The subtle art of lying about your age on dating apps
While it's never okay to lie about your age, it's understandable and potentially forgivable on dating apps - if done ethically.
Read this article on Medium or listen to the Your Dating Bestie Podcast episode.
Why lying about your age on dating apps is so common
Sadly, online dating and lying about your age tend to go hand-in-hand.
At first, you don’t want to lie. Then you feel yourself getting overlooked with every passing birthday, even though you don’t look that different.
Then you find out other people lie, which means you’re competing with so-called ‘younger’ people who are actually the same age as you — or older.
And that’s just on your side of things.
What about the men you’re looking to date? They lie about their age too.
What if you’ve swallowed your pride and been honest about your age on your dating profile (or at least on the first date), but they haven’t?
The ethics of lying about your age on dating apps
Warning: Nuance ahead.
If you’re a black and white thinker who always takes the politically correct, morally righteous standpoint (despite how impractical it might be sometimes), I’m already prepared for you to willfully misunderstand me.
So, let me be crystal clear:
I’m not advocating for lying about your age.
Personally, I’ve never lied about my age on or off a dating app. But I do think lying about your age on dating apps is understandable. And I do think there are ethical and unethical ways of going about it.
So, let’s tackle this topic in three parts:
Q&A: This woman asked me how to handle a man who lied about his age on his dating profile and, after two dates, still hadn’t come clean.
How to lie about your age on dating apps ethically — if you must
If you should forgive men who lie about their age on dating apps
Q: He lied about his age. What should I do?
Hi Elly,
How do you approach the subject of someone lying to you about their age?
I’ve now been on two dates with a man who said he was 48 on his dating profile. Turns out, he’s actually 52. (Yes, I’ll admit it — I did some googling.)
I want to discuss it with him, but I don’t know how.
I really like him and don’t have a problem with his age — just the fact that he lied about it on his dating profile and hasn’t come clean after two dates.
Hope you can help.
Cheers,
Jane
A: It depends on how the lie makes you feel
Hi Jane,
Lying about your age on dating apps is tricky because the best way to handle it varies from person to person and circumstance to circumstance.
So, I’m going to lay out some options and you can pick the one that feels right for you.
Firstly, the trouble with online dating is that people don’t want to get filtered out of searches by an arbitrary number, such as 50. Like, the moment you turn 50, you drop off the radar of everyone searching for people aged 40–49. Hence the temptation to knock a few years off your age.
Secondly, scraping four years off your age, especially when you’re older and it’s not misleading from a fertility standpoint, isn’t too bad. I think seven years or more is a bit of a stretch and unfair to prospective dates.
So, is lying about your age okay? No. Is it a red flag? Not necessarily.
If you just can’t get past it, that’s okay. Tell him you’re aware of his real age, you’re disappointed you’ve now been on two dates and he hasn’t come clean, and you’ve decided you want to find someone who’s more honest.
It’s possible he’ll beg and plead for a second chance, but don’t count on it. If you choose this option, you have to be willing to walk away.
However, if you’re more flexible, here’s another option…
Next time you see him, open up a discussion about this in a light and genuinely curious manner. You could say something like, ‘Okay, I have a confession to make. Because I like you, I couldn’t resist googling you. However, I discovered you’re actually 52 — not 48. Is that correct?’
Assuming he says yes, ask him why he lied — and listen to his answer. If he gets defensive and blames it on you or everyone and everything other than himself, that’s a bad sign. That’s much more of a red flag than the lie itself because he’s not someone who takes responsibility for his actions.
But if he’s more like, ‘Oops, I’m busted’, and shares that he’s a little insecure about the fact that he’s now over 50 (or something to that effect) and seems apologetic, you might want to consider giving him a second chance.
Trust your intuition. If he makes you feel icky, move on. But if you can see where he’s coming from, you really like him and you think he’s worth another chance, keep seeing him. As you get to know him, you’ll discover if this lie was an anomaly or if lying is a part of who he is.
I hope that has given you some clarity.
Warmest,
Elly
My husband: The poster-boy for ethically lying about your age on dating apps
You might be interested to know that my husband, David, lied about his age on his dating profile. BUT… He did it on the most ethical way possible.
Firstly, he really, truly, looks young for his age. He’s 10 years older than me and, if we’d met offline, I would have thought he was about my age.
Secondly, he only scraped three years off his age. He could have scraped five or more years off his age and gotten away with it.
Thirdly, he specifically stated in the body of his dating profile: ‘I look younger than I am, which is a little older than I said.’
And finally, on our first date, literally as we sat down at the table, he brought it up and came clean about his real age. No prompting from me.
My general feeling about him was that he was an open and honest guy — and I was right. In fact, openness and honesty is one of David’s best qualities. Also on our first date, he told me he wasn’t currently working full-time — that he was doing some part-time work between full-time jobs. He didn’t need to be so open and honest so soon about the state of his career, but he chose to be. I really liked that about him. And almost a decade later, he continues to be extremely open and honest with me.
So, I’m glad I didn’t have a hard and fast rule about ditching men who lie about their age on dating apps. I’m glad I trusted my intuition and got to know him a little better before writing him off - even though I, personally, have never lied about my age on a dating app.
Should you forgive men who lie about their age on dating apps?
My advice is to check in with yourself about how the lie makes you feel.
If he lied about his age by too many years or he hasn’t come clean about his real age early enough in the dating process, it might be a sign that he’s comfortable with being deceitful.
But if he knocked a few years off his age to appear in more women’s search results and he comes clean about his real age quickly and easily, it might be worth giving him a second chance.
Should you lie about your age on dating apps?
As a general rule, I’d never advocate for lying about your age.
However, if you must, here are two rules for doing it ethically:
Don’t lie about your age around crucial fertility years. It isn’t fair to market yourself as a 35-year-old woman when you’re actually 40. That could mean the difference between falling pregnant naturally — or not.
Do what my husband did and knock less than five years off your age so you appear in more men’s search results, but come clean about your real age in your dating profile or, at the very least, on the first date. Don’t leave it for weeks on end or until the man finds out your real age himself and confronts you with your lie. He might not be so forgiving.
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