I created an online dating profile back in January and said I was interested in men ages 27-35. One of the first normal-seeming guys to hit me up listed his age as 36…slightly out of range, but I thought “Why not?” We went out a few times and had really good chemistry, even though there were things about him that made me hold back a little bit from seeing him as a “forever” prospect. After a lackluster Valentine’s Day date, I avoided him for a few weeks, finally lured back by concert tickets. We had a great time and I felt satisfied that even if I wasn’t madly in love, he was a solid dude worth hanging out with and having fun with. I met up with him again for drinks a few days after the concert, and in the midst of a conversation about something completely different, he starts a sentence with: “Look, I’m 42 years old…”
I’m sorry, what?
He said he was sorry, he thought he had told me, and then said he lies about his age because he looks young and doesn’t want to deal with “awkward conversations” (okay, honey, you don’t look THAT young). “Besides”, he said, “does it really matter? Age is just a number, after all”. I explained to him that it’s not the age so much as it is the deception – finding out after four months that the person you’ve been sleeping with is actually 6 years older than you thought they were – it’s just a shock to the system. “Sure”, he acknowledged, but four months isn’t that long – “a flash in the pan, really.” Um, yeah. Bye.