Chick: The Girlfriend to Girlfriend Guide to Getting the Love You Deserve
will help you figure out what you want, how to get it, and why you shouldn't settle for anything less. Most importantly, they’ll make the entire process a lot more fun with their advice on the hidden joys of being single, how to send out magical Hot Chick Vibes and interpret the vibe your date is sending, steps to falling in love without freaking out, tactful dumping procedures, survival techniques for heart-wrenching breakups, and much more.

Whether you’re single, dating, in a relationship, or so confused you don’t know what your status even is, How to Love Like a Hot Chick will have you laughing your way through dating and relationship issues and tackling them like the sexy, fabulous woman you already are and deserve to be.

Please read it. You will have so much fun!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Find Your Dream Man On Line...Really


Have I mentioned I found my love on Match.com?

It is a real fairy tale story.

I had gone to a Christmas party at a friends house and her mom was single. We chatted a bit about boys and such and she mentioned that she was on Match.com. I was surprised and even more so once she told me that she had met some very interesting men from Match.

Hmmm. I went home that night with the intention of looking at boys online. At the time, the site wouldn't let you look without signing up. So I did. Checking out the profiles was great! It was so nice to see that there were still a lot of single me still out there. It can be so much more difficult to see that in daily life!

Match.com 7-day Free Trial

Looking at the profiles helped me think hard about what I was really looking for, what kind of a man I wanted in my life. I also took the time to check out the women's profiles to see what I was up against if someone were to search for a woman who fell into my category. That was enlightening! Do that for sure. Read a few profiles and it becomes sooo obvious what not to say!!!

The next night my girlfriends came over with wine and I took my laptop downstairs and we created my profile. By the way, "curvy" means curvier than the novice might think. So don't select "curvy" unless you are curvier.

I decided not to include a picture. I wouldn't recommend this at all for anyone, but hey, it worked for me. I was thinking that I could meet any guy in a bar who would love to do me, you know, we are girls, guys are always after us for that. I wanted a man who could READ about me and "get" me on some level other than the pic. Well, that was the philosophy, however faulty.

I searched the men for a couple I thought were worth chatting with and e-mailed.

Remember, I had only heard about it at a Christmas party. Our first date was in January. In February we were in London. We had our first Valentine together when we returned from London.

It's been three years and I love him something crazy. I think if you "match" on paper to begin with, if you meet and have chemistry, wham! It's a big deal.

When you meet at a bar or anywhere in real life, the process is reversed. You know if you have chemistry and have no idea if you have anything in common. On top of it, the chemistry causes the two of you to want to have things in common, to look for them, and maybe alter yourself just a bit to accommodate the desire to find "the one".

On-line dating is amazing. It gives you options previously unavailable. I found a true gem and one I cannot ever imagine having the opportunity to meet in daily life without an incredible amount of luck. On-line, you just search and find.

Now it's not quite that easy, but pretty close. There are lots of ins and out to the whole thing, but go on and try it now. I found a 7 day FREE trial and included it above in this post. You have nothing to lose. They even have a 6 month guarantee! On a relationship!

Wouldn't you just love to find your dream man by next week? Click the Match Free Trial above. Do it now.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Fabulous First Date



Watch this video. She's right, we still need the coffee date! Get a coffee date of your very own on Match!












6 Profile Mistakes Women Make




Want to get guys emailing you left and right? Purge your profile of these common problems—and try our more guy-friendly fixes.

By Laura Gilbert

Ever wonder why a profile that describes you perfectly isn’t getting noticed by guys you’re dying to hear from? It’s not because you’re not a catch—rather, it could be that your profile contains some tiny red flags that, while invisible to the female eye, make guys think twice about winking and saying hello. But luckily, there’s nothing a few simple tweaks can’t fix. So go ahead and comb your write-up for the no-no’s, and try these substitutes (trust us, guys find them irresistible!).



Profile problem #1: Creating a laundry list of the perfect guy’s traits
Of course, we all want someone who’s hot, rich, interesting, hilarious—the whole package, and it’d be foolish not to have a few must-haves for the guy you’d like to get to know better. But when a woman spends her introductory paragraph going on and on about who she's hoping to date, it can scare off men who don’t feel they can live up to those expectations.

Guy-friendly alternative: List just two or three of the most important things you want in a mate, whether it’s financial security or a passion for going out on the town every Post a blurry shot online and guys will wonder what you’re trying to hide. weekend. Lest you think you’re lowering your standards, think about the happiest couples you know: When they first started dating, were they exactly ideal? Or, think about someone you’ve dated who was perfect on paper but lacked that spark to keep you coming back. In other words, what makes a match work is not always based on meeting that checklist in your head. Nix it from your profile, and watch the guys pour in—then take your pick!

