I have just found out that my boyfriend lied to me about his age. We live together and were thinking of maybe getting engaged towards the end of this year.
When we initially met, he told me he was born in summer 1991. I had no reason not to believe him.
Subsequently, doubts entered my mind. A different year was on his CV (1989 or 1990, I can't remember). He explained this by saying that he aged himself up to improve his legitimacy, which sort of made sense, as he is in a managerial position that he would generally be considered quite young for. I also, to be honest, just had a feeling that something was 'off' when we talked about age or birthdays. I questioned him a couple of times while the relationship was still fairly new, asking if he was definitely born in 1991 and also confirming multiple times that I would still be interested in him if he was older (even quite significantly older). He stuck with 1991, and after a while I left it, even talking about how excited I was to throw him a 30th birthday party this year.
Well, I just asked him again. He told me he is 29 years old, and was born in summer 1990. I'm not great at maths but even I know that would make him 30. I asked him to tell me the truth. He found it funny, and told me 1990, then 1991, then 1989, then 1986, before finally admitting, after I became visibly upset, that the real year was 1989. So he is 31.
I don't care that he is 31. It wouldn't have made a difference to me deciding to date him, even if I had known it right from the beginning.
He says that age is not important, it's just personality that matters, and so he doesn't feel he has to tell anyone his real age. He says that he gave a younger age initially because there were other people with us (but that doesn't explain, in my opinion, why he didn't admit the truth in private). He doesn't consider it to be a lie. He claims that even if he found out I had given him a fake name, he would still love me.
He is a good, kind, intelligent, funny man, who is very considerate and supportive. He has a great job and has never attempted to sponge off me. I have been in a manipulative relationship previously and I do not think that is what is going on here. I have met his family, who are kind and welcoming. I don't have any reason to believe (or any gut feeling suggesting to me) that he is lying about anything else.
And yet there is a kernel of doubt. Is it stupid to stay with a man who lied about something so fundamental? Does it always indicate more lies? Or am I the one who's off-base, and this is not as big of a deal as I think it is? How can we (or should we) move past this? I don't want to throw a wonderful relationship away, but I also don't want to find out a decade into marriage that he's been lying about other things.
TL;DR Is lying about age always a red flag?
Submitted January 26, 2021 at 08:15AM by age_dilemma https://ift.tt/36ecXPw
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