Online Dating Tip #2: How to Start a Conversation

We know that the first message you send on a dating site can feel like a big deal. This isn’t just you. It’s true for most men that sending messages on a dating site is intimidating.

It’s still important to approach them calmly.

Women can tell if you’re nervous when you contact them. They don’t like feeling that they’re so afraid that they can’t be contacted, because they don’t want a guy who’s terrified of starting a conversation.

If you relax and think about why you want to contact this woman, the rest should be much easier. You can always panic as long as you want, as long as you don’t send the message when you’re in that state of mind.

Remember, one of the best things about online dating is the fact that you can revise your messages as many times as you want. You don’t get second chances and redos if you’re meeting women in person for the first time, so take advantage of it.

Use her profile.

One of the best tips we have about how to start a conversation is the advice that you should look in her profile.

Think of a woman’s dating profile as a guide to dating her. Many men just see a profile as a way to see if a woman is good-looking or not before they send over the first message. This is short-sighted.

Women put up profiles as a cheat sheet for guys who don’t know what to say in their first message, and too often, men ignore this perfectly good advice that’s been hand-picked for them.

At one point, on one of our favorite sites, a man who is part of our group met up with a woman for a date. He asked why she’d agreed to go out with him, and she said, “You’re the first person who mentioned something from my profile instead of telling me I have nice tits.”

The email he sent? One sentence. She said in her profile that she studied Shakespeare in college, and he simply said:

“Thou hast excellent taste in literature.”

Just that one sentence was enough to put him ahead of the crowd because he stopped and thought for about two seconds before sending over the first thing that came to mind. Yes, it really is that easy.

If you don’t find anything in common in her profile, there are other options available.

If you really want to meet a woman but you can’t find anything in her profile that you can talk about, first, think about why you want to contact her. If it’s just because she’s good-looking, make sure you can’t meet other good-looking women who actually share your interests.

But if you must talk to her and you don’t know how to talk to Canadian girls online, try leading with something about current affairs, or if that fails (or you don’t want to get into what Stephen Harper has done this week), try saying something about yourself.

Just don’t expect to do all of the talking or all of the listening. Make sure you’re reacting to what she says in a message, not just continuing a conversation by yourself.