If you have any of these words on your dating profile, remove them. Immediately.

Dating profiles are a difficult thing to compose.

You have to toe the line of portraying yourself in the best possible way, without seeming arrogant, self-obsessed or too conceited.

What we need more than anything is hard data on the pitfalls.

Thankfully, Illicit Encounters, a dating website for married people (yes, you read that right), studied over 400,000 profiles on their website.

They gathered together a list of the best and worst adjectives to use on your online dating profile.

Men

... are, supposedly, looking for women that use the words "sexy" (15 per cent looked for this), "honest" (10 per cent), and "confident" (seven per cent).

The least popular were "shy" (two per cent), "trustworthy" (one per cent), and "happy" (0.3 per cent).

Women

...meanwhile, are looking for men that call themselves "honest" (13 per cent), "intelligent" (10 per cent), and confident (nine per cent).

The least popular terms were "shy" (one per cent), "happy" (0.4 per cent), and "curvy" (0.09 per cent).

The 'best' to 'worst' adjectives for women's profiles were:

• Sexy
• Honest / Honesty
• Confident
• Affectionate
• Intelligent
• Humorous
• Romance / Romantic
• Curvy
• Spontaneous
• Shy
• Trust / Trustworthy
• Happy

The 'best' to 'worst' adjectives for men's profiles were:

• Honest / Honesty
• Intelligent
• Confident
• Humorous
• Romance / Romantic
• Affectionate
• Sexy
• Spontaneous
• Trust / Trustworthy
• Shy
• Happy
• Curvy

The website’s spokesperson, Christian Grant, said:

It’s no surprise to see that both men and women are looking for someone whose honest and confident, but there are some interesting differences between the sexes.

Most notably, men are, on the whole, gravitated more toward someone who really sells their looks; words such as ‘sexy’ or ‘curvy’ are all-important.

While these aren’t exactly unimportant to women, you’ll find that they’re more concerned if someone’s intelligent or affectionate  – without that, it doesn’t matter how sexy you are.

Mind you, you might want to caveat that this information comes from a website which actively encourages infidelity.

HT Mirror

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