Chalking It Up to Experience

You can learn something from every experience. Sometimes the tuition is high, and sometimes it’s not. If you view this date as a learning experience rather than dashed hopes, a waste of time and money, or a night you could have spent watching Glee, the entire date will feel very different. After all,

• It’s only one night (day, afternoon, hour).
• It never has to happen again.
• This date can help you figure out what you want or don’t want next time.

The best way to avoid making another mistake is to figure out specifically what went wrong this time. After the date is over, after you’re home and reliving the scenario in your mind (or trying to get it out of your mind), take out your dating notebook and make two columns on a piece of paper: “What I was originally attracted to” and “What totally turned me off.” List everything you can think of in each column. Be honest. No one is looking. You can burn or flush this list later. Even if what originally attracted you was her Baywatch bod and what turned you off was the fact that Baywatch is her favorite TV show, write it down. Write it all down. When you’re finished, you’ll have a much clearer picture of exactly what went awry . . . and how to avoid making the same mistake next time.

Handling Hurt Feelings

Rejection is just someone’s opinion. You don’t like everyone, and not everyone is going to like you. Don’t allow your discomfort to make you mean. Stringing someone along, pretending you like him or her when you really don’t, is cowardly and cruel. In the long run, you’ll inflict more pain by pretending, which is really to protect yourself. Pretending is much harsher than saying upfront that this isn’t working for you. If your date is smitten, the truth is going to pinch a bit but for less time or intensity than if you lie. You’ve been honorable, have asked your date out, or have been asked out on the assumption of potential good stuff. You’ve now discovered things aren’t working out. No need to push the guilt button. No one likes to hurt anyone’s feelings. It’s important to be humane and human: When the news is hard to break and hard to take, be aware of what you’re feeling and why, and be specific about why it’s not working for you without being judgmental. Unless you are incredibly adept at letting your date down gently (how did you get so much practice? We may need to talk), you’re very likely going to hurt feelings.
When you do:

• Acknowledge your date’s rights to feelings. Don’t pretend everything is okay or get defensive if your date lashes out or is upset. Listen quietly and patiently.
• Don’t try to fix it. These are your date’s feelings, not yours. You deal with your feelings, and let your date do the same.
• Apologize for the hurt, not the fact. Not liking someone isn’t a crime. You didn’t do anything wrong. As a human being, you feel bad when another human being feels bad, but when you start down the “sorry” road, the next thing you may find yourself doing is trying to make it up to your date. Don’t start down that slippery slope.
• Let go. Ultimately, you have to make peace with the whole situation by realizing another fact of life: Not every date is terrific any more than every meal is wonderful, every sunset grand, or every flavor chocolate.

Telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, sort of . . .

The one time you really do want to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is when your date asks, “Can I call you?” — or worse, “Will you call me?” The phone thing is fraught with nearly every conceivable emotion —hope, fear, anxiety, trust, excitement, rejection, and anticipation. Now is the moment to take a deep breath and tell the truth. It’s not fair to leave her waiting by a phone that refuses to ring or have him logging on to check his e-mail every few hours. If you’re not going to call, now or in the millennium, don’t say you will. Period. It’s not cool. It’s not fair. It’s not what polite, respectful people do. That said, here are a few tactful ways to get the message across:

• “Though I had fun tonight, I don’t think it’s going to work out between us.”
• “To be honest, I see you as more of a friend.”
• “We’re just too different, you and I.”
• “I don’t want to mislead you by telling you I’ll call. I’m sorry, but I probably won’t.”
• “I’m going to be really busy at work for the next couple of months.”
• “Family concerns are going to keep me tied up.” It’s tough. No two ways about it.

Everyone wants to believe in love and union and two souls who were meant to be together. But if this isn’t that scene, don’t make it even worse by lying and leading your date to believe it might one day be.

Being polite

Your mom has explained the need for good manners: to avoid making another person feel bad. Well, your date may not be going as well as you wanted, but now is not the time to abandon all those skills that your parents spent a lifetime drilling into you. The basics of being polite include the following:

• Stay put. No leaving out the back door, faking a headache, or spending the entire date in the restroom reading phone numbers carved into the wall.
• Have a conversation. Sitting stone-faced is the ultimate slap in the face. Find something to talk about even if you discover you two are worlds apart. Seen any good movies lately?
• Maintain eye contact. You don’t need to gaze into your date’s eyes, certainly, but staring up at the ceiling is rude.
• Listen. Your date may not notice that things aren’t going swimmingly. Tuning this person out will only cause him or her to try harder to reach you, and panic isn’t pretty.
• Make nice. As Elvis said, “Don’t be cruel.” Your date didn’t kidnap you. If things aren’t going well, so be it. Without being overly encouraging (you don’t want a bad date hoping for bad date number two), be civil and kind.
• See your date home. It’s impolite to abruptly end your date the moment the check is paid, the ending credits roll, or the coffee cup is empty. You don’t need to prolong it, but you do need to finish what you both started. If you drove, drive your date home. If your date drove, accept a ride home.

