Can You Change Your Age on OkCupid?

No. Once your date of birth is set on OkCupid, you cannot change it on the site or in the app. Other members only ever see your age, never your actual birthday. If you entered the date wrong by accident, OkCupid asks you to email its support to have it corrected.

Your birthday stays private. A woman looking at your page sees one number, your age, and nothing more exact than that.

So nobody sees the day or the month you were born. Nobody finds out you are a Scorpio unless you tell her yourself. The only part of your date of birth that shows is the part that matters to her, which is how old you are.

Slips at sign-up are common. A scroll wheel lands one year off. The day and month get swapped. A thumb hits the wrong number on a small screen.

OkCupid's answer is to email support. You cannot correct it yourself, so the email is the only way. Make the request easy to act on:

• Send it from the email address that is on your account.
• Say plainly that the date of birth was entered by accident.
• Give the correct date.

Keep it short and factual, then wait for the reply. Do not try to work around the rule in the meantime.

Some men made a genuine typo. Plenty of others want a younger number, usually to land inside the age filters women set.

It is an understandable temptation. If most women near you cap their range at 40 and you are 42, two years feels like the difference between being seen and being invisible. OkCupid's rule settles it anyway, since the date stays put once it is set. But it is worth knowing why the honest number is the better bet even where an app would let you fudge it.

Say a younger age did put you in front of more women. The first date would then start with a lie that she is going to uncover. She sees your face across the table. She notices a detail about the year you finished school. Or she simply does the math later. From that moment she is wondering what else on your page is untrue.

Online dating already asks a woman to trust a stranger. A man who looks exactly like his photos and is exactly the age he said has nothing waiting to go wrong. That calm shows on the date.

The same logic applies to old photos and heavily edited ones. A woman tends to assume the least flattering version of you is the real one. It pays to show her the real one from the start, so the man she meets is the man she expected.

Age matters less than most men fear. It matters more for what it signals than for the number itself. To a woman, your age stands for other things: your energy, your stage of life, whether you want what she wants.

Plenty of women like dating an older man. Plenty do not care either way. Some are put off. That spread holds for almost every trait a man has, and you do not need every woman. You need enough of the ones who like what you are.

So a 45-year-old who comes across as active, social and fun can do very well against a 38-year-old whose photos show a couch and a dim kitchen.

Instead of fighting the number, make it part of the appeal.

Choose photos that show a life being lived: outdoors, with friends, doing something you are good at. Recent photos matter even more for an older man, because an out-of-date picture is the first thing a date notices when you walk in.

Set your own age range honestly. Include the women you would actually enjoy an evening with, not only the youngest ones who might say yes.

Then write with a little confidence and humor. A man who seems comfortable with who he is makes his age feel like an advantage. A man who seems apologetic about it turns it into a problem, and she picks up on that before she reaches the end of his first line.

Leave your age out of your opening lines entirely. She can already see it. Joking that you are "the old guy" or asking whether she minds the gap only points at the thing you were worried about. Talk about her page, make her laugh, and suggest a drink. If the gap matters to her, she will say so, and you will have lost nothing by being straight with her from the start.