Meeting someone on a dating website can sometimes feel like playing Roulette. The ball will either land on the lucky number or it won’t. Hitting it off with someone online doesn’t guarantee anything either. You may have great rapport via email and phone, but the true test is whether or not sparks will fly when you meet each other in person. If you have made plans to meet with someone from a dating website, and the experience is less than stellar, how do you politely end things quickly and painlessly?
The best plan is to make the date a quick one before you even meet. Decide to simply meet for a walk or a cup of coffee. This way, if things don’t go as well as you hoped, you can get out of it easily. If you make a date for dinner and a movie, then you’re basically stuck with this person for hours. So keep it simple. And if you do hit it off, you can always extend the walking or coffee date to something more.
You definitely need to plan ahead if you fear this date might be a bust. This means asking a friend to call you mid-way through your date. If the date is going well, don’t answer your phone. If you want an escape route, you can answer the call and tell your date there is something urgent you need to tend to and you have to go. This is basically one of the oldest tricks in the book, but it can still save you embarrassment and get you out of a bad situation at the same time.
If the “friend phone call” isn’t an option, you can always pretend to get sick. If you want to pull this one off effectively, you really need to be a good actor. But you can always get a terrible headache or stomach ache and say that you really