I wrote the same profile twice, in two languages, and got two different cities
- Looking for
- somebody who will read whichever version they get and reply properly
- Experience
- Seven years, two arrangements, one of them five years.
- Around
- out by the ring, Amsterdam
Last winter I translated my own profile. Same photographs, same age, same everything, and I ran it in Dutch for a month and then in English for a month. The two months produced two different populations. Not slightly different. Different ages, different opening messages, different assumptions about how quickly anything should move.
The English month brought volume and a great deal of enthusiasm and almost nobody who was going to be here in two years. The Dutch month was quieter, older, slower and considerably more direct, and two of those conversations are still going. I am not drawing a moral from that. I am saying that the language of a bio is a filter the app does not tell you it is applying.
Forty two, out by the ring, submissive, seven years in. One arrangement ran five years and ended when he retired abroad, which we had both planned for.
I write in either language and I do not care which we use, as long as whoever writes is comfortable enough in it to be blunt.
What I want is a long, ordinary arrangement. A fixed evening, standing rules, correction spoken at the time. Not looking for an audience. Not looking for somebody who wants to practise their English on me, which is a real thing that has happened. And not looking to translate my own limits twice.