Carrie Bickmore: You need to tell a few lies to find love

IF YOU want to win the dating game in 2017, you need to tell a few white lies, says Carrie Bickmore, who argues the truth can come out after you’re happily in love.

Stellar columnist Carrie Bickmore argues the truth can come out when you’re happily in love. Until then, what’s a few white lies during the dating stage?

STEVE: Tall, handsome, adventurous and loves rom-coms.

My girlfriend eyeballs the Tinder description and concludes, “Nup, I’m swiping left.”

“Why?” I plead. “He sounds perfect.”

“Nope, if that’s what he’s writing on his Tinder profile he’s bound to be short, boring and hasn’t even seen The Notebook,” she replied.

The dating game in 2017 is complicated. Despite how easy apps have made meeting a would-be suitor, we’ve lost many of the checks and balances that meeting in real life provides.

There she was, make-up free and peeing behind a bush, all the while pretending she’s at one with the great outdoors.

Once you could tell if someone was a douche by their manner and the amount of beer they’d spilt on their shirt. Now you have to determine their personality based on the three words they use on their Tinder profile.

But what hasn’t changed is our need to puff up our feathers. Whether online or in person, we’ve all talked ourselves up to impress someone.

Take my friend (let’s call her Sally). She’d just met a guy she really liked, and in the uncompromising seconds of the first hopeful exchange, tells him she loves Star Wars. Brightened by her love of stormtroopers and Wookiees, he takes her to the latest film for their first date.

So just how big a lie can you be expected to lump yourself with?

Sally chews popcorn, desperately hoping he won’t ask her about the Death Star or why Chewbacca talks the way he does. She somehow gets away with it.

The next day, he says he’s going to the Big Bash that night. “I love cricket!” Sally replies, shocking herself with her own words. This guy must’ve thought he had hit the jackpot. A girl who loves Star Wars and the odd reverse sweep.

Pleased at how things were progressing, she then agrees to go camping with him and his family. There she was, make-up free and peeing behind a bush, all the while pretending she’s at one with the great outdoors.

It was during this time in the wilderness, while making bacon and eggs over the fire, that she casually dropped in: “God, I love cooking.”

Now, Sally is one of the sweetest girls I know. But she doesn’t like sport, hates being dirty and can’t cook. Like, I mean, she is only ever allowed to bring a cheese platter to a barbecue.

Our true colours will come through in the end.

So to declare a passion for cooking when you can’t cook is like saying you’re a fantastic aunt when your siblings don’t even have kids. It’s a dead-end lie. If the relationship progresses, the truth will come out. Or will it?

Since bullsh*tting about the Big Bash, Sally told me she’s actually sad that the “summer of cricket” is over. She’s also taking cooking classes and, while she’s relieved the next Star Wars film is a year away, you’d have to admit that her little white lies have opened her mind to things she may never have considered.

Maybe it is possible for a fib to become your reality. I have a friend who said he loved musicals to impress a girl, and has now been forced to sit through The Lion King in London, New York and Sydney. But he felt it was a small price to pay for snagging the woman of his dreams.

The point is, our true colours will come through in the end. But, let’s be honest, you can’t start out by saying: “Hey, I’m Sophie, I get a bit farty after eating dried fruit, and if you so much as look at another girl’s ankles. I will remove your eyeballs from their sockets.”

All the truth can come out when you’re happily in love.

Carrie co-hosts The Project, 6.30pm weeknights, on Network Ten.

Originally published as Carrie Bickmore: You need to tell a few lies to find love