We were having Chinese food when my boyfriend mentioned the animal associated with the year he was born. It did not fit the birth year he had given me. This time, instead of leaving the discrepancy alone, I challenged it.
He finally admitted he was three years older than he had said.
I’m in my mid-fifties, and we have been together for five months. Four months ago, I asked what year he was born. He gave me an answer that turned out to be false. This was not just a number left over on a dating profile or something I had misunderstood. I asked him directly, and he told me directly.
The uncomfortable part is that I had suspected it for almost as long as I had known his answer. I had run a background check, and the information I found pointed to a birth year three years earlier. Other details about his past made more sense with that year, too. There was already a gap between the man’s account of himself and the information in front of me.
But a suspicion is an awkward thing to bring into a new relationship. I had given him the benefit of the doubt. The check pointed one way, while the answer he had given me pointed another. So the question stayed unresolved until last week’s dinner, when his reference to the zodiac brought it back into the conversation.
I reminded him of the year he had told me. Once he admitted the truth, I told him I had suspected it all along. That admission did not make me feel triumphant. I was angry that I had allowed room for an innocent explanation while he knew the answer I was trying to establish.
I also asked him to confirm a regulated credential he had said he held. He said he did have it. That matched the database I had checked, and I told him so. The credential was not another lie I had uncovered; it was something I could verify, and the records supported what he had told me.
Now he seems rattled by the fact that I check things. That is my impression of his reaction, but it has become a second uncomfortable part of the same conversation. He knows I looked beyond what he told me. I know that, on his age, looking beyond it turned out to be necessary to find the truth.
I have been honest with him, including about personal health matters that could affect a partner. Those were things I chose to disclose because we were getting involved with each other. Meanwhile, the answer he gave to a straightforward question about his own life was false.
The three years are no longer a mystery. What is sitting between us now is that I verified his story, he seems upset that I did, and I’m still angry that there was a lie to verify.
