A lot of women “of a certain age” get all bent out of shape by this question. I find that in person, I can usually make a reasonable guess, but online, it’s hard to tell. I know women who want to have people believe they are a good twenty years younger than they are. This was bad for me because the person seemed a whole lot wiser than a 30 year old would be. I thought I was going crazy for a while until I was told the true age. Then things made sense.
It’s a kind of social fiction that we allow women to pretend they are ten years younger than they are. Everyone nods and winks. We know this isn’t the case, but that we are pandering to them by pretending it is the case. So by all means pander. It makes the women happy. Everyone knows we are all being silly. And just bide your time. At some point it will become clear that the woman is old enough to know better, and you add that to the story.
They call it being mysterious and they believe that if men know their real age, they will no longer be interested in them. Men, apparently, only want to talk to girls of good child bearing years or something. Lots of condescension underlying these assumptions on both sides. I don’t know why a woman would care for a man who, if he knew her real age, would drop her in a New York minute. But society is strange and people do perverse things.
I’m happy for you to know my age unless you ask me directly. If you ask me directly, I won’t tell you, but if you don’t ask me, it’ll come up in conversation and I won’t think twice about sharing that information. I think maybe it’s a control issue. I don’t want you to know anything you might use against me, although I don’t know how you could hurt me with my age. But just to be safe, I won’t tell you. Unless I do.