Share a cab, a subway, a bus ride. No bolting or escaping is necessary. Behave as you’d like to be treated. Show common courtesy. Smile, laugh at jokes, and avoid rolling your eyes to the back of your head. The goal here is to be kind without being dishonest. The key to being polite is to think of yourself as Lord or Lady Bountiful —much too well-bred to let on that your bunions pinch or your fine sense of smell has just discerned that something has died. The goal of being polite is not to lead your date on, but to treat your date with the same kindness and respect with which you’d treat anyone.

Avoiding blame

Understandably, you’re going to feel disappointed when you first get the inkling that your date isn’t working out. Either people click, or they don’t.
When they click, their communication is like a tapestry — each shared
experience and similarity intertwines. Each giggle, stare, brush of a hand
is a gossamer thread, one on top of the other, until a beautiful scene is
depicted. When folks don’t click, the date is more like a wrinkly paper bag —
uninteresting, unappealing, and just plain un-wonderful. When you discover
that the situation has gone south, don’t be tempted to blame your date or
yourself for the unpleasantness — no need to accuse your date of

• Using you
• Being an idiot
• Being ungrateful
• Being uncivilized

Sometimes two perfectly nice people can just not mesh very well. If you take that perspective, you don’t have to take offense or blame or a position — just take a deep breath.

Deploying survival strategies

If you’re not having a good time but your date is, give these strategies a try. Not only can they get you through the evening, but they give you the opportunity to discover interesting and worthwhile things about your date and yourself — and that’s never a waste of time.

• Identify three things you like about your date. Everyone has at least a few interesting and unique qualities. When a date starts to slide downhill, we tend to magnify the negative moments in our minds and discount the positive. Reverse this trend: Find three things you like about your date. They don’t have to be big things. You don’t have to suddenly realize you love this person’s personality. Start small. Do you like her hair? His hands? Her laugh? His quirky sense of humor?
• Become a good listener. View this as a great opportunity to sharpen your listening skills. Stay in the moment. Don’t second-guess what you could have possibly done here or worry about what you’re going to tell your friends or how you’re going to get a good night’s sleep. Really listen to what your date has to say — without judgment. You may hear something interesting.
• Relax and tune in to your surroundings. Enjoy the food, the atmosphere, the popcorn, the movie, the biscotti, the sunshine, the snow, the sound of bowling pins falling each time you score a strike. Shift your focus away from a date that’s not working out to all the things that are perfectly fine.

Ending on a Positive Note

Your job, when your date isn’t dazzled by you, is to listen gracefully and nondefensively and smile sweetly and make a swift exit as soon as the coast is clear. No need to prolong a bad date.
One of the biggest pitfalls to a date that feels like it’s heading downhill is the “snowball effect” — you sense something’s wrong, you panic, you clam up, you overreact, and it just makes matters worse. Suddenly, a not-great date is on its way to disasterville. If things are really awful, it makes more sense to call a polite and gentle halt rather than hurt someone’s feelings for hours or waste your time or your date’s time. It really is okay to say, “You don’t seem to be having a good time. Shall we just chalk this up to experience?” Be honest. ’Fess up. Stop the snowball before it becomes an avalanche and buries you both. Ignoring an overwhelming feeling; trying to hide, squash, cover up, or pretend it isn’t there; or wishing it weren’t there isn’t going to change the reality. You’re not responsible for your feelings, just your behavior. If you can gently acknowledge your feelings, you can deal with them. A lousy date isn’t a reason to inflict pain on either of you. It isn’t necessary to hang in there and finish what you started. It’s okay to say, “I think we should call it a night.” It’s also okay to use that universal come-down line almost all daters have heard at least once, “I think we should just be friends.” Not every couple has chemistry. That’s what dates are for — to find out. Hey, chemistry happens, or it doesn’t. It can’t be faked or manufactured. The feeling is out of your hands. If your date says he or she just doesn’t feel any chemistry between the two of you, don’t take it personally, but also don’t assume a few more hours will make a whole lot of difference. While it’s true that a deep love can develop slowly over time, this is a date, not an arranged marriage. Chemistry up-front is helpful on both sides for future promise; it gives you both motivation to explore further — unless it’s so overwhelming that you both ignore every other part of what might be going on between the two of you. Overwhelming initial passion can move you both at the speed of light past things you ought to be assessing slowly and carefully (see Chapter 21 on taking things slow). Don’t worry too much if you’re not turned on as long as you’re not turned off.

