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" \u202A&amp;quot;If you tried online dating and hated it, you probably didn&amp;#039;t do it right,&amp;quot; writes Evan Marc Katz, dating coach for &amp;quot;strong, smart, successful women,&amp;quot; and creator of \u202C\u202AFinding The One Online\u202C\u202A, a six-and-a-half hour long audio guide that guarantees a &amp;quot;new lease on love.&amp;quot; (The series is the jewel of Katz&amp;#039;s San Fernando Valley-based online dating empire, which includes multiple books, podcasts, and video tutorials). While I&amp;#039;ve never been Katz&amp;#039;s client, in the last three years I&amp;#039;ve religiously devoured his blog posts in order to appeal to the heart and mind of the Los Angeles online dating man.\u202C \u202AJudging from my full Match.com inbox, I have indeed been doing it right. In fact, if you&amp;#039;ve ever run into me at a party in the last three years, you may have caught one of my enthusiastic how-to lectures on profile writing or how I developed my three-pronged screening process. Picking up where Bridget Jones&amp;#039; reviled &amp;quot;smug-marrieds&amp;quot; left off, I became a member of an equally suspect species: the smug online dater.\u202C Related: Game, Set, and Cyber-Match \u202ABut even star players strike out. Last summer, after a bad run, which culminated in being stood up by Martin, a sexy animator with a string of baby mamas up the West Coast, it seemed like it was time to take a break. On my first Match-less Saturday in months I was blindsided by crying jags and existential panic. Was there such a thing as online dating withdrawal? I cringed knowing that I had let my inbox statistics become the cornerstone of my self-esteem. Maybe this break needed to be a retirement.\u202C *** It takes a certain kind of woman to walk through the looking-glass of online dating. I wouldn&amp;#039;t want you to assume that you, too, will lose a chunk of your thirties and thousands of dollars (therapy hours, clothes bought in the wake of misguided hookups...) just because you cobble together a profile.\u202C Related: Is Genetic Testing the Future of Online Dating? \u202AAs a professional actor for the last 15 years, my career has primed me for this level of extreme online dating. The endless grind of auditions\u2014and trying to get them\u2014means I&amp;#039;m well-practiced at barreling through serial humiliations by telling myself the game-changer is just around the corner. There&amp;#039;s a fine line between optimism and delusion. Acting and online dating live on it.\u202C But what acting didn&amp;#039;t always give me\u202C\u2014\u202Aa sense of acceptance\u202C\u2014\u202Aonline dating did. Online daters often complain of the feeling of &amp;quot;people shopping&amp;quot; on the sites. But what if you&amp;#039;re what&amp;#039;s on everyone&amp;#039;s list?\u202C \u202AIn profile-land, my upscale Everywoman look\u202C\u2014\u202Awhich had consigned me to the &amp;#039;interesting faces&amp;#039; pile for film auditions (read: not the love interest)\u202C\u2014\u202Asomehow translated to tasteful glamour online. That, combined with my sassy writing style, made me catnip to attractive Type As. I ordered potential matches to obey cheeky &amp;quot;playground rules&amp;quot;: no hitting, no racism, share your sandtoys, and to refrain from complaining about work. I closed with a line fed to me by my glamorous, sassy, and long-married friend: &amp;quot;Drop me a note if you think we have a chance at being best friends who also have great sex.&amp;quot;\u202C \u202AWithin two days, I had over 200 messages in my inbox, teeming with photos of private jets and invitations to concerts by the bands I&amp;#039;d listed in my Favorite Things. I had finally found a way to become, as one suitor put it, &amp;quot;the belle of the ball.&amp;quot; (See! A lead role!)\u202C \u202AUnfortunately, this ball happened to be populated mainly by men like Ross, a law firm partner hunting for a woman who looked like his not-quite-yet-ex wife and also possessed qualities likely to get under her skin. I know the former because he admitted to finding me by putting &amp;quot;pale, freckles&amp;quot; in the Match.com search field; I suspect the latter because the first words out of his mouth after confirming I was an actress were, &amp;quot;Ha! My ex wanted to be an actress!&amp;quot;\u202C \u202ADespite these red flags, Ross&amp;#039;s charm got to me. But after three dates of monologues about his divorce, I asked if he had the room in his life to get to know me. He disappeared.\u202C \u202AStill, I was undeterred. Because the main thing that kept me on the merry-go-round of Match was the fact that it worked\u2026well, almost.