By Melissa Becker
Age is just a number. Your driver�s license might say that you�re over fifty but you still have the energy and focus you did in your twenties. Unfortunately, when someone asks you how old you are they usually don�t care about how old you feel. Ageism runs throughout society and it can be hard to overcome the stereotypes of what someone your age is expected to look and act like. It is enough to make a mature single person start to consider shaving a few years off of their age.
In a perfect world potential dates would be able to get the time to know you and your personality before deciding if they want to start a relationship or not. But usually people don�t have the time to really get to know someone so instead they make decisions based on arbitrary things like age. It�s possible that there is a perfect match for you out there who hasn�t met you yet because they are one or two years out of their ideal age range. It can be especially hard for people using Internet dating sites where users are able to sort perspective matches by age. So with one click of a button a fun and feisty sixty-one year old could be left out even though she may look and act younger then the fifty-nine year old that makes the cut.
On the other hand it is never a good idea to begin a relationship with deception. At some point your real age is going to come out, probably on your next birthday, and then you need to be able to explain your motives and rational. I remember a story of a couple who were moving in together to an apartment and had to fill out forms for a background check. When the apartment manager called back to alert them that the information she supplied came back as fraudulent she had to very quickly confess the truth and it was very embarrassing for everyone involved. It�s even possible that you could lose the relationship because of this small lie because the trust is broken. These are the things you have to weigh before deciding if you are going to start fibbing about how old you are.
If you do decide that it is worth the risks then you should be realistic in your deception. Pretending to be a year or two younger is one thing but when you start taking off decades it looks ridiculous. Also, it is much harder to be forgiven for a couple years then five or ten of them. And just because you are altering your age doesn�t mean that you should start trying to equally adjust the ages of everyone around you. Trying to pretend that your children and grandchildren are also younger starts to get very complicated, not to mention that while you have the right to lie about yourself you don�t have the right to do the same for somebody else. Finally, you need to have an exit plan. Set a point in your mind early in the relationship, one the sixth or eighth date for example, when you are going to come clean. Give them just enough time to get to know how vivacious and youthful you are so that they can see that you are not defined by your age. But the longer you wait to tell the truth the harder it is going to be.
Of course the bigger question is if you really want to be involved with someone who considers youth to be a defining factor? Don�t let society pressure you into changing who you are in an effort to fit in. You age is something you should be proud of because is a symbol of your experience and maturity. Even if you do choose to fib about your age to try and meet somebody don�t let the lie consume you to the point that you feel embarrassed by the truth. Growing old isn�t easy, but it is better then the alternative.
Melissa Becker is a contributing writer for http://www.peoplefishing.com, a free online dating service.
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