This column is written by guest author Holly Bernabe. She wrote it to try to help people posting sex or relationship ads to polyamorous discussion list why the list reaction tended to be less than stellar, and to help them be successful in finding the relationships they wanted.
I received your email/ad on my group list/social networking site, etc. And I’ve got some advice for you:
- When looking for an addition, look locally. I’m likely in a state you aren’t in. You’re in BFE, wherever. Why are you looking out of state? LDRs are possible, but pretty hard to accomplish. Are you expecting the new person to move to your state?
- Write intelligently. I don’t generally bother writing back to people who can’t write a full sentence with proper use of punctuation and spelling. I know in this day and age of IM-ing and cell phone text messaging, everything is getting dumbed down for sake of brevity. But in an email where you are introducing yourself, brevity is a MISTAKE. Brevity sounds like someone who has no education and is an idiot! For crying out loud, make an effort. First impressions are important. Is the first impression you want to leave your potential new spice with one of idiocy or laziness?
- If you are going to bother to create a blanket email ad to post on a group list to try and find an addition to your family, add some detail to your email so you don’t look like a spambot. Blather on about your details and add some interesting quotes and so on so that we have some way of judging who the heck you are, so that we can figure out whether or not we even want to give you the time of day, let alone get to know you. As it is, I have no idea what kind of music you like, what you like to do for fun, what movies you like, or anything else about you. Your email is a meaningless blank slate.
- Sign up for okCupid and let us know how to find you on that site. That way, if people want to check you out some more, they can. OkCupid is poly friendly and has some fun features. Lots of poly people are signed up there, already.
- If you have joined a poly list, ask the list some questions. Join in on some discussions before you post your ad. Then we will know that you’ve even bothered to READ our list and that you really are interested and you aren’t just spamming thousands of people out there with generic messages in hopes by playing the numbers someone will bother to write back to you. If you had bothered to read our list, you would know we allow most any type of post–however, we PREFER discussion and don’t like personals ads very much that have no personal information. If you had read our list at all, you likely wouldn’t have spammed our inboxes in the first place with your ad.
- Read the discussions on our list and make friends. Then privately, if you all really dig someone, and you think they might like you, too, you can pursue them off list, if you feel that is an appropriate course of action.
Follow those tips, and maybe you’ll have some luck on our list.
Tips To Couples Looking to Add an Additional Person Into Their Relationship
© 2010, Holly Bernabe, used by permission
Holly Bernabe is a film student and mom of two (five counting the fuzzbucket dog, the spastic cat and the hubby). Her biggest wish in life is to figure out how to stop time, so that she can cram into the day everything (and everyone) that she wants to do.