Below you will see the welcome screen at LavaLife.com, a singles site I’m trying out for the first time. Getting into the site and starting your profile is easy. They had a real good "tips" section that only took a few minutes to read, four minutes exactly, and that got me on my way with the profile. The opening line is a tough one! Good luck, you will struggle - but it’s fun! Don’t you dare put "can’t think of anything"
Just to summarize the profile writing advice that LavaLife.com gives:
Be honest. Spell well. Be witty. And one I really liked and utilized in my own profile: Think of three things that other "love intrests" complimented you about. They also advised that you don’t get too deep into who specifically appreciated those assets. The way I stated it in my profile was a couple woman said that my three best attributes are…
If you can keep it short, do so. If you can make it rhyme, maybe do that too -but be careful. This could get real tacky, hokey and silly if not done right. I just happened to list three things that started with the same letter… It had a nice ring to it (I thought).
The forty eight minute sign up was a breeze, but it didn’t quite get me totally up and running. Lavalife separates out the usual "laundry list" of questions that is usually included in the initial profile. You fill this in later if you want to take advantage of their "match up" feature. They do this by letting you search other singles by interest. In order to do that they take you through about a dozen your interests, but for the search by interest they only have you choose up to four from a drop down menu.
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You can choose a photo…choose it carefully, to use for your profile picture. Read the rules at LavaLife first. They have some strict guidelines. The profile picture has to be one of you only. I am still having a problem getting my profile picture posted. Maybe because my dog was in the picture with me? The ball is in my court now I guess. I need to choose another picture for my profile. The one that they didn’t accept for a profile picture, they allowed me to put in the gallery. The gallery is a page where you can post other pictures, of anything that you choose. Does anyone know how many pictures they allow? I thought I saw it, and yet I don’t remember. It’s like a dozen I think. Then, LavaLife.com, allows you to post a bunch of other pictures "backstage" where only the people that you give permission to may see them. If you want access to someone else’s backstage photos, shoot them an email or IM and ask permission. They allow these backstage pictures to be anything you want. The backstage pictures can even be nude, although read the terms…there are still limits -even for the totally uninhibited!
This site is broken into three main areas; dating, relationship and intimate. You can be in any one of these groups or up to all three at once. I couldn’t find anywhere on the site where these areas were explained. I did a lot of searching, and this is what I came up with from my own observation:
Dating
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This category is probably the least serious yet the most ambiguous. Your desire to date can have any or all of the following intents and purposes:
- You want to practice your male / female interaction skills. Starting online, you want to see if you can get someone interested in you enough to spend some face to face time with you.
- When that face to face time finally happens, you want to add in all the looks and gestures that were unseen online -to back up all those quick and witty lines and come-backs that got you from I.M. to T.G.I.F.
- You hope for good food, good conversation, a good time in general. Good daters should be able to accomplish that. Even if the sparks don’t fly thirty minutes into this first encounter it’s no reason to sulk for the rest of the date.
- Will you click with that other person? Will they click with you? (A much more important question, because rejection…Sucks!)
- No matter how it works out at this stage, you are free to go through the same process again with another prospect.
- A prospect for what? Well, a date, a relationship, whatever! Well, maybe something just intimate instead. I don’t know. This would be my best guess:
Relationship
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This category would be for someone who is looking for a steady someone. A coupling up in an exclusive way that I would say, kinda ends up in marriage. *Gulp* no, just kidding. I don’t have bonding issues. I don’t fear intimacy. Bring it on! That’s why I’m here. You qualify for this group if you would rather not date a type of person that you know upfront that you would not spend the rest of your life with. So you reserve the first meeting until you know a lot about the person from online dialog. It’s so easy to lie over wires than it is face to face. This is why it is even more important to reveal yourself for who you really are. That doesn’t mean you need to have a skeleton parade every time someone sends you an cyber smile. Little by little, and always honest. If you don’t want to answer a question, don’t -but don’t fabricate the right answer. If a relationship doesn’t begin in all honesty then it’s doomed to fail.
Intimate Encounters
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This is a hook up…Plain and simple. ‘Nuff said?
Speed Dating
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LavaLife.com also has a real cool speed dating time. I’m gearing up to try it. I’ll report back with the experience in a whole new factoid just on that subject. I’ll give the play by play review of LavaLife.com as I use this site to open doors to future romance…Cue violins..
