I'm more likely to sabotage myself by telling you how dirty my house is, or how overweight I am, or about my annoying habits, or some deep dark secret, or whatever, than I am to mention that I'm a smart, funny, articulate, sensitive, sensual, and attractive human being.

I wish I knew why my brain is built that way! Because it just works against me on dating sites like this one.

Actually, I think I might know why. I blame the culture. "Someday I'll find someone who loves me for me, and not who I pretend to be." Well, I bought into that so much that I never even bothered to develop the pretend version. I never learned the skills of selling myself. So, warts-and-all tends to be my default position.

And you know what? People don't really work that way. We want someone who fits closely enough to our ideal that we can overlook the ways they don't. And so here I come and keep pushing my flaws in people's faces, saying, you have to take the bad with the good, and that turns them off.

I am smart. And funny. And articulate. sensitive, sensual, and attractive. And I just have to remember to promote those features and not the flaws. The flaws will reveal themselves in time, let it happen naturally.

I'm a bit perplexed by people who put NOTHING in that box. It's not asking for the most private thing about you, ever at all. It's asking for the most private thing you'd be willing to share. That may mean something silly, like "I like to try putting on my pants both legs at a time," or mildly embarrassing like "The trunk of my car is filled with bags from McDonald's." Or it may mean something personal but trivial, like "I have horrible penmanship."

It doesn't have to be the deep dark secret like, "I was molested by my 8th grade music teacher, and I keep blaming myself because I had a crush on him." If you don't want to talk about that, that's fine; that's not being asked of you.

The important part is "Willing To Admit Here", not "Most Private Thing".

I don't know what's going on in my head lately that I seem to find myself able to open up a bit more, but as a result I've given the lie a bit to the part of my profile that says I'm not good at keeping a conversation going.

The last few times someone's messaged me, I've suddenly found myself able to write more than my typical one-word answers. Unfortunately, it's all for naught, as most of the recent recipients of my new-found verbal courage have either not seen fit to return my messages or have been unpleasantly forward in their responses.