Should You Lie About Your Age?

Should you lie about your age on your online dating profile?

Short answer: No. You should be completely truthful about your age, height, income, etc. You should use recent photos that actually look like you. Be 100% open and honest, because when you go on dates, they’ll know if you’ve been lying.

Long answer: Still no, but it’s slightly more complicated than that.

I’ve had this theory for a while that I want to share with you. I got on Match.com in early August of last year. I was 29 at the time. I turned 30 in early January. My theory is that the number of women under 30 who have contacted me on Match has dropped precipitously since I turned 30, as if there’s a huge gap between 29 and 30.

Now, I want to say up front that I have no problem at all with older women contacting me. I certainly think there’s an element of me wanting to feel like I still attract younger women–that’s definitely there. But beyond that, age doesn’t really matter to me.

I didn’t think I’d be able to test this theory until tonight, when I realized that I could search my gmail for the word “winked” and find every woman who has winked at me on Match. So I compiled the data, and here’s what I found:

  • The past year, 421 women have winked at me on Match.com, 220 of them when I was 29, 201 of them since I turned 30.
  • This is somewhat irrelevant, but just to show you that the data isn’t skewed by me winking at every woman on Match, I wink at about 5 women a month on Match.
  • The average age of women who winked at me when I was 29 was 27.84. Since I’ve been 30, that average has climbed to 28.16 (a negligible difference).
  • The percentages show a slightly larger gap, but not by much: In my youth, 72% of women who winked at me were under 30. Since I’ve turned 30, that percentage has dropped to 66%.
Thus my hypothesis held a only a shred of truth. So I’d like to thank all women–those who are younger and those who are older–for considering me an eligible bachelor. I hope you treat other men the same way.

13 thoughts on “Should You Lie About Your Age?”

  1. Regarding the slight uptick in the average age of women contacting you–I wonder how much of that can be accounted for by the fact that roughly the same women are on match today as pre-January and that they, too, are becoming older as you age.

    For instance, a woman creating a similar poll of men contacting her who were over or under 30 would have her results differently impacted by you contacting her pre- and post-January.

    Reply
    • I’m not quite sure I follow. The winks came from 421 different women.

      Now, I do see the point that the age thing might work both ways. Just as younger women were slightly more likely to contact me when I was 29, when I got bumped into a new age bracket, perhaps I suddenly showed up on more 30+ women’s searches.

      Overall, I had hypothesized that there is a huge psychological difference when perceiving potential dating partners when comparing 29-year-olds to 30-year-olds. But my theory was mostly incorrect. I wonder, though, if guys’ perception of girls at that age makes for a more distinct difference.

      Reply
      • I think Matthew McKinnna-needs-a-shower exemplifies Trev’s point in the movie Dazed & Confused, when he said, “That’s what I love about High School Girls. I get older, and they stay the smae age.” As you age, so should the people who are interested in you. Thus, they are the same people.

        Also take into account that you’ve been winked at by 421 women, and perform 5 winks a month (60/yr). I understand that the number of ladies in the pool are changing regularly, but maybe you’re just running out of new women to interact with.

        Reply
        • Yes, that first point is what I was getting at. As you age, so do the other people on match (the site isn’t continuously updated with new 18-year-olds all the time). The site is largely populated by the same women as it was a year ago, they’re just a year older, ergo, the average age of women searching for you has increased slightly as the women on the site have aged. (A minor point, I know, but one I felt like noting.)

          Reply
            • Yes, also you need to check each woman’s birthday and the date they winked at you and make the comparison to see what age they were then. (if you didn’t already do this–I wasn’t certain based on your highly detailed results report)

              Reply
              • I can send you the full spreadsheet if you’d like it. 🙂 The ages of the women are the ages they were when they winked at me, not their ages today.

  2. I’ve used match.com a couple times, with about a year in between uses. However, when I updated my information the second time I also updated the age of the men I was looking for – to reflect a year or so older as I had aged. I’m sure not every woman out there does this, but in general I also think women tend to look for men who are either roughly the same age or older. Conversely, men would be looking for rougly the same age or younger.

    Reply

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