Is "Lying" About Your Height A Deal Breaker?

What To Do When Your Vision of a Person Collides With Reality

Hi friends! It's Dear Dr. Marina Day! Let's dive in.

Hi Dr. Marina, my question is regarding the person I’ve been seeing for 4 months now. Initially it started long distance and after a month he came to see me. I would talk regularly on ft and ask him about his family and tell him that I’m a short girl like 5’3 and he would tell me his sister is really tall like 5’9 and that he’s taller. So I started to build him in my head. Fast forward when he came to see me he was wearing chunky shoes and therefore I thought he was 5’11 or 6 ft and after that I went to his air bnb and he wasn’t wearing shoes so I’m guessing he’s actually 5’7. I asked him point blank and he said that as well. But I’m having a hard time getting over it and I can’t figure out why. Because my ex was 5’7 or 5’8 and I was completely okay with it. Can you please help me work through this. I don’t want to lose a good person because I can’t love him wholeheartedly

I've seen many situations where something said early on in a relationship starts to take on larger than life meaning. In this case, the writer had a picture of their now partner as a specific height, and felt he reinforced that image. When she realized he was shorter than she envisioned, she got hung up on the discrepancy between that initial image and reality. Although this question is about height, I think it's actually very universal! What do you do when your new partner is not exactly who you thought they were?

Today I'll explore:

• how to feel into what this hang up is really about,
• what to do once you figure out the underlying issue at play,
• mindset shifts to help you make a choice and move on,
• and what to do in cases of more serious deception.

Let's go!