July 23: Not catfished. Kittenfished. There's a difference.

A few nights ago, I was standing outside a coffee shop, waiting for a date.

An attractive man walked up.

I smiled, distracted, the way you do when someone's just passing by.

Then he kept looking at me.

Expectantly.

That's when it hit me: this is the guy I'm waiting for.

And he was not the guy in his photos.

I double-checked later, just to be sure I wasn't losing it.

He was the guy.

Just an older, heavier-by-60-pounds version, which he later admitted himself, no prompting required.

So our connection started with a lie.

Small, maybe. But a lie.

And it put me in this deeply awkward spot: do I say something and risk sounding like I'm shaming a man for aging or gaining weight?

Or do I just... pretend I didn't notice the multi-year, sixty-pound gap between his profile and his person?

I didn't say anything.

We talked for hours.

He was funny, easy to be with, genuinely likable.

I still couldn't get past it.

This isn't catfishing, where someone invents a whole fake person.

This is kittenfishing, the subtler cousin.

The heavily filtered photo.

The decade-old headshot.

The "I'm 5'10"" that is, generously, 5'8".

Small embellishments people make because they're anxious about the competition, not because they're trying to con anyone.

Here's the part that gets missed: it still backfires.

Every time.

Because trust doesn't erode from the big lies nearly as often as it erodes from the small, sneaky ones.

The ones that make someone feel, even for a second, wait, who did I actually agree to meet?

I wasn't looking for perfection that night.

I would've been thrilled to meet the guy in a current photo, whoever he actually was.

What I couldn't get past wasn't his appearance.

It was the gap between what he showed me and who he is.

If you've ever wondered whether your own photos, bio, or "about me" is doing you a favor or quietly setting you up to disappoint someone, that's exactly the kind of thing we can untangle in a Big Ask call.

Fifteen minutes, no judgment, just an honest look at whether your profile is representing you or a slightly-improved rerun.

Book your free Big Ask here: https://my.curiouser.life/15-minutes-big-ask

--Rev Heather, aka Nookie, LUQ
https://my.curiouser.life
+1-855-712-5433 (toll-free)

P.S. Have you ever been kittenfished? Or, be honest, done a little kittenfishing yourself?

Hit reply. I want to hear the details.