There’s no way around it: the process of putting together your dating profile can be anxiety-inducing. Most of us were raised to be humble about our looks, talents, and accomplishments.

Humility is surely a better quality than narcissism, but constructing a profile for an online dating site requires you to toot your own horn a bit. In the online space, you’re the only person to talk yourself up—there’s no wingman to do the bragging for you. If you’re wondering how exactly to describe yourself on a dating site, we’re here with the answers.

Honesty Is Always the Best Policy

This should be a no-brainer, but being dishonest online will always come back to bite you. As humble as you may be in your day to day life, you still may be worried that your competition in the dating world is strong enough that you should embellish a bit. Resist the urge.

Your goal is to find someone who likes you for you, so fudging it just isn’t an option. Whatever your intent, rounding up on height, down on weight, or pretending that you’re a millionaire may be fine until it comes time to meet. Being dishonest and being discovered are major no-no’s and an automatic dealbreaker to most people.

How To Describe Your Appearance

This is arguably the most excruciating aspect of putting together a dating profile. No matter how honest you are about your appearance, the words you use to describe yourself may not be how others would—that’s not a bad thing—again, you may be a little more humble than you think.

One of the first steps in creating a dating profile involves filling out basic demographic information like name, age, height, and hair color—all pretty basic. Next, things get tricky. You may be asked to pick a description of your body type. This is definitely uncomfortable. What one person may consider tall may be what another person considers average height. Go ahead and trust your instincts, but don’t sell yourself short.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Verbal description can only go so far, and it’s likely to make a potential date skeptical or feel unsafe about meeting a person who doesn’t include pictures on their dating profile. Plenty of us are camera shy, but recent, appealing photos really do make the difference. How recent is recent, and how many pictures do you really need?

Try to post pictures taken within the last two years, unless you’ve gone through a major change in appearance like significant weight loss or gain. Even a change in facial hair is worth a photo update. Mustache aficionados may be disappointed to meet you in person if you’ve suddenly gone clean-shaven.

Post three photos at the absolute minimum, and while it’s difficult to imagine in this day and age, try to limit the selfies. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t need to provide a photo that shows the full length of your body, but people do have preferences. As uncomfortable as it is, this is all part of the online dating world.

Describe Your Personality

We’ve established how hard it is to brag about yourself. Again, it’s a necessity, but it doesn’t have to feel like torture. Talk about the things you love doing, and it will make things easier for potential dates to envision.

If you love to hike and would call in sick to work in a snap to hit the trails, mention it. You could say something like “fun-loving,” but if you’ve got limited online space and readers with a short attention span, getting specific is better—after all, do you know someone who genuinely doesn’t love fun? It’s a matter of what you find fun that will help you connect with others.

Talk about your hobbies, or your travel bucket-list. Talk about what you like to do after work. Do you like to gather with a gaggle of friends and play video games, or volunteer at the local animal shelter? It’s all information that gives a fuller description of who you really are.

Ask Your Friends

This one requires a bit of trust, but asking your friends to chime in can help in getting a well-rounded verbal picture of yourself. Some people even let their friends write their whole profile and edit accordingly! This can take some of that “am I being humble enough?” anxiety off the table because you’re presenting real reactions to how the outside world sees you.

Of course, this can backfire if your friends want to be smart alecks. Don’t hit save if you think there could be a little snark hidden in there somewhere. You can also write your own profile, then show it to your friends for feedback. They’ll likely be kind, but they’re also likely to point out aspect of your looks and personality you may not have noted. Plus, “my friends say I’m a good listener” is better than making the evaluation on your own.

Use the Tools You Have

Don’t be afraid to follow the prompts or answer the questionnaires that dating sites provide. They’re there precisely because describing yourself on a dating site can be difficult! It can be tempting to skip those steps and dive right into looking at others’ profiles, but all of those questions can be worthwhile, so they deserve time.

Here are some of our favorite sites that will help you navigate the process of describing you, your looks, and your interests.

One Last Time: Honesty Is The Best Policy

We can’t hammer this home enough. Aside from presenting yourself as sincere, thoughtful, and serious about the dating process, an honest description of who you are and what you’re looking for gives you the best chances of finding a date or mate that you really connect with. Whether you tend to be too humble or are bursting with bravado, the best, most successful option is to take that middle road and describe yourself accurately online.

Want even more help on your dating profile? Make sure you take a minute to check out our insanely awesome and thorough guide on how to write a dating profile. It breaks every step of the process down one at a time and even has links to real-world dating profile examples to check out.

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