SWF Seeks...

Over the past two weekends I have been helping out a girlfriend with some flat-hunting. Each Saturday we have gotten up early to collect the rental lists from the local (and often unhelpful) real estate agents and armed with these, have now seen a variety of places, both good and bad. The more we saw however, the more obvious it became that there is a definite knack to understanding the advertisements. For example, a charming, neat and tidy, apartment could be anything but.

In real estate lingo, charming tends to mean that the light fittings and fixtures are original 1970’s or earlier. For neat, read the flat is not as dirty and scratched as it was when the last tenant left and for tidy, read there’s not enough room to actually create a mess in the first place. Property descriptions are not the only things however, that are open to misrepresentation. Anyone looking through singles ads would have to conclude that these should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt as well.

It seems that there are an awful lot of attractive, intelligent, and sensitive people out there in possession of a good sense of humour. Many of them are married or in relationships already (obviously - we all know the good ones are already taken) but those who aren’t (for some completely unknown reason!), are looking. I have to wonder though, if this were really the case, how do you explain people like Larry Emder? Surely if we have so many people out there who are at least intelligent with a good sense of humour, this man would not still be on tv?!?

Even assuming that you may choose to exaggerate somewhat in a personal ad, it’s actually quite hard to sum yourself up in only a couple of words though. What do you say? Younger women will often make a reference to their youth by talking about their looks but to say you look fantastic is fairly subjective. I mean you look this way compared to what? You may be better off saying something like you enjoy humour. Although this isn’t all that clear either. I believe there is a fair bit of difference between John Saffran and Jackass but both may be considered amusing.

When it comes down to it, what you do say is probably as important as what you don’t. You may have to decide whether you want someone to connect with on a physical level or an emotional one and the descriptions you use will help to reflect this. Whether you have or are looking for intelligence, articulation, fun, sensitivity or even passion, whatever you say will be completely open to interpretation. Given that though, why not just go the whole hog? My next one could read 'stunning, witty broad looking for cheeky fun with similar entertaining man - guaranteed better than your ex, don’t miss out!'.