Archive for December, 2013

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014!

As part of every New Year’s celebration, we make resolutions regarding how to be a better person and what goals we hope to achieve in the coming year. If you’re hookup and single, add 100hookup to that list. Make a resolution to be a more active 100hookupr this year by taking the following steps:

• Get some fresh photos taken
• Create a more exciting profile name
• Rewrite and complete your profile answers
• Either expand your narrow search preferences or tighten up your broad preferences
• Answer the emails of prospects who are on your borderline list
• Send emails to new prospects who didn’t necessarily catch your eye before
• Be more confident in your emails and turn virtual correspondences into dates

Make your chances of 2014 being the year you meet your Beshert even better by being a better person… with a better 100hookup profile!

Hello Tamar,

I have rewritten my profile many times, and I am not sure why people don’t respond to me or even message me. I am heavier than I am now in some of my pictures, but I am not sure how to write that. I could use a lot of help redoing my profile. Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.

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Hi Daniel,

In looking at your profile and pictures, I think you fall into the common trap of providing too much information and writing in ways that make sense in your head — as you would say it — but that don’t necessarily read smoothly.

In regards to your weight gain, update your photos to show how you look now. If you don’t have photos, then take them. In the meantime, you don’t have to specifically address the weight gain, but you do need to change your body type as it states “average/medium build” when you are larger than that. But this is where you give too much information as your exact weight isn’t necessary. I don’t recommend that anyone complete their exact weight as stating your build and providing accurate pictures along with your height is enough. There are two photos of you with another guy (who I assume is your brother), please add descriptions to your photos and specify which guy you are in the photo, as you and your brother look alike.

Proofread your paragraphs; there are many typos. However, the paragraph under “A Brief History of My Life” is where you seem to get too detailed — saying you have your MBA is great, but from where is not necessary at this point — that is the information you want to save for the first date! You mention a few of the same things twice in answering different questions, for instance your dream job and hanging out with friends. Not all questions need to be answered. If you find yourself repeating, then determine if you actually need to answer both questions.

I would also narrow down what you’re looking for under “Your Ideal Match” and remember to expand your age range as you age.

Otherwise, keep being active, send Flirts, click “Yes, No or Maybe” under Secret Admirer and send short but sweet emails to women whom you find to be strong matches.

I was with a friend the other day and I told her one of my goals for 2014 was to take dating more seriously. My game plan for next year is to make dating a more prime focus in my life and to stop flirting with the excuse of, “I don’t have time” or “There’s no one out there for me.”

• Do: Set a goal to meet new people in 2014. That alone will spice up your dating life. Whether it’s to join an online dating site or just say yes to more social invitations, mentally prepare yourself and your heart to accept the prospect of love when it knocks at your door.

• Don’t: Bring your negative attitude toward dating into 2014. Leave the awkward stories, the bad dates, and the people who broke your heart in 2013. There’s no need to weave them in to the brand new year starting January 1st, 2014.

Read more Jen Glantz here or follow her on Twitter.

A friend of mine was very excited about her newest 100hookup and took two hours to get ready, called me on the way for a pep talk and had high hopes. About three hours later I received a perplexed phone call from her. Her date didn’t have any hands. No prosthetics either. He was more than able to eat and drink and of course his physical disability had nothing to do with the great conversation — or the lack of chemistry — but she was also perturbed that he hadn’t mentioned it earlier because she was in shock. Nor did he address it during dinner and she didn’t feel comfortable doing so either. Even so, she was able to put that aside and enjoy the date and was disappointed when she didn’t feel anything romantic towards him. Yet, she was perplexed about why he wouldn’t have disclosed such an obvious physical disability ahead of time and asked me if that was wrong of her to feel that way.

Although I don’t necessarily think her date needed to write about it in his 100hookup profile, he could have broached the topic in their emails simply by saying that he has a physical disability which doesn’t hold him back from living a normal life but that he doesn’t want her to be surprised upon arrival. And he absolutely should have addressed it immediately upon meeting her as it becomes the elephant in the room otherwise. It doesn’t need to become a focal point, he should have just said something along the lines of “clearly I don’t have hands, this is why and what happened and how I operate” and let her ask a question or two and then move on. The same would go for a glass eye or a prosthetic leg or anything else that is visually obvious because although it is not a lie to not disclose it ahead of time, it is omitting something important. Of course there are mental disabilities that people don’t have to disclose and can keep under wraps but that’s another post which would be 10x as long!

