Putting your best face foreward

Without realizing it, this post became a companion piece – of sorts – to my other post from today…

There’s something I don’t like to think about a lot, and something I like to talk about even less, but it’s been on my mind for some time.

Having been in the world of online dating off-and-on for the last several years, I have to say one thing that really really frustrates me, and as a guy saying this, I know I’m going to sound superficial and shallow, but: I really hate when people are dishonest about their appearance on dating apps.

I know, everybody wants to put their best foot (or face) forward when it comes to social media, and especially so on dating apps. I have no doubt that women use filters to make their makeup look a little bit better in pictures. I have no doubt that women might even use Photoshop to remove a pimple or a birthmark or what not. But the thing that gets me is when women are straight up, deceitful about their appearance. Sometimes people will use pictures of themselves when they’re younger, when they weigh less (sometimes considerably less) in order to be deemed attractive by potential suitors.

Once, on one of the dating apps, I think I’d use a picture that was about three months old, and somebody had told me that I was “catfishing”because of that. I think my hair was shorter in the picture but beyond that, my appearance was pretty much the same. At the same time, I think this person had some real issues and that’s probably why they were resorting to finding a date on a dating app rather than talking to people in real life, but I digress.

But there are a few people that I have dated through the dating apps that I can tell you they were straight-up deceitful with thephotos that they used.

From a certain point of view

There was one, Title Lady, who I dated a few months ago, who I feel was…clever about her appearance. but she was apt at positioning the camera at certain angles to make yourself look thinner than she really was. Again, I think a lot of people do this, and that’s not the biggest crime in the world. The truth was, I just didn’t feel any connection with Title Lady.

Turning back time

One woman, Customer Service, whom I have blogged about here in the past, had admitted to me that she had some substance abuse issues roughly two years before we met. She had even said that in a lot of photos of herself when she was considerably thinner, it was because she was doing drugs, and simply not eating as much. I don’t think this is unusual as I’ve heard, but this happens to a lot of drug abusers.

I don’t bring up her past to be judgmental. After all, it was well before her and I had met. The problem with customer service is she was using photos of herself as she appeared while she was abusing drugs… Mainly thinner… Not only on her dating app profile, but on her regular social media accounts as well.

Customer service certainly wasn’t proud of her past. She had only told me about it after we had gotten to know each other and established a sense of trust with one another. But I always found it odd that she would use photos of herself from this particularly darker time in her life as to the image that she was putting out into the world.

I know that there are photo apps where people can actually make themselves look thinner. It’s possible she may have been using one of those. But I couldn’t see somebody concocting a story about drug abuse to hide the fact that they were using a filter on their own photos.

The funny thing is is I still dated customer service anyway. Even though I had been deceived, I wasn’t ready to pass judgment on her yet. I never held her physique against her. Hell, for that matter, I never really held against her the fact that she was clearly being deceitful.

Needless to say, there were other things that went on in that relationship and Customer Service and I aren’t speaking today

Not catfishing, but….

There’s someone who I’m dating right now, or at least seeing, who I feel was straight up deceitful with her use of photos on the dating app. She’s a nice person and everything, and I can tell she’s really into me, but I really am taken aback at this level of deceit.

And I won’t be blunt here: on her online photos, the veteran looks to be about 100 pounds lighter than what she is in real life. I understand people being insecure about their bodies, but there is a big difference between “putting your best face forward“ and being straight up deceitful.

And I don’t know what to do about that. The Veteran just had knee surgery so I know she’s been mostly immobile for the last few months. But I guess now that the surgery is done, and most of her rehab is over, I guess it’s a matter of Seeing if she’s able to get back a little bit of the appearance that she once had.

And I know, this sounds totally shallow and positively sexist. And I don’t really mean it that way. I think I’m just taken aback at the level of dishonesty that these women have shown me over the years. I would not go as far as to call any of these women catfish. They are real people, clearly they are the people they claim to be. But a lie is still a lie.

Herein lies the big problem with dating apps. We can say everything we want about how “It’s hard to meet people at our age, especially after Covid” or even “this is just how people do it today”. But the truth is that most of us are on online dating apps, most of us who have to resort to using online dating apps, we do so for a reason. Like everything else in life, I guess it’s just a question of how much of the illusion we’re willing to put up with.

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