You are sitting in a restaurant across from your date. It is your first meet-up in the real world; a few flirty online messages culminated into a hopeful dinner for two. Your date smiles at you, leans in close, puts one hand in your hair and whispers, “From your profile picture, I thought you would be more of a sandy blonde, not a brunette.” Online dating fouls can ruin any chance of a successful relationship.

These dating qualms and more inevitably arise when one enters the often brutal online dating ring. While it would seem logical to prescribe to each online dater to simply be themselves online, it is even more important to stress that you be yourself in person.

All is unfair in love and online. Here’s how to even-up the playing field:

 1. As noted in the anecdote above, do not under any circumstances point out physical trait “discrepancies” between a person’s profile picture and their in-person appearance.

A. It shows you only care about looks.

B. It’s just mean to tell someone right off the bat that they’re not living up to your expectations. If you tend to be “visually oriented” try to at least point out a positive: Tell them their picture doesn’t do them the justice they deserve.

 2. Don’t reveal how the site has been working for you or not. Just as you wouldn’t tell some one you met in real life how your single life has been heading so far, you shouldn’t fill them in on your online triumphs and woes.

 3. Don’t reminisce on your online interactions, i.e., “I remember our first message…” or “I can’t believe you Facebook poked me that day…” Keep in mind that until you see each other in person, you still have not technically “met.”

 4. Don’t monologue. Of course at some point during the date you’re going to talk about yourself more than once, just make sure you leave time to catch your breath and room for questions to be asked. Even better, ask them questions; people secretly love feeling like they’re “In the Actor’s Studio.”

 5. Do practice self-deprecation. Nothing says “I’m normal” like an embarrassing story about yourself. Just make sure to laugh about it; don’t turn it into a pity-party.

 6. Do keep conversation, as Larry David would say, at a healthy medium level. This means no small-talk: “Did you subway or cab it here?” and no heavy-talk either: “My therapist says I have compensation issues which are really rooted in…” No. Stop and save yourself. Medium: not too mild and not too spicy.

At the end of the day, no matter how hard you tweak your online profile, it will not represent you fully. And it shouldn’t! You don’t want to have a personality that can be so easily JPEG-ed! The Internet is but a projection of what people really are. And if you know anything about Freud, projections are often very far from the reality of the person in the matter.

Of course, it’s hard to actually gauge a person’s personality online, so use this real-life meeting to focus on just that. Don’t be too disappointed when you can’t reconcile your cyber expectations to the person sitting across you.

You have made the leap from Wi-Fi to real-life and at the end of the day, your online existence is not binding. Don’t worry about trying to keep to the script, and similarly, don’t stress if your date doesn’t either.