Is the person you are talking to online really single?

You’ve been messaging for a fortnight. They’re funny, they reply quickly, and their profile says they’re single. But between six and ten every evening they vanish, and the last two plans fell through for reasons that were almost convincing.

I would wager that most people who have dated online have been here. You start talking to someone, believing they’re single, and then discover they aren’t. The sinking feeling that follows is not really about the lie. It’s about the time you spent, and the trust you extended on the strength of a single word in a dropdown box.

Dating apps can’t check if someone’s lying

Dating apps can’t check whether a person is truly single, so “single” on a profile is a claim, not a fact. How often the claim is false is a surprisingly murky question. A market-research survey put the share of Tinder users who were married at around 30 per cent (GlobalWebIndex, 2015). Tinder’s own survey, the same year, said 1.7 per cent (Tinder, 2015). More recently, a study of nearly 1,400 Tinder users (NBC News, 2023), reported by NBC News, found that nearly two thirds were already in relationships, though Tinder disputed it, pointing out that the questionnaire offered no “single” option. Some of those people were also entirely open about their situation, which is a very different thing from lying.

So the honest answer is that nobody has measured it reliably. What we do know is that the question matters, so the internet has filled the gap with advice. Some of it is sensible. Some of it is not.

The lie is the problem, not the relationship

Before we go further, let me be clear about something. Dating while you’re in another relationship is not, in itself, a problem. Some people are separated and haven’t finished the paperwork. Some are in open relationships, with their partner’s full knowledge. Some are somewhere in between, and say so. What turns any of these into a problem is lying about it. The person who says “I’m seeing someone, and here is the situation” is being honest, and what you do with that is your choice. The person who says “I’m single” and isn’t is taking that choice away from you.

So if you are one of the people who is not single, my advice is simple: say so, early, and don’t play games. You will lose some matches. You will also keep the ones worth having, and nobody will have to find out by accident. JOAD has a “partnered” status for exactly this reason.

Playing detective

Let’s start with the sensible end. Look for these patterns:

  • Predictable absences. They can’t talk on weekday evenings or at weekends, and holidays are mysteriously off limits. Someone with family duties after work is unlikely to be free for a call at that time. One missed evening means nothing, since shift workers and parents of small children exist. A pattern is what to watch for.
  • A life you never see. Suggest a video call. Look for ordinary signs of a normal life: a kitchen, a flatmate wandering past, a friend mentioned by name. Someone who only ever phones from their car or a hotel room is worth a raised eyebrow.
  • Effort that fades. Real interest shows up as time spent. If the attention is keen for a week and then shrinks to the odd late-night message, ask yourself why.

And now the less sensible end. There is the tip that went viral in Japan in 2019, which promises to catch a liar with a single question. Ask your partner for a detailed account of yesterday: what they ate, who they saw, what they talked about. Then say, “OK, now can you say all that in reverse?” The theory is that a liar, having invented the story, will fall apart when asked to run it backwards. The flaw is that most honest people can’t recite a day in reverse either. Try it on your own Tuesday and see how far you get before you are lost somewhere around lunch. Even the article that reported it notes that critics found it unreliable.

The common flaw is that every test has an innocent explanation, and every guilty person has a perfectly good answer.

Just ask

There is nothing wrong with asking directly. It takes a little courage, but asking shows that you value your own time and that you do your homework. You don’t need a clever tactic. “Are you seeing anyone at the moment?” is a perfectly good question, and most reasonable people will understand why you asked.

Plenty of people will simply answer. Those who won’t often give themselves away by dodging, changing the subject or turning it back on you. Be careful, though: a fluent liar with a sincere face is hard to read, so treat the answer as evidence, not proof, and keep an eye on whether the facts match up over time.

It helps to split the question in three:

  • Are you seeing anyone else right now? Usually a plain yes or no, though not always.
  • What are you looking for? Get this settled early so neither of you wastes the other’s time.
  • When are you actually free? The answers vary, but someone who is serious about meeting should have reasonable time available at sensible hours.

Three underlying questions

Notice that those aren’t really one worry. They’re three, and it helps to separate them:

  1. Identity. Is this person who they say they are?
  2. Availability. Are they free to date?
  3. Intentions. Are they honest about what they want from you?

You need reasonable confidence in all three, and an app can only credibly help with some of them. Here’s where JOAD stands on each.

How JOAD helps

It starts with the community. A platform that has a proper ID check, a complete profile, a monthly fee and no way to browse is hard work for someone who isn’t serious, and I would expect that to put off many low-effort daters on its own. I’m not claiming that high-effort people never lie, because plainly they do. But I suspect that low effort and a casual attitude to the truth go together. To be clear, I haven’t found research that tests this directly. The nearest I came was a study of Tinder users in relationships, who scored lower on conscientiousness. That isn’t the same thing, so please treat it as my hunch.

Identity. Every member will pass a document check and a face check, and confirm a mobile number, before they see anyone or anyone sees them. It isn’t perfect, since documents can be forged or stolen, but it is a strong deterrent, and it means the person you’re talking to is a real person who has been through the same door as you.

Availability. Members declare a relationship status, and you are only shown people who fit what you asked for. That status is self-declared and not verified, so keep your eyes open.

Intentions. Members say what kind of relationship they want and how long they want it to last, and you only see people whose answers match yours. Nobody gets to browse a list of everyone who might be open to anything.

A push towards actually meeting. JOAD shows one person a day and a conversation that goes nowhere is closed. Someone who is hiding a relationship, or playing games, is unlikely to be free for a coffee on a Tuesday afternoon, and the platform makes that visible by measuring the number that matters most: real meetings that actually happened. Time-wasters are filtered out by the structure, not by anyone’s judgement.

What JOAD cannot do

We can’t verify relationship status. No website can. If someone lies to you, you can report it. Nothing happens to their account, because we can’t establish what is true. The report is counted, and the count is published as an allegation nobody has checked. All of this is strictly anonymous. That is the honest version of a hard problem: not pretending nobody ever lies, and not pretending we can punish it.

If you want a platform that investigates and punishes, JOAD isn’t it. And we can’t take responsibility for other people’s choices.

So the bottom line is this: if you are not single, say so. And if you are looking for someone, be a little suspicious, do your homework, ask the plain questions, and watch what people do as well as what they say. A good platform can make the odds better, but you remain responsible for your own safety.

In the comments: what makes you trust that someone is genuinely available for dating?

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