My last name is Stayman, and I will frequently make a joke about my manliness when I introduce myself to people. Usually it’s something along the lines of “Stay-man, which I intend to do”. I have, however, somewhat been lying about that. I intend to stay a man of course, but I have veered a bit to the other side in a sense, too.

Back in college, some friends and I thought it would help our fraternity/hookup groups to make a fake girl’s profile on Facebook as an entering hookup freshman on campus. Using this technique we found a number of incoming hookup freshman, men and women, who either returned our friend requests or were excited about our “existence” and friended us. We invited kids to parties and events using the girl and we set membership records for Hillel and the fraternity. No one ever noticed that first girl they talked to wasn’t there.

Not my proudest moment, but they called me the Jewhunter in college for a reason, and I was darn good at doing anything it took to get people involved. I called it quits after that, despite my fraternity continuing to do it in the coming year to see if lightning could strike twice (it didn’t).

So then this year I posted on Facebook for Chanukah that I would re-do anyone’s 100hookup profile that wanted me to. Surprisingly, the biggest response to my post was from females, and I started redoing profiles. In the last few weeks I’ve done some good ones, but my best one was for a close friend. It was my magnum opus, the greatest profile I’ve ever re-written from a pretty decently sized pool of profile re-dos.

There was one thing I forgot from my days of the fake Facebook girl though: men surprisingly forget so often to talk about anything but looks. So I asked my friend how her newly revamped profile was going. “Terribly,” she told me. “Everyone is just saying the equivalent of ‘you’re pretty’”.

I think on both ends, we misunderstand what it is we’re supposed to see in a girl’s profile. Most women I’ve helped have either way too simple or too complex of profiles (ie: 2-3 pictures and 6 adjectives and then a message me tag at the end, or the polar opposite with their overwhelming life story and the maximum on pictures), and I think that makes guys panic and talk about the only thing all of them have in common: being a girl. We message about looks far too frequently, and sometimes it’s because it’s all we can manage to easily take away. So ladies, be sure to add some personality, I know for me that is usually the biggest factor. I’ll definitely message a girl with a personality before I message a boring girl, the pictures only serve as a filter for whose profiles I’ll read (so in that sense, yes, pictures are important, too).

And guys, seriously, pick out things that show personality on both ends. You’ve got to be fun, so find things in the pictures that aren’t their looks, even if their profiles are fairly empty. If they’re somewhere exciting, like say a picture in Rome, ask about their travels. It’s all about the details, so figure out what you can talk about that doesn’t mention looks.

SSS or single sadness syndrome (this is not endorsed, yet, by Dr. Oz) surfaces during the holidays like a persistent pimple. And while all the couples are off doing couples things — like holding hands while ice skating through Central Park, or feeding each other pieces of pie, or taking selfies as they smooch underneath the mistletoe — us single folks are left feeling uncomfortably alone.

• Do: Make an effort to be social. Make plans with friends that are coming into town, or check out some of the traditional holiday events in your area. If you find yourself with no plus one to your company holiday party or family dinner, try to be okay with that. Use that as an opportunity to work the room, shake hands, and bring in brand new people into your life.

• Don’t: Wallow in your single status. Instead of getting upset when you see the photos that your friends post with their boyfriends or girlfriends, get motivated to go out and do something fun.

Read more from Jen Glantz here or on Twitter: @tthingsilearned.

Hanging on the wall of my bedroom, there is a poster that has been with me in every room I’ve ever lived in, from when I shared a room with my brother as a kid to my dorm room to the bedroom I sleep in now. That poster is a poster of one of my favorite things: my name. Written around my name are compliments from fifth grade friends from an exercise my school completed weekly of hanging posters of a students’ name in each classroom. Every student went around and wrote nice things about each person, and at the end of the week the poster was laminated and given to us.

Some of the compliments make sense: “Have a very successful year!” “You’re a great friend!” “You’re cool!”. Some make a little less sense: “You’re good at football!” or the person who decided to write “Hi”. But one thing on my poster as well as the poster my brother has hanging in his room is one comment that I really like: “Don’t ever change.”

