11/19/2009

Dear Patti,
I’ve been divorced two years and my friends urged me to try online dating. It’s been great getting to know all kinds of guys, but when I finally met Brian two months ago it felt like we’d been together forever. We’re very compatible and he’s wonderful in every way. The problem is that I lied about my age when I first went online. I’m 45, but said I was 39. I usually don’t lie about my age, but felt that men who’d be attracted to my youthful looks in person wouldn’t even respond if they saw “45” on my profile. Brian and I have never discussed our ages, but he recently asked if I wanted to have children and jokingly suggested we should get started on that.
What do I do? I don’t know if I could still get pregnant or if I even want children at my age. The real point is that I wasn’t truthful on the dating form and am not sure how he’ll react if I tell him.
— Bridget 

Dear Bridget,
Your predicament isn’t uncommon. Lying about personal details on a dating site is a long-running Internet joke, the most common offenses being that men lie about their height and women lie about their weight. The duplicity further extends to the subject of age, impelled by the fact that men want to date younger women and women want to date men their own age. Studies from Cornell University as well as online surveys such as Engage.com’s “Manners and Behaviors” reveal that both sexes think a few little white lies are perfectly acceptable in online dating. As if it weren’t stressful enough to resort to technology to find romance, the option of pre-selecting the characteristics a person deems important criteria prior to a first meeting replaces the old-fashioned discovery of sharing personal information on the date itself.
I understand you didn’t lie to Brian directly, but please ask yourself why you haven’t corrected this misinformation after two months. One of the difficult aspects of your problem will be explaining your rationale for the delay. Besides the issue of getting a fair chance to meet suitable men, were there other reasons why? Are you perhaps more insecure about yourself than you want to admit?
Sit down with Brian and explain everything to him as soon as possible, just as you explained it to me. I’m not convinced that maintaining the pretense is worth the risk. Lying about your age may have helped you to meet your dream man, but we don’t want it to be the very reason you lose him. Intimate relationships are built on trust. Even if you can get away with lying about your age, the cost may be so high that you don’t want to. Brian may not look at it as a trivial issue and may even worry that age isn’t the only secret you’ve kept from him.
I recommend that you and Brian also have a conversation concerning your individual views on having a family. Was he just kidding or is having a family truly essential and important to him? Communicate honestly to determine if your views about parenthood are mutually compatible.
Tweaking one’s age in order to make an initial connection is a practice that a lot of online daters think is all right. Many of them also insist they have every honest intention of admitting the truth upon meeting, especially if there seems to be a spark of interest. The longer the lie lingers, however, the more it puts a genuinely healthy relationship in jeopardy.