Never tell the truth

One of the ten commandments of internet dating is THOU SHALT NOT TELL THE TRUTH. Of course, I only discovered this a few weeks into my first foray. I had decided upfront that I was going to be honest. Surely, I thought, if a connection starts off on a lie, where else can it go but downhill?

Oh silly me – everyone lies! Some are small white lies, like shaving a year or two off your age for example. I can understand that 39 sounds more attractive than 41, as we all know 40 signals the beginning of the end. And really this is a kind of gentle embellishment, like a colour rinse to hide those few grey hairs. But then there are the whoppers. Who could blame my friend Ashley for being slightly miffed when the picture of the man he hooked up with one night turned out to have been taken 10 years and 30 kilograms earlier?

And then there’s the plain old bizarre. Like when you click on Andre from Aman’s picture and the fine print under it reads: this is what I’m looking for. Well duh, Andre, we all want to date a supermodel, but you’ve kind of pissed us off by now. Trust me, this will NOT WORK.

At first I told the truth: thank you but I’m not attracted to you. Thank you but I’m not sure we can start, never mind sustain, something if I live in Manhattan, or ... London, or ... Johannesburg and you live in Lagos. Or my favourite, thank you, Boris, for my boyfriend offer to be, but where exactly is Krgystan? Ah bless, they really liked my qualities, drooled over the grainy pic I uploaded and they just knew I would be husband material based on that gay staple, yes, the size of my penis.

One or two were so shocked by my candour they even wrote back and said, thank you, your honesty is so rare. Poor lambs. Like me, I hope they learned fast.

I don’t see it as lying now, it’s more like a game, a tease, a dance. We all know it’s a bit of a show but since we’re all doing it, who gets hurt? Warning, here comes a serious moment. You see no one gets hurt hurt, but what gets eroded is hope and dreams. So when Sipho from Alberton rocked up one night for a date, I realised why he’d chosen only to show his face in his pic. His generous, womanly hips, while surely a turn on for some (mostly heterosexual?) men, were not my cup of tea. “Oh where are all the real men?” I wailed to Robin?

No, boys and girls, do not go internet dating if you’re looking for the truth. As someone once said to me, no matter how well you connect with someone over e-mail, you’ve got to start from scratch when you meet them face to face.