Profile problem #2: A picture that doesn’t really show you at your best
We all have a shot of ourselves that we love, regardless of the fact that it’s a little blurry, distant… or that you’re wearing sunglasses that hide your eyes or a huge comfy sweater that obscures your figure. That’s fine if you like it and feel free to keep it for the fond memories—post it in your profile, though, and guys will wonder what you’re trying to hide. “An obscured photo is as good as no photo,” says Roman Griffen, author of Internet Dating: Tips, Tricks, Tactics. “Men are suspicious of a shot where they can’t make you out and since they’re so visually oriented, they’ll just skip your profile if that first picture doesn’t look good.”

Guy-friendly alternative: Easy: Set your main photo to one that shows you at your best—and leaves nothing important to guesswork. It doesn’t matter if the background is boring—your goal in that first picture is just to present yourself as accurately (and positively!) as possible. It’s fine to include your beloved, more obscure photo in your secondary shots.

Profile problem #3: Going overboard in the “about me” section
We’ve all heard that old statistic about women using, oh, seventy billion words for every one that a man says, and the same is true online. While many men’s personal essays struggle to reach the 200-character minimum, many women only stop when they hit the 2,000-character max. Now, there’s nothing wrong with telling us as much about yourself as you can fit into an essay, but keep in mind that not all guys like reading a wall of “Soul mate”… “Knight in shining armor”… men get skittish when they see this kind of poetic language. text—and may be tempted to move on purely because they’re not in a reading mood.

Guy-friendly alternative: Absolutely share some basics, but save some details for later. Use anecdotes that tell your readers about the real you: “Okay, here goes: I guess that most of my friends would probably say I’m really nice,” uses up 16 words and reveals almost nothing; but “I once walked an old lady four blocks because she needed directions but didn’t speak English” is a memorable, kick-butt story to include, and just a few stories like that will turn a guy’s head.

Profile problem #4: Listing all your hobbies, including ones that turn off guys
So you absolutely love baking, sewing, flower arranging? All fine ways to spend your time. But remember, in your profile you’re trying to attract a romantic partner. “When you list your hobbies, you need to remember that your reader should appreciate them,” says Cherie Burbach, author of At the Coffee Shop: If You Thought E- Dating Was for Freaks and Weirdos, Read This Book.

Guy-friendly alternative: List hobbies that a guy might be glad to join in on himself. Even if you don’t have any current activities that could fit the bill, list something you’d like to do, like “I’ve always wanted to try kayaking.” Not only may you attract some cute kayak enthusiast, you’ll show that you’re open to new things—and that’s an attractive trait.

Profile problem #5: Harping on your exes
Plenty of profiles start with an explanation of why the person is now single. “Prove to me that men aren’t jerks” or “Where are the nice guys?” crop up. Think it’s smart to be honest about your romantic past? Wrong. “The number-one mistake I see people making online is talking about their exes,” says Liz Kelly, author of SMART Man Hunting. The problem isn’t that you’ve had a bad experience, it’s that spending precious profile space on the jerk makes you appear unready to move on.

Guy-friendly alternative: Any time you find yourself writing about your ex, flip it into a positive statement that doesn’t involve him. Turn “I moved here two years ago to be with my boyfriend but then he broke up with me” into “I’ve lived here for two years and still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this city.” And why write “My last boyfriend seemed perfect until he turned into a liar” when you could say “The most important thing to me is finding a guy who isn’t afraid to reveal himself, warts and all”?

Profile problem #6: Using flowery, fairy-tale language
Soul mate. Knight in shining armor. These terms permeate women’s profiles, and yet it probably comes as no surprise that men get skittish when they see poetic language along these lines. “The bottom line is that everyone dating online is looking for their soul mate, so you don’t have to use terms like that,” says Griffen. “In fact, doing so makes guys feel like they’re a candidate, not just a date, and it turns the pressure way up.”

Guy-friendly alternative: Hold off on the lovey talk until you’re in love. Instead, describe what hanging out with you would actually be like: Do you love ordering a pizza and playing videogames on rainy Saturdays? Or do you make a point of hitting a trendy new bar or restaurant on weekends to keep things interesting? It’s details like these that will draw guys in—and get you one step closer to finding that soul mate you’re looking for.


Laura Gilbert writes for Health, The Knot, Stuff, and Radar—and is proud to say she’s never once used the words “soul mate” or “knight” in her profile. Or in a face-to-face conversation, for that matter.