How to Catch a Date in a Lie

I’ve found that men I date are “ honesty-challenged.” Many of them complain that women at online dating sites also post old photographs of themselves and lie about their age.

Perpetrated by either a man or a woman, that seems so counterproductive. Does the person think a date won’t notice the discrepancy? (For that matter, why do women fake orgasms? Are they trying to teach their lovers what not to do?)

I confess that I’m too trusting. I couldn’t detect a lie if Pinocchio told me he was a real boy, and I need to learn to do a better job of knowing when men aren’t telling the truth. Help comes in the book Never Be Lied to Again: How to Get the Truth in Five Minutes or Less in Any Conversation or Situation by psychologist David J. Lieberman.

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Body language, supposedly, never lies, Leiberman writes, so I’ve begun to scrutinize my dates’ physical behavior. When people lie, they tend to be less demonstrative, particularly with arms and hands. I’m originally from New York City, where there must be a lot of honest people because almost everyone talks with their arms and hands. I can’t tell you how many glasses I’ve almost knocked over while talking.

More specifically, according to Lieberman, people telling a lie keep their hands in their laps or stuffed into their pockets. Fingers might be folded into their hands. If your date, when asked a question, turns hands palm down or clenches them, that’s defensiveness.

Your date’s eyes are even more revealing. Besides getting no direct eye contact or looking at a face partially covered by hands, you can catch a date lying just by observing in which direction his eyeballs move after you ask a question. If a right-handed man answers a question and his eyes shoot to the right, he is making something up. If his eyes go to the left, he is recalling something that actually happened. For left-handed people, it’s the opposite.

As they say, the eyes really are the windows to the soul.

Coming Sept. 3: More tips for becoming a human lie detector.

*Names and identifying information have been changed to protect privacy and security.

 Photo: caracterdesign/iStock

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