No Whining!

If you’ve ever been in a long line on a hot, sweaty day, with a bunch of tired little kids, you probably know what whining is all about. It’s annoying, cloying, tiring, and, most of all, unproductive. Whining never gets you anywhere but on someone’s nerves. Don’t do it. If your date tells you he or she is having a rotten time, suck it up. Yeah, you’re right. It hurts, but no whining. It isn’t the end of the world. All of the following constitute the whine response:

• “Just my luck.”
• “My last date dumped me, too.”
• “Boy, I sure do know how to pick ’em, don’t I?”
• “This always happens just when I start liking someone.”

If you feel these words — or their ilk — bubbling to the surface, stop immediately, press your lips together and refuse to speak again until you’ve shed that whole sackcloth-and-ashes routine and are ready to respond like the mature person (not victim!) you are. The time to lick your wounds is later, when you’re home running a hot bubble bath, or calling your mom for a hug or a best friend for support or the bakery to see if they have any double fudge brownies left.

Getting More Info

When you feel disaster in your gut, or see it in your date’s response, bring it to your lips. I don’t pretend this is always easy to do, but, trust me on this:
It’s better to know than to stumble around in ignorance. If you feel like your date is not going well, here are some things you may want to say:

• “I’m sensing you’re not having a good time. Is this true?”
• “I’d appreciate your honesty. Are you having fun?”
• “Is there something I’ve said or done to offend you?”
• “Are we not quite clicking here?”

The truth isn’t always fun to hear. Sometimes it’s downright painful. But, when you give people the chance to be honest with you, they usually will in a kind and gentle way. You don’t want to date someone who doesn’t want to date you. It’s as simple as that. You don’t want to have to convince someone to like you, or ask them to hang in until chemistry kicks in. This is not an endurance test or some dating karmic reincarnation where you’re doomed to repeat every awful experience and where your cosmic score in each category is added up and totaled at the end before you can escape. A date is an organic process as much as it is planning and prep work. Mother Nature is in there orchestrating the event, right alongside your careful blueprint for the perfect outing. Sometimes you just have to chalk it up to fate —this date wasn’t meant to be. Find out what went awry — don’t blame yourself or your date. Then move on. Don’t obsess about why it didn’t work out. Try not to take it too personally. Most importantly, no whining.

Reading the Signs

It’s easy to tell when someone hates your guts. They sneer, they scowl, they scoff, they storm off in a huff. They won’t make eye contact, they mace you, they call their Rottweiler and the fashion police. Unless we’re talking major meltdown or atomic winter, it is really unlikely that the clues will be so obvious. What is much more likely when a date goes sour is a slow process of disconnection, a major lack of chemistry that becomes more apparent as the date ticks on, rather than dramatic magnetic repulsion. Here are the six warning signs of potential date disaster:

• Lack of eye contact: Eye contact is the very essence of connection, the “window to the soul.” If your date won’t make eye contact — nothing else will connect.
• Sullenness: Your date is unresponsive and says as little as possible. Make sure that you’re not monopolizing the conversation or asking too many personal questions, but if your date consistently responds with “Yeah,” “No,” and “Don’t know,” you have a pretty clear sign that things are not going well. This doesn’t mean there will never be a gap of silence (or two or three), but when the gaps yawn like the Grand Canyon, something isn’t working.
• The “I” focus: If your date’s conversation is focused exclusively on himor herself, without any apparent interest in you, it’s a sign of either no interest in you or a pre-occupation with self. Yech.
• Emotionally out of sync: Have you ever been with somebody who totally “gets it?” Every nuance, every joke, every raised eyebrow? You’re in tune. Conversely, if you find yourself laughing alone a lot during your date, explaining punch lines, or finding humor where your date finds horror (or worse, nothing), you and your date are likely really different and are going to have a rough time finding any common emotional ground.
• Physically out of sync: A body speaks volumes of feelings. Connected, interested people lean in toward each other or sit close to one another. If one body consistently says, “I’m out of here,” or “Not interested” and remains aloof throughout the date, it’s a fair bet the head feels the same thing.
• Edgy or anxious or sad: A wee bit of nerves are understandable, but if your date is in an obvious emotional turmoil that doesn’t let up, it’s a sign that your time together is in the dumps, too.

Me, Paranoid?

