If you think about what is most important to women in a relationship, it’s trust. If you’ve misrepresented yourself, no matter about what it was, a woman will immediately not trust you. Then, no matter how good of a salesman you might be, you will have to spend all your time convincing her that the person you are is not a liar (and that you are actually a great person).

So let’s go through four of the biggest and most common misrepresentations that men make online, and how each of those will backfire on you every time.

Using An Old Photo

One of the biggest misrepresentations men make when dating online has to do with the photos they use in their profile. Choice of photos, in fact, is one of the biggest mistakes men make overall when creating an online profile.

Men very often will put up pictures of themselves that were taken at the peak of their attractiveness. They might put up pictures of them weighing twenty or thirty pounds less, or of them with more hair.

The problem with doing this, is that any woman you meet online will be expecting to meet the person she sees in those pictures — as he looks in those pictures. So when you do meet her in person, she is going to instantly think less of you. This is not for the reasons you’re probably thinking.

It really has nothing to do with how you look, it’s simply the fact that you do not look as you portrayed yourself to look. In other words, you misrepresented yourself. When you meet a woman after having posted these non-current photos of you, her first thought about you is not going to be an evaluation of how you look, but rather it will be that you are someone who wasn’t honest about themselves.

What most guys will then do is defend themselves. They’ll tell the woman, “Don’t worry. I’m going to get back into shape.” You don’t want to be doing this. The way to start a date is not by defending yourself. The way to start a date is with a woman being excited about getting to know you and and what you’re all about. You never want to have an uphill battle on a date, especially a first date.

So here’s what you want to do. Go out with a friend and have him take some current pictures of you throughout the day. That way, women can see what you really look like.

Stay away from professional photos, as they tend to make you look like you are trying too hard. Also, make sure you are wearing different clothes in each of the photos.

The most important thing is to have fun with this! It’s your first impression (along with your profile). So make sure you are smiling and relaxed.

Lying About Your Age

Another major area of online misrepresentation among men is age. There are so many men dating online who lie about their age, because they are perpetually chasing younger women.

Men who are 45 years old will say they’re 39. Men who are 55 years old will say they’re 45.

When you lie about your age online, you will only fool women until you actually meet them in person. If you put on your profile that you’re 39 years old when you’re really 45, a woman will know you’re not 39 years old the minute you show up to that first date.

She’ll probably, in fact, ask you how old you really are. That’s when most guys will give the standard “why I lied” answer and say, “I look a lot younger than my age in person, and if you knew I was 45 you probably wouldn’t have gone out with me.”

Let me tell you something. If this is a 28 or 29 year old woman who said she was looking for a guy up to age 39, then you’re right that she probably won’t want to go out with you again now that she knows you’re 45.

If she stated that she was looking to meet someone only within a certain age range, then that was a requirement of hers and not a guideline. She won’t want to go out with you again not only because you are not what she already plainly said she was looking for, but also (once again) because she will see you as someone she can’t trust. You’ve already lied to her once.

If you’re looking to date younger women, then online is not the place for you to find them. Meet them in person. People online want to meet people who fall within the parameters of what they specify in their profile.

Not only that, but what do you think it says about you that you are misrepresenting your age? It says that you are not really comfortable about where you are in your life. If you’re a guy chasing much younger women, that will tell her that you may be very emotionally immature.

I’m in my 40s, and to tell you the truth I wouldn’t want to date a woman in her 20s. They may look great, but I find women in my age range to be far more interesting. You share life experiences. So, maybe it’s time you stopped chasing the dream and started to get real about who you are.

It’s time to stop worrying about whether women will date you at your age, and to start showing women why dating an older guy will be such a great experience. With age comes wisdom, and you will be able to show women a whole new side of life.

Telling Her What She Wants To Hear

When you’re dating online, it is important to be really clear about whether you want to have children. Most women want to have children.

A lot of men who don’t want children will check the boxes that say they are open to children or possibly want children. They do this so they will be matched up with, or will be able to get a response from, more women.

Because so many women want children, these men think their choices will be limited if they put on their profile that they don’t want children. This is not the right mindset though.

You need to have an abundant mindset. If you don’t want children, date the women who also don’t want children. There are plenty of them out there.

What you don’t want to do is take someone on an emotional journey on which you are not prepared to follow through. You will only end up in a mess of a situation.

Write down what you really want. Most people who misrepresent themselves online are not really clear about what they want, or they are chasing an illusion or a fantasy. Get clear and have an abundant mindset, and you will no longer feel the need to misrepresent anything about yourself.

So, instead of telling women what you think they want to hear, it is always better to hook up with people by being honest and telling them where you are at this point in your life. Women have been lied to so many times, that being totally truthful will be refreshing (even if you are on different romantic paths).

Whenever I was newly out of a relationship, I would tell women I’d meet that I didn’t want anything heavy at that time. Not only did I have more fun dating that way, but I had some great sex because women always knew where I stood and there were no games.

Mirroring Her (Pretending To Like What She Does)

The last type of common misrepresentation men make online is the way they write their profile. When you write your profile, don’t write it to sound like a romance novel unless you plan to act out that romance novel.

