Dating Strategy for the UK #4: Conversation Starters

Once you’ve established a great dating site, a great profile, a great picture, and a great way to make sure you’re going to get responses, it’s time to move onto something you may be dreading: FIRST CONTACT.

Sending the first email doesn’t have to be frightening. It’s all about finding something to talk about.

We’re well aware that not every guy is a sitcom writer, and we don’t all have a witty repertoire to draw on whenever we want to make a woman interested in us for the night.

However, you don’t have to be! Finding something to talk about is a lot less about being entertaining, and a lot more about learning how to listen. Yes, your mum was right: you DO have to learn how to listen to girls rather than just talking all the time.

Find something in her profile.

The biggest and easiest hints a woman can give you are in her profile. The profile is, essentially, a way that a woman can tell you, “See this? I’m interested in this! I wish to talk about this subject, so please contact me so that we can discuss it!”

This should be your largest box of conversation starters when you’re trying to talk to British girls online. You want to have a conversation, you want to make things fun, and you don’t want to run out of things to talk about, so plumb the depths of her profile.

Find something that you can talk about, at least a little bit. You don’t have to be an expert in the subject, but you should know enough to be able to carry on whichever conversation you start.

“But what if I can’t find anything?”

If you can’t talk about anything in her profile at all, are you sure this is the kind of girl you should be looking for a date with? Imagine how awkward a conversation in person will be on your first date, if you can’t think of anything to talk about when you’re looking directly at a hand-picked list of her interests! If you can’t find something, walk away.

However, there is an inherent danger to picking a topic that you know TOO much about. Women aren’t here for a lecture!

You’re here to have a conversation with this woman. You’re not here to educate her. You’re not here to make her feel stupid.

If you can’t do that with your current conversation starter, then ignore it and pick up another topic of conversation, do NOT attempt to give her a seminar in her interests.

You’re not her professor, and you’re not her father (no matter what private roleplay fantasies the two of you manage to cook up later). Doing this will make her start avoiding your messages!

Keep it short.

Your message shouldn’t overwhelm the girl you’re trying to contact. Remember that women get a lot more messages than men do on dating sites. When we say a lot, we mean a LOT.

Think of how many times you’ve seen something on the Internet and immediately thought, “tl;dr,” or “too long, didn’t read.” When you see a wall of text, your eyes immediately glaze over, and you don’t want to keep going with whatever it is you’re reading.

Imagine a woman looking in her messages center, only to find a massive paragraph of text. She’s going to think one of three things when she sees that. Her choices are:

“He’s put WAY too much effort into someone he doesn’t know.”

“That’s way too long, I’m not reading that.”

“This is weird, I bet he’s talking all about himself.”

None of these are reactions that you want a woman to have to your email the first time!

Keep it simple.

Brevity is the soul of wit—don’t try to make an overcomplicated message. Keep your message not just short, but simple as well. Cover one or two things, but don’t overwhelm her.

If she has to use a numbered list or bullet points in order to address everything you’ve brought up, you’ve messed up. Try your email again, or risk never hearing from this woman. You want to interest her just enough for a first response. She doesn’t need your life story yet!