Should you sense that your date is less than thrilled with you, undoubtedly the question will arise, “Am I right, or am I paranoid?” Good question. Dating is an emotional experience. You’re vulnerable. You’re letting someone you barely know see the real you. Pretty scary stuff. It’s only natural that you might feel a little insecure. You may misread nuances or misinterpret a yawn or a glance at a watch as a sure sign that you’re on the verge of a dating meltdown —especially if you’ve had any dating disasters in the past (who hasn’t?). But this may not be the case at all. Sometimes a yawn really is just insomnia. Glancing at a watch — well, some people need to get up early the next morning, even when they’ve had a great time the night before. So before you write this date off, find out if you really are being paranoid by asking yourself these questions:

• Was I dreading this date?
• Did I figure it probably wouldn’t work out before the date even started?
• Am I trying to decipher the “hidden meaning” in everything my date says?
• Am I obsessed with how I come off?
• Does my date keep protesting that he or she was misunderstood?
• Has anyone ever told me before that I’m oversensitive?
• Has anyone ever called me “paranoid” before?
• What’s reality and what’s delusional — do I need a new date or serious medication?

If you answered “yes” to most of the questions, you may need to do a reality check before you dismiss this date. Or you may be too fearful to date at all. See whether the answers you yourself give would make sense if your best friend were telling the story. Would you be calm or dialing for the paramedics? If you wouldn’t see anything all that alarming in these answers if they were your friend’s, you’ve probably passed your own test, and it’s time to shift the focus from you to your date.

When Your Date Hates You

Let’s face it — everyone isn’t going to like you; you’re not going to like everyone. That’s life. Admittedly, it doesn’t feel terrific when someone would rather not see you again, but it’s only one person, one person’s opinion, one date on planet Earth. The ground doesn’t have to tremble or swallow you up to put you out of your misery. Lighten up. Actually, a semi-awful date can be a gift from the gods of dating, an opportunity to take a look at yourself, your expectations, the signals you send out, the people you pick to date, your behavior, your level of relaxation, and your ability to communicate who you really are.
The trick is not to become overly sensitive or obtuse. The last thing I want you to do is sit across from your date scanning his or her body language to determine if the date is a dud. Dating requires a leap of faith that the two of you can have a good time together for an hour or two. Think positive. Enter any dating situation with the expectation that a fun time will be had by all. Reevaluate, if necessary, if evidence to the contrary bubbles up.
Life isn’t a mood ring. I’m going to give you some warning signs, but context is everything when evaluating whether your date is having a good time or would rather be home with a pint of Häagen-Dazs. A yawn can be the end of a really tough week as well as boredom. Looking at your watch doesn’t always mean you can’t wait to get the heck out of there — it can be an old habit or a new watch. Lack of eye contact may mean your date is shy rather than sneaky unwilling to let you see how much fun they’re not having. A stumbling conversation may simply be faulty social skills or nerves rather than an unwillingness to expend air or thought on you. Use all your senses — including your sixth sense, intuition — to evaluate what your date is really trying to convey. Relax a bit.

When Your Date Hates You

Let’s face it — everyone isn’t going to like you; you’re not going to like everyone. That’s life. Admittedly, it doesn’t feel terrific when someone would rather not see you again, but it’s only one person, one person’s opinion, one date on planet Earth. The ground doesn’t have to tremble or swallow you up to put you out of your misery. Lighten up. Actually, a semi-awful date can be a gift from the gods of dating, an opportunity to take a look at yourself, your expectations, the signals you send out, the people you pick to date, your behavior, your level of relaxation, and your ability to communicate who you really are.
The trick is not to become overly sensitive or obtuse. The last thing I want you to do is sit across from your date scanning his or her body language to determine if the date is a dud. Dating requires a leap of faith that the two of you can have a good time together for an hour or two. Think positive. Enter any dating situation with the expectation that a fun time will be had by all. Reevaluate, if necessary, if evidence to the contrary bubbles up.
Life isn’t a mood ring. I’m going to give you some warning signs, but context is everything when evaluating whether your date is having a good time or would rather be home with a pint of Häagen-Dazs. A yawn can be the end of a really tough week as well as boredom. Looking at your watch doesn’t always mean you can’t wait to get the heck out of there — it can be an old habit or a new watch. Lack of eye contact may mean your date is shy rather than sneaky unwilling to let you see how much fun they’re not having. A stumbling conversation may simply be faulty social skills or nerves rather than an unwillingness to expend air or thought on you. Use all your senses — including your sixth sense, intuition — to evaluate what your date is really trying to convey. Relax a bit.