A lot of men who are just interested in fooling around with women, will write their profile in ways that make them seem like someone who is romantic and wants a relationship. They’ll say that they enjoy taking long walks on the beach, or that they are “all about romance,” when in reality all they want to do is sleep with the women they are meeting.

If you don’t want a relationship, then don’t write a romance novel sounding profile with which women will emotionally bond. You need to be clear about your intentions and literally write them down. Say something like, “I’m not sure about what I want in terms of dating right now. I’d like to meet some interesting women, date and have some fun.”

This is not about making a judgment about what you do or don’t want. It is just very important to be honest about whatever it is that you do want. The thing you want to really avoid is taking a woman on an emotional journey on which you are not prepared to accompany her.

Do you really want to continue spending your days pretending you like art museums when they bore you out of your mind, just so you can get certain women online to like you? Here is a better alternative. Negotiate!

Tell a woman that one weekend will be all about going to museums so she can show you her passion, but then the next weekend you two will hit the beach and play Frisbee so you can show her your passion. That is a way to be able to bond with the woman you really like without ever having to pretend you like something you don’t. Plus, if you end up in a relationship together, there will be plenty of days when you will each do your own thing.

Misrepresenting yourself online really says a lot about who you are as a person. It says that you are really not in touch with what you want. It also says that you don’t practice abundance; that you don’t believe that there are plenty of great women out there, so you feel the need to misrepresent yourself (okay, really lie) on your profile.

Whether it’s about the way your body looks, your age or what you’re looking for in terms of a relationship, misrepresenting yourself online will always backfire on you. You need to believe that there are tons of women out there for you to meet and connect with online.

Dating online is like going to a cyber bar, a bar with tons of women. So you can absolutely find people who will like you exactly as you are and who fit your needs.
When you show up for that first date, show up as you — the real you. Don’t show up hoping to be liked because of (and in spite of) the online misrepresentation version of you.

When you misrepresent yourself online, you will only put yourself at a disadvantage when you meet up with people, and always put yourself in a position of having to work twice as hard for any of those meetings to work out. No relationship can start or work when one person is not being honest with the other person.

Do you know about the 80/20 rule in life? In life, 80% of the people fail and 20% of the people succeed.

These success percentages carry over into online dating as well. Do you know why? It is because most people don’t understand exactly what is needed to succeed in online dating. In particular, most guys don’t understand what is needed to succeed in online dating.

First, men who are successful online daters connect with women emotionally. Most guys don’t understand why that is important, and don’t know how to do it if they do.

What most men do is put some pictures up of themselves and then list things in their profile. They don’t create a story in their profile. You need to create some type of store to engender an emotional response in a woman.

For example, let’s say you are someone who has been on vacation in Italy. You could write in your profile, “I love Italy,” but so what? Who cares?

A lot of people would care if you wrote about it in the right way. They would care if you instead wrote this: “On my trip to Italy, I cruised up and down the Positano Coast. Let me tell you something. If you’ve never experienced a sunset in Positano, then you’ve never really experienced a sunset in your life.”

Do you see the difference? The difference is that you’re creating an emotion. You’re creating a feeling. You are creating something inside people that is going to get them really excited.

Another thing you need to realize about online dating is that is it really like a giant bar in the sky. Just because someone didn’t respond to you on Tuesday, September 22nd, doesn’t mean they’re not going to respond to you three weeks later. 

They could be dating somebody else, flirting with somebody else, or whatever it might be. So I always tell people to email someone again. The key with this, though, is what you write when you do it.

Don’t cut and paste your first email (or any other email message). Go into their profile. Walk into their life a little bit. Read through it — even read it out loud — until you have an “Aha!” moment and see something that really resonates with you.

Say their profile says, “I love running on the beach with my dog. The funny thing about it is that my dog runs around in circles, and sometimes I think he’s going to get dizzy and pass out.” You have that “aha!” moment because your dog does the same thing.

So you could write an email that has has the subject line, “Wondering what would happen if we ran around…” Then in the body of the email you would write, “…in circles like our dogs. It’s funny, but my dog does the same exact thing and sometimes I wonder how she doesn’t get dizzy. Remember when you were a kid and used to spin in circles until you got dizzy? Maybe we should try that with our dogs one time ”

What happened what that you related to her by sharing a story about your life that pertained to something in hers. That’s how you get better at online dating. You need to look at it as a conversation.

There’s so many women out there. Take advantage of that and find women with whom you can connect. It’s really important, though, to connect by relating in a a conversation.

Read every email response you get from a woman out loud so you can relate to it like you’re in a conversation with her. Form your responses by thinking how you would respond if she said it to you in a live conversation.

Online dating is really all about a conversation from the beginning. It’s no different than flirting in a bar, at a supermarket or anywhere else.

If you want to learn EVERYTHING about how to succeed at online dating — from how to create an online profile, interpret women’s profiles, how to contact women online, to EXACTLY what to say to intrigue them … as well as what specifically will attract the women online and get their attention, then be sure to check out my video product “Secrets Of Online Dating”