As I sit here on the eve of my 24^th birthday, I think about how much about my life has changed in the last year. I’ve changed jobs, I’ve travelled more, I’ve become better at giving of myself and doing volunteer work more often. Heck, I’m writing for a dating website that until a year ago I’d hardly had any luck with as a user! Life is at its best when it is changing.

With all that in mind, I don’t believe the core of me has changed at all. One of my favorite rabbis once told me a story about a person who said they changed completely and made everyone ask “were you really so bad before?” One of my favorite books, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, talks of becoming our habits. I suppose in some ways I have become my new habits, and that’s great, but it hasn’t changed who I am.

What’s fundamental about me is that I am a person who loves my hookup culture, I like to help others, and I have a passion for any job placed before me. Those traits won’t change. Maybe next year people will be able to accurately say I got good at football, but they won’t be able to say Aaron at 24 fundamentally changed a bit.

Dear Tamar,

I’m getting tired of women not returning calls. What do I do?

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Dear Dead Ringer,

Keep calling. But first, analyze what you are saying and how you are saying it to see if perhaps you are being too aggressive or too much of a pushover. Are you saying too much? Too little? Have some sort of script ready, one for if the prospect answers and one for the voicemail. It shouldn’t sound too rehearsed but you need something to keep you on track. A phone call should last about 10 minutes and consist of you asking the girl out on a date. A message should simply state who you are, a quick reminder of who you are (example: …this is Mike from 100hookup…) and your phone number as well as a short but sweet farewell (I’m looking forward to hearing back from you soon). People get nervous when they are making their first phone call which is why people often go off on tangents. having a framework to follow will help you have confidence calling and that confidence will come through in your voice. And don’t abuse the phone. Call once and if you get the voicemail or she answers but can’t talk at the moment, then go ahead and try again if you don’t hear back after 2 days, but don’t call again after that. Twice is nice. In this circumstance the third time is not the charm, it’s overkill. So when I said keep calling at the beginning of my response I meant keep calling different women. The fact that you’re getting the phone number is a testament unto itself as that’s often the hardest part!

Dear Tamar,

I have no idea what I am doing wrong on 100hookup. I am a handsome, successful 27-year-old and I think I am just not able to convey that in my profile. I have really tried 100hookup: I’ve literally sent out a couple hundred messages and gotten very few responses. I don’t know what I am doing wrong could definitely could use some help.

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Dear Mr. Handsome,

First off, you don’t necessarily want to convey that you are successful because you don’t want women showing interest in you based on your riches. And you don’t have to write about how handsome you are — your pictures should do the trick for you as long as you have good photos. My concern when I read “a couple hundred messages” is that you may be sending copy & paste emails — NEVER DO THIS! Make sure your emails are written specifically for that prospect. My other concern about so many emails sent is that your preferences may not be narrow enough and therefore you are sending emails to women who clearly would not be interested in you for whatever reasons. So make sure your profile is not obnoxious about how successful you are, make sure your photos are good, write charming emails, and narrow down your preferences slightly to be more realistic. Don’t give up. The odds are in your favor whether it feels like it or not!

“All my friends are engaged,” she said to me as if I haven’t heard that one before. “What am I supposed to do?”

I thought she meant gift-wise, so I instructed her on the types of gifts you should purchase for a couple, depending on where they are in their wedding timeline. But then, unexpectedly, she started shaking her head at me.

“No, no,” she said. “I mean how am I supposed to feel.”

When you see that all your friends are in long-lasting relationships, and the rings start magically growing on their fingers, it’s common to feel a bit jealous or internally sad. But it’s important to remember a few things.

• Do: Try to be happy for them. If they are a good friend of yours, this won’t be something you will have to try hard to do. It’s important to push away any negative personal feelings you have for the moment and instead congratulate them. Remember, this is not about you — this is about them.

• Don’t: There’s no need to compare yourself to them — or anyone. Everyone’s life moves at a different speed and you should never compare and contrast. Don’t ask yourself why you’re still single, or if there’s something wrong with you.

Learn about Jen Glantz’s new book, ALL MY FRIENDS ARE ENGAGED.