A mundane lie so many men tell women they are dating turned my life upside down. It’s time we stopped accepting this

When you’ve already lived through the kind of heartbreak that leaves a permanent mark – raising your baby alone before he’s even born – you cling to love when you find it.

And sometimes, those red flags? They look suspiciously like green lights.

In 2015, I was 30 weeks pregnant when my husband, Glen, died in his sleep while in Thailand recording with his band. We’d married just nine months earlier. There were no real answers beyond ‘heart and respiratory failure’.

One day I was part of a power couple – me running multiple businesses, him on the cusp of big tours – and the next, I was back living with my parents, carrying our son, trying to keep my world from collapsing.

Dating again wasn’t even on my radar. When I eventually dipped a toe in, seven years later, it was a whole new world – apps, swipes, men who didn’t know how to respond when I told them my husband hadn’t left me – he’d died. I wasn’t a single mum with every second weekend free. I was a solo parent.

By the end of 2022, I’d had a few short flings before I met Dave* on Bumble. At 45, he was 10 years older than me, but we clicked instantly. We talked for a week before meeting. He didn’t drive, so I went to his place in Brisbane from mine in Ipswich.

We shared the same spiritual interests, he listened, encouraged my work, and didn’t flinch when trolls attacked my business online. That support meant everything. He seemed completely genuine and I put my faith in him.

Within months, we were building a life together. He had three kids, and blending our lives took some adjusting, but I wanted it to work. I wanted to be a wife again. I wanted the life I thought I was supposed to have – marriage, a shared home, a family.

When we started talking marriage, I probably nudged it along. I didn’t beg for a ring, but I encouraged it. I’d lost that role so suddenly with Glen’s death; I wanted it back.

One night, he set up candles outside, told me to come out after work, and proposed. It was sweet, exactly the moment I’d been craving.

We celebrated quietly at home. No friends, no family – he said he was estranged from them and lived for his kids. That made sense to me.

Dave was a chef, I was an entrepreneur, so we started a catering business. He handled the cooking, I ran the business side. We branded it, built a website, got bookings rolling in.

But to manage the money properly, we needed a joint business account. I filled in the forms and submitted them to the bank. There was an issue and they needed to speak with Dave. He told me it was an issue with his email address. I remember sitting there thinking, ‘How on earth does an email hold up a bank account for this long?’ But he always had a calm, plausible-sounding reason why it would be fixed ‘soon’.

After weeks passed, I urged him to sort it. It was not sustainable for me to keep running the money from the catering business through my other business accounts.

Together we called the bank. ‘You’ve put 1977 as his birth year, but our records say 1971.’

It seemed like a silly clerical error. The guy from the bank even said it happened all the time. Sitting next to me, Dave said, ‘Yeah, it should be ’77.’ I told him, ‘Let’s go to the bank right now and sort it.’

That’s when the excuses started.

First: I don’t have my ID on me.

That weekend: I’ve lost my ID.

Weeks later: It’s in the mail.

Then: It must have been lost in the mail.

Before the bank saga, we’d been happy. After it started, the whole energy between us shifted. He became more withdrawn and irritable. The connection we’d had – that easy flow – started to feel tense.

I can see now he was living with the pressure of maintaining a lie. At the time, I just felt like something was rotting between us and I couldn’t work out what.

After about six weeks, he sent me a photo of a digital ID. ‘I’ve got my ID now,’ he said. I was relieved – great, we can get this sorted.

But when we went to the bank, they wouldn’t accept it. It had to be physical ID. So the joint account stayed in limbo. The whole thing got pushed aside over Christmas, New Year, school holidays.

By early February, his lease was up and we’d decided he’d move in with me. But instead of packing, he spiralled about giving away his cat and started making passive-aggressive comments about all the ‘changes’ he was making for me.

On Valentine’s Day, we had a huge screaming match. I can’t even remember what started it – there was just so much tension. I left and didn’t hear from him for 24 hours. That was it for me. The energy had been wrong for months. I ended it.

He was upset, asked me to reconsider, but I didn’t really feel him fight for it. I think part of him was relieved.

We still had to finalise the business – including transferring the phone account into his name. That meant a meeting at Optus.

We were sitting at the counter – Dave on my left, the Optus guy on my right. When the guy asked for ID, Dave hesitated just long enough for me to notice. His hands were shaking as he reached into his wallet.

The rep took it, typed in the details, and instead of handing it straight back, placed it flat on the counter in front of me.

It was like everything around me went quiet. I didn’t have to squint or double-check – the numbers stared back at me. 1971.

My stomach dropped. I could feel the heat rise up my neck, my pulse in my ears. I glanced at Dave – he was slouched forward, eyes locked on the floor, jaw tight, breathing shallow. He looked like a man about to be marched to the gallows.

I didn’t pick it up or wave it in his face. I just let the silence stretch between us, let him sit in it. This wasn’t a rumour, a misunderstanding, a clerical error. This was black-and-white proof that the man I’d lived with, loved, and built a business with had lied every single day about something so basic, it made me question everything else.

Outside, in the car, I turned to him. ‘Why?’

He finally looked at me, eyes glassy. ‘I just didn’t think anyone would want to date a 50-something. I didn’t think you’d want to be with me.’

That was it. No grand confession, no apology that could touch the months of stalling, the excuses, the tension that had poisoned us. Just a pitiful little sentence that made me realise he’d rather dig himself into a hole of lies than risk telling me the truth.

Weeks later, after it was all over, I showed the digital ID photo to a friend. She zoomed in and it was obvious – he’d photoshopped the ’71’ into ’77.’

That’s when it really sank in: this wasn’t just a silly fib. It was sustained manipulation. Fraud.

It was grief all over again – grief for a relationship, for trust lost, for the bond my son had formed with his kids. And for a future I thought I was building, only to watch it unravel over a date of birth.

My friends and family were shocked. Everyone had been so happy for me; no one had suspected a thing. The hardest part wasn’t trusting men again. It was trusting myself.

If I’d listened to my gut after that first bank call, I wouldn’t have wasted those tense, awful months. But I wanted the connection so badly that I ignored the signs.

Now I know better. I know my body and my mind will always tell me the truth if I listen. And I know I’d rather love myself than twist myself into knots for someone else’s version of the truth.

• As told to Rebel Wylie