\u202C  \u202ADeep in Profile 2.0 (softer, more feminine, now with anecdotes!), I met Paul, a former-musician/newly-hatched lawyer who had just relocated from New York. We reminisced about our Brooklyn neighborhoods and explored the beach towns and second-run movie theaters. He was the first man I introduced to my family in seven years. I was so relieved to have companionship that I overlooked the temper flare-ups that would send me to the next room to recover. Six months in, I finally suggested that we get counseling. This set off a volcanic-level rage that ended with his speeding away and worried questions from my neighbors. I was shaken and heart-broken, but it occurred to me that I&amp;#039;d written a profile that promised the fantasy of a relationship. No wonder it attracted men who couldn&amp;#039;t handle the reality of one.\u202C \u202AAfter licking my post-Paul wounds I went into profile re-writing overdrive. In version 1.0, I&amp;#039;d unwittingly portrayed myself as a shiny object, in 2.0, an accommodating muse. It was time to let the mask down. I spent days working on a portrait of the real me\u2013creative, ruminative, and hopeful. In Profile 3.0. I shared my vision of the relationship I wanted (&amp;quot;We go slow...one of the the best parts of dating in mid-life-ishness is getting to know each other&amp;#039;s world-in-progress&amp;quot;). I slipped in an &amp;quot;I feel&amp;quot; statement (&amp;quot;I feel most relaxed and playful when I&amp;#039;m with someone whose affections are consistent and whose intentions are clear&amp;quot;). I closed on a note of assurance to us both: &amp;quot;After all, we know that online dating is for thoughtful warriors.&amp;quot; I was scared to go public with my insecurities and desires, but I was also happy to finally have the courage to reveal my tender parts.\u202C \u202AMy traffic flatlined.\u202C But \u202Aeventually, a few suitors trickled in. And, despite the underwhelming demand, I learned to accommodate my new interest level. I met several interesting men, most of whom seemed uninterested in having a relationship, at least with me. Phone calls regularly failed to turn into first dates, first dates often failed to turn into second ones.\u202C \u202AMy would-be suitors&amp;#039; inconsistencies had gotten so consistent that I wondered if I could find meaning in it. Maybe the system had worked. Maybe the revisions, the books, and the diligence in getting out there finally introduced me to meet my real &amp;#039;matches.&amp;#039; My well-meaning phone and dinner dates\u2013like Peter, the Malibu businessman still wary from his last girlfriend&amp;#039;s drug problem, and Richard, the writer whose abrupt phone exit was explained by a Google search revealing his life-threatening illness\u2013didn&amp;#039;t seem to really want to be dating. Maybe, after all that, I didn&amp;#039;t either?\u202C *** \u202AI tallied up my audition call-back rates and discovered they went down when I had more on my plate romantically. I was conflating dating and commercial auditioning, in particular. In both I resented the long drives, the amount of time I spent worrying about my hairstyle, and the throwing-spaghetti-against-the-wall element. As the disappointments in both love and work racked up, I became brittle and pessimistic. I stopped thinking about what I really wanted and downsized my desires to what I thought I could obtain.\u202C \u202APerhaps it was easier to focus on writing the perfect profile than it was over-hauling my life to meet more compatible men (not to mention making myself more emotionally available to them when I did). Those changes are a tall order, but I&amp;#039;m starting like this: I vow to follow through with creating more complex acting opportunities; I&amp;#039;ll no longer let my half-finished screenplays languish on my hard drive. As for the emotional availability, I&amp;#039;m practicing with friends. As Being-a-Person-101 as it sounds, when they ask how I am I remind myself to tell them what I&amp;#039;m feeling not what I&amp;#039;m doing.\u202C \u202AIt&amp;#039;s likely I&amp;#039;ll one day return to online dating. I met interesting men and went to a ton of interesting wine bars. Or maybe I&amp;#039;ll meet someone while I&amp;#039;m going about my business. I&amp;#039;ll become aware of an attractive stranger and just, you know, toss him a winning smile. I&amp;#039;m getting better at that. It turns out there&amp;#039;s actually a lot going on when you&amp;#039;re not a slave to your inbox. Or Favorites list. Or winks. Or Like buttons. Or page views.\u202C "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/advice/a12789/reinventing-myself-one-online-dating-profile-at-a-time/>