Secrets

Internet dating sites are places bursting full of secrets.

I have found that everyone has secrets. Some are huge game changing secrets, and some are quieter, smaller secrets that make you wonder why they are even secrets at all.

We hide secrets from one another in the online dating world in the hope that someone will firstly meet us, secondly be enchanted by our looks, and thirdly adore our personality that they will then be so infatuated by us that any secret we reveal, no matter how shocking, will be like water off a duck’s back to a potential partner. This is the hope, the reality is often different.

My experience with dating men I have met online has not always been a positive one, especially when it comes to the secrets they have concealed then revealed. I am not alone in my experience, many of my female friends have succumbed to the same fate. 

Before the men reveal their secrets, they use a spell, mixed in a cauldron I believe, or so I have been told. Not many people know this. These sorts of men are wizards of deception. The ingredients for their spells are as follows…

4 parts love bombing

2 parts charm

3 parts hypnosis

1 part wishful thinking

Once they have successfully cast the spell, the secrets wiggle out like little worms at first. Testing the air and the reaction they get. Gingerly easing into the atmosphere. Then suddenly they begin dropping onto us. The slimy squiggly information they just happened to ‘forget’ to tell us.

I’m still married

My last 2 ex’s have restraining orders against me but it’s because they were crazy and controlling

I actually still live with my ex

I have 7 children by 4 different women

Of course, our immediate response is that we are shellshocked. Our skin crawls, but the men are quick to kiss us and flatter us, wrap their arms around us and whisper of their fondness for the earrings we are wearing and the scent of the perfume on our necks. The little worms retreat. Pounding hearts steady. Breathing slows. The numbing effect of the wine they have been ordering throughout the night takes the edge off. Maybe it’s not so bad says the last glass of red I drank.

But what they never know is that I have a secret too. 

My secret I kept hidden for a long time. I concealed it in the photos I posted on my online profile and in the way I dressed on a first date. I double checked that first date locations never had stairs and I never agreed to walking dates. Sitting down dates were a must to hide my secret. Coffee, dinner or going for drinks were the only acceptable first date options. I always made sure to arrive early so I was already seated, legs firmly planted under the table. All I had to do was rise for a polite continental kiss on the cheek as a greeting. Keeping my secret safe was my number one priority.

Well, it was, until one day something inside me changed. I no longer wanted to be a keeper of secrets…

Tell me two truths and tell me one lie, he typed…

I have a cat, one leg and have been to Dubai, I replied

Christ! Please tell me the leg is the lie!

Nope, it’s the truth actually…

I can’t tell if you’re being sick with me or not.

Sick? I’m not being sick, I have one leg, I had an accident.

I went on a date with a girl with a prosthetic once,

(He states heroically as if to astound me with his act of charity) 

but amputees aren’t really my thing.  

Sorry.

Ah that’s just as well then, as men like you aren’t really my thing either. 

Sorry. 

Everyone has secrets. 

Secrets are no longer my thing.