meet João
Less profile. More person.
I'm 43, Portuguese, a father, a startup executive, and a man who spends his life trying to understand people.
I have a psychology background, a dangerous curiosity about behaviour, and a brain that rarely shuts up. But I'm also simpler than this page may suggest.
I love sushi, chocolate, cooking, travelling, videogames, TV shows, books, good conversations, foreign cities, live music, and people who make the world feel wider.
I'm intense, yes. But I'm warm. I'm playful. And I'm much easier to talk to than a page called "with no filters" may suggest.
Why does this exist?
Because dating apps are terrible at nuance.
They give you a few photos, some prompts, a forced joke, and then everyone is supposed to decide whether there is chemistry based on a digital shop window.
So I created this page. Not because I want to impress you. Not because I think I'm a product. But because attraction becomes more interesting when there is context.
This is a small attempt to show a bit more of the human behind the profile.
No filters. But still with boundaries.
The human behind the profile
I'm a startup executive and I deal with people for a living. Which means I spend my days thinking about behaviour, leadership, culture, emotion, conflict, ambition, trust, fear, talent, and why humans are both brilliant and completely irrational.
Outside work, I'm easier to understand.
I cook. I travel. I read. I disappear into TV shows, films and videogames.
I have a suspiciously emotional relationship with sushi and a chocolate dependency that should probably be monitored by science.
I love gadgets, psychology, neuroscience, good restaurants, strange questions, live music in foreign cities, and people who are emotionally alive.
I don't have a dog, not because I don't love dogs, but because I love them too much. I've had to say goodbye before, and apparently there are types of grief my heart refuses to voluntarily schedule again.
So this is me, more or less. A man with intensity, humour, curiosity, appetite, contradictions, tenderness, ambition, and a brain that rarely shuts up.
The date version
- A walk without a rigid plan.
- A place we found because it smelled good.
- Something to eat that neither of us fully understands.
- A conversation that starts lightly and accidentally becomes real.
- A stupid joke at the wrong moment.
- A look that says: "Ok. This is interesting."
No performance. No interview. Just chemistry, curiosity and enough humour to keep it human.
Not everything needs to start as romance
I'm open to friendship. I'm open to chemistry. I'm open to the kind of conversation that does not need to know what it is in the first five minutes.
One of the things I genuinely enjoy is getting to know people from other countries, cultures, ways of thinking, stories, references and ways of seeing life.
Sometimes chemistry is romantic. Sometimes intellectual. Sometimes it is just two people having a great conversation and realising the world feels slightly bigger afterwards.
I travel regularly to Milan, Madrid and Barcelona, so I'm often moving between different cities, moods, people and versions of myself.
London is my favourite European city. Energy, elegance, chaos, humour, diversity and cinematic greyness.
I've been to the Caribbean more than once, travelled to the United States, and one of my biggest travel dreams is Japan — the food, the discipline, the aesthetics, the contrast between tradition and technology, the rituals, the strangeness, the beauty, the neon, the silence.
So yes, I'm open. To romance, if it happens. To friendship, if it feels real. To someone who makes the world feel wider.
The way I travel
I love visiting new countries and cities. But not just to tick places off a list.
I like getting slightly lost. Walking without needing to optimise every minute. Following the smell of food on a street I don't know. Noticing the colours, the doors, the people, the way a city breathes when you stop behaving like a tourist for five minutes.
I like the restaurant that doesn't look perfect but feels alive. The street where something is happening and I don't fully understand what. The small shop, the strange corner, the unexpected view, the human detail that somehow becomes the memory.
I also love going to concerts in foreign cities. Listening to music surrounded by people who do not share your language, your habits or your references, but somehow share the same moment.
Last one? Benson Boone in Belgium. Honestly — I miss going to another one.
"Great sushi is like heaven to me!"
The mind behind the man
I have a background in psychology and a deep passion for neuroscience, behaviour and the hidden architecture of human beings.
I'm fascinated by what makes people move.
- Not just what they say they want, but what they actually pursue.
- Not just who they claim to be, but who appears under pressure.
- Not just attraction, but attachment.
- Not just ambition, but fear.
- Not just charm, but manipulation.
For the last few years, I've studied psychopathy, dark personality patterns and some serial killers. Not because I romanticise darkness. I don't.
I study it because I prefer recognising it before it recognises me. Because manipulation usually arrives well dressed. Because cruelty can be charming. Because intelligence without empathy is dangerous.
Maybe that is why I value kindness so much. Not the performative kind. The quiet kind. The kind that shows up in how someone talks to a waiter, handles frustration, repairs after tension, and treats people when there is nothing to gain.
That does not mean I walk around diagnosing people over dinner. Usually.
A few very specific truths
I don't have a dog because I'm emotionally weak in one very specific way
I can handle complex conversations, difficult decisions, corporate politics, emotional storms, and high-pressure startup life. But the idea of loving a dog deeply and then having to say goodbye? That destroys me. I love dogs. I just don't currently trust my heart with one.
I am dangerously serious about sushi
Not in a pretentious "I will judge your soy sauce technique" way. More in a "yes, I could eat sushi far too often and still somehow justify it as emotional wellbeing" way. Good sushi makes me happy. Bad sushi makes me philosophical.
I'm a home chef, not a recipe follower
I cook because it calms me, challenges me, and gives me a socially acceptable excuse to be obsessive about flavour. I like feeding people. The small moment when someone tastes something and pauses — that pause is one of my favourite compliments.
I play videogames and I'm not apologising for it
Videogames are not an escape from reality. They are sometimes better-designed versions of it. I love the immersion, the story, the worlds. Also, sometimes I just want to switch my brain off and destroy things digitally. Healthy, probably.
Chocolate is not a snack. It is personality infrastructure.
Some people meditate. Some run marathons. Some pretend they don't need dessert. I respect all paths. Mine has chocolate.
I work with people, which is both beautiful and dangerous
I spend a lot of time trying to understand what is said, what is not said, what is avoided, what is desired, what is feared and what is hidden behind professional sentences. It also means I may accidentally analyse the emotional architecture of a dinner conversation. Sorry in advance.
Concerts in foreign cities have a strange magic
Being somewhere unfamiliar, surrounded by people I don't know, listening to music that temporarily makes everyone part of the same invisible thing. The last one was Benson Boone in Belgium. And I miss that feeling.
I study the dark side of people for a very practical reason
Psychopathy, manipulation, charm without empathy. The more you understand how predators think, the less likely you are to become prey.
Compatibility data
Things that make me feel alive
Not a list to impress. A list to recognise.
- 01A conversation that starts with "this may sound weird, but…"
- 02Cooking without fully following the recipe.
- 03Sushi that makes silence happen for a few seconds.
- 04A city where I can get lost without wanting to be found too quickly.
- 05Books that make me underline things like a man with no self-control.
- 06A TV show that stays in my nervous system for days.
- 07A concert in a city where I don't speak the language.
- 08London on a grey day.
- 09The idea of Japan.
- 10Dark humour with kindness and timing.
- 11A woman with presence. Not noise. Presence.
- 12People who make the world feel wider.
What I'm probably looking for
I'm not looking for perfection. That would be boring and suspicious.
I'm looking for someone emotionally alive. Someone with intelligence, humour, self-awareness and some kind of inner fire.
Someone who can be independent without being emotionally unavailable. Someone who likes affection, but doesn't need to turn everything into a test.
Someone who can laugh, think, desire, argue with respect, repair after conflict, and be curious about the person in front of her.
Chemistry is not just physical. It is intellectual. Emotional. Nervous system. Timing. Smell. Safety. Tension. Play.
And yes, physical attraction matters. I'm too old to pretend otherwise and too honest to make it sound shallow.
But I also like simple things. A walk. A stupid joke. Good food. A look that says more than the conversation.
Sometimes the best things start as curiosity. Sometimes as friendship. Sometimes as a conversation that was not supposed to matter.
A fair warning
I'm not the easiest person to read at first.
I can be intense. I notice details. I ask questions. I think about what is underneath what people say. Sometimes I feel too much and analyse even more.
I have a strong personality, but I'm not interested in dominating anyone. I value emotional honesty, which means I struggle with avoidance, mixed signals, passive-aggressive behaviour and people who say "nothing" when clearly there is something.
My psychology background does not mean I want to analyse everyone. But it does mean I am rarely satisfied with the surface.
So, if you want only lightness, I can do lightness. But not emptiness.
And yes, I can also just laugh, eat sushi and talk about a TV show.
Things I find attractive
What this page is not
- 01This is not a campaign.
- 02Not a funnel.
- 03Not a seduction strategy approved by a growth team.
- 04Not a personality brochure.
- 05Not a performance of emotional availability.
- 06Not a warning label.
- 07Not a psychological assessment.
It's just a better introduction than: "Hey, how's your weekend?" Although, to be fair, I may still ask that.
So, what now?
If you got here and thought, "too much", that is completely fair.
If you got here and smiled, paused, became curious, or felt a tiny hmm… interesting — then maybe the page did its job.
You don't need to send the perfect message. Just send me something real.
A question. A place you love. A city where you got lost. The last concert that stayed with you. The country you still dream of visiting. The book, show, game or strange obsession that tells me something about how your mind works.