Lying or Misrepresenting Yourself in Your Online Dating Profile

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This is the absolute WORST thing you can do in your profile. If you are looking to develop a meaningful relationship with someone, why in the world would you want to start things off with a material misrepresentation?

Here are some of the most common ways people misrepresent themselves online:
• A 36 year old woman says that she is 32;
• A married guy says he is single;
• A heavy-set woman describes her body-type as ‘petite’ (which by the way, is NOT acceptable just because you happen to be 5’1);
• A teacher puts down ‘physician’ as his occupation;
• A bald guy posts photos from five years ago, when he had a full head of hair (or is wearing a baseball hat in all of his pictures);
• A woman deliberately posts photos of herself only from the neck up in an attempt to conceal her true ‘body-type’;
• A guy copies someone else’s profile and represents it as his own.

I would like to point out one thing here. There is a fine line between lying in your profile and ‘embellishing’ a bit. So if you find out that someone made themselves an inch taller, 10 pounds (NO MORE!) lighter or put their location as Manhattan when they really live right across the river, you really can’t complain too much. However, this becomes a problem when the ‘misrepresentation’ is material – meaning that it is a significant change from reality.

The bottom line is this – YOU ARE GOING TO GET CAUGHT. You are who you are, and if you are not happy with that, you need to change that aspect of yourself. But in the meantime, be honest. It is not fair to waste other people’s time and resources because you lied to them. And look at it this way – you are also wasting your own time (and self-respect), because once they find out you are a fraud, they are going to drop you anyway.

Alexander Stone & Stephen David
Copyright 2009 - All rights reserved
Online Dating Edge / Approach Dynamics