According to the Mirror, a recent survey claims a staggering amount of people lie on first dates. 37% of women lie about their age and 29% of men lie about their wage, for starters.
And that’s even before you get to the 14% of women who give a totally false name – I guess they don’t want you @-ing them with your totally amazing bantz after all, boys. Sorry.
Maybe we’d all like to pretend to be someone else once in a while, but it seems dating is the perfect stage for wannabe thesps to try out their best fibs. Here are a few of the most obvious ones you’ll meet.
1. The six-footer
If your date claims to be six-feet tall, I have some bad news: he probably isn’t. For reasons best known only to them, to be 6′ tall is the dream, the ultimate goal. And if you’re not? Why, just say you are – everyone else will fall into line and believe you.
Thanks to everyone being super-weird about height and no doubt tying it into masculinity or strength or power or whatever, it’s common for the more diminutive of us to fudge the stats a little, to add on an inch or two to our online profiles.
Quite how anyone expects to explain this to your date when you arrive and come up to their elbows is another matter entirely, but people still give it a go.
And the best thing is, he’ll probably say to you: “Oh, you’re not as tall as I thought you’d be.”
Tall people themselves don’t really help, lording it over everyone with those magical, aspirational heights of between 6′ to 6’4. Once you get beyond that however, the height-shaming slips into reverse and our loftier friends start knocking an inch or two off to avoid being labelled as giants.
In short (pardon the pun), nobody is as tall or as short as they say. Nobody.
2. The celebrity CPF
“Yeah, I actually know quite a few famous people.” Impressing people with your celebrity rolodex feels like a very old-fashioned thing to do.
It’s an early noughties, Met Bar, “All Saints at no. 1 in the charts”, “Popbitch messageboard getting threatening letters from J***** C*******” kind of thing. Nobody cares now.
A date who tries to impress you with celebrity gossip or his famous pals is full of shit – people who actually hang out with stars never talk about it until they know you or trust you. All this liar wants to do is get into your knickers; you should tell him his VIP pass isn’t valid and that the velvet rope is staying exactly where it is.
3. The guest list goon
It is great to go somewhere “nice” on a date, but there’s no way on earth a guy on a first date should be pulling out all the big guns. A couple of drinks in the local should suffice. The guy who tells you he can get you into certain clubs or chichi restaurants may well be telling the truth, but he is essentially trying to buy you for the night.
Like the celebrity bullshitter, he’s hoping all this star talk and Amex-fuelled opulence will go right to your head, so he can get straight into your strides. And he probably does it every weekend. With a different one every time. First dates like this rarely make it to a sequel.
And they never, ever, ever have as much money as they say they do. Proper rich people are too scared you’ll fritter it all away to fess up to millions on a first date. Unless they look like a llama’s arse.
4. “I’m over my ex. Totally over it.”
If someone is totally over their ex, they don’t talk about them. Especially on a first date. If somebody asks you about your ex on a first date, run! It is a trap! They just want to talk about their ex.
5. “I don’t really have sex on a first date.”
If this even comes up in conversation, they have already plotted how they’ll get you back to theirs, what they’ll do to you – or have you do to them – once you’re there and how long they’ll give it before asking you to leave.
Men just want you to *think* they don’t fuck on a first date because they assume it makes them look wholesome or respectful or… oh, I don’t know. If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it, but spare us the halo-polishing.
6. “I’m 39.”
I get age sensitivity, I really do. I am, after all, 39. No, I actually am. But some boys tend not to be so truthful.
The trouble with lying about your age is that it suggests you’re not in it for the long haul. Eventually, you’ll have to introduce your partner to your family and, well, unless they’re remarkably compliant or incredibly thoughtless, they aren’t going to let your 40th birthday go unmarked.
If you can’t be with someone who accepts you at the age you are, then what’s the point? Unless you just want a few weeks of sex – in that case, knock five years off. You can tooooooootally get away with that, babes.
7. Physique fakers
Whether they’ve used a picture that was taken when Tony Blair was still hogging the doorstep of Number 10, or added a mille-feuille of filters, body type is still another big lie in the online dating world.
The thing is, your date may well not have cared that your supposed “athletic build” was honed by throwing darts and lifting Heinekens – but if you can lie about that, what other porkies are in your portfolio?
There’s a lot to be said for stamping out body fascism and accepting each other for who we are, but carrying out a social experiment on a date who’s been dreaming of doing a handstand on your purported six-pack is not the way to do it.
What are the biggest whoppers you’ve ever been told on a date? Tweet me baby.
More like this:
25 men you should never date this summer
How the internet makes liars of us all
10 terrible opening lines for a dating profile
Decoding dumb clichés on dating bios
