A post about a man who has been secretly faking a peanut allergy for more than six years has gone viral on Reddit.
Ethan Cole (u/Creepy-Desk-468), a 29-year-old project manager based in the Midwest who works in the tech space, detailed his dilemma in a Reddit post titled “I’ve been faking an allergy for YEARS, and now it’s gone way too far.” The post has amassed over 39,000 upvotes and thousands of comments since it was shared on April 3.
“This started as a dumb excuse, and now I’m in too deep,” Cole wrote in the post. “Years ago, I went on a date with this girl who was obsessed with peanut butter. She kept pushing me to try her peanut butter smoothie, even after I said I wasn’t in the mood. Instead of just saying no, I blurted out ‘Oh, I can’t—I’m allergic.'”
That spur-of-the-moment lie set off a chain reaction the poster couldn’t have foreseen. “Big mistake. She was super concerned, asked a million questions, and I figured, whatever, I’d never see her again,” he noted in the post.
Cole told Newsweek that his current girlfriend is not the same woman from the peanut butter smoothie date. However, he became part of the friend group of the woman from the smoothie date and “that’s where the lie started escalating,” he said. “They all knew about my ‘allergy,'” he wrote in the post and, “at that point, correcting it felt too awkward.”
Psychologist Cynthia Edwards-Hawver told Newsweek: “This might seem like a harmless white lie gone sideways, but what’s really happening here is a slow unraveling of trust.”
Edwards-Hawver added: “I’ve seen time and time again how something that starts as conflict avoidance turns into emotional dishonesty. And that creates real damage, not just to the relationship, but to the person who’s lying, too.”
A September 2021 study in the Journal of Social Psychology notes that “lying to a partner is sometimes driven by a relational focus” and “people tend to believe that honesty can sometimes damage the relationship.”
Previous research has shown that “people mispredicted the relational harm brought by honesty such that honesty did less harm than what individuals expected,” the study said.
‘I’m Stuck Managing This Weird Double Life’
The web of deception in the viral Reddit post deepened as the fake allergy became an accepted fact among the friends of the woman from the smoothie date, and they have been friends for six years.
Cole told Newsweek: “I’m no longer in touch with the original peanut butter girl I met all those years ago, but I still hang out with several of her friends regularly. That’s part of why I’m keeping it going; at this point, it feels like it would unravel too much to come clean.”
What makes the confession even more complicated is the fact that the poster actually loves peanut butter. “I eat it in secret. I have a stash at work,” Cole wrote. He told Newsweek that, earlier this week, he bought all the party-sized bags of Reese’s peanut butter cup treats at his local grocery store, “but I’m trying to hide them.”
The lie is interfering with his relationship with his current girlfriend, whom he has been with for about three years. Cole said: “By the time we got together, the ‘allergy’
was already something my whole social circle accepted as a fact. I didn’t want to change the story, especially when my friends were casually telling her about it early on in our relationship. I thought about saying I outgrew the allergy, but I just didn’t have the courage to do it.”
Cole said his girlfriend wants them to move in together. “I’m terrified she’ll find my peanut butter stash and think I’ve been lying to her. Which I have. For years,” he wrote in the post.
Looking back at that initial smoothie date, Cole said he didn’t want to seem difficult or picky in the moment. “It was easier to say ‘I’m allergic’ than to explain why I didn’t want the smoothie. Obviously, that was a terrible call,” he told Newsweek.
Cole added: “Do I regret it? 100 percent. Not just because I miss eating peanut butter openly—I do—but also because now I’m stuck managing this weird double life over something completely avoidable.”
‘This Isn’t About Peanut Butter Anymore’
Psychologist Edwards-Hawver characterizes the initial lie as a reflexive response rooted in emotional patterns. “This person didn’t fake an allergy because he’s malicious. He did it because he didn’t know how to say ‘no’ in the moment,” she said. “That’s people-pleasing in action, an emotional survival strategy that often starts early in life, usually in homes where it wasn’t safe to disappoint or set boundaries.”
Edwards-Hawver said: “This isn’t about peanut butter anymore; it’s about trust, self-worth, and the emotional maturity to repair what’s been broken.” The Reddit user is “living a double life over peanut butter,” she added, while his partner thinks she knows him. “But she doesn’t. Not really,” the psychologist said. “That’s where the guilt, anxiety and paralysis come from.”
But Edwards-Hawver warned against attempting to save face with another fiction. Cole needs to “come clean but not with a cute story about a misdiagnosis or miracle cure,” Edwards-Hawver said. Instead, he “needs to own the real reason,” such as by saying, “I was afraid to speak up … I never meant to hurt you, but I’ve realized that keeping this going is unfair to you and to me.”
“Real intimacy requires honesty,” Edwards-Hawver added, and “if she’s the kind of partner worth building a future with, she’ll care more about the truth than the peanut butter.”
“The key is learning how to repair, not just hide,” Edwards-Hawver concluded. “Because small lies don’t stay small forever—they grow roots—and, eventually, they start to choke out connection.”
‘That’s Just Insane’
The viral post attracted a wave of reactions, with Reddit users offering a range of advice and judgment.
U/Darkdaphne didn’t mince words: “U gotta come clean. This is way too far gone. Tell ur [your] gf [girlfriend] and ur friends the truth. It’ll be awk [awkward], yeah, and some ppl [people] might be pissed. But living a double life over peanut butter? That’s just insane.”
Others suggested digging deeper into the lie. u/berpyderpderp2ne1 posted: “Maybe this is one of those things you take to your grave … or … call it a misdiagnosis …”
One Reddit user, u/Reasonable_Moose_738, added: “If I was you I’d tell them, if they’re your true friends they’ll stick with you after this but never break trust for as long as this again, it’s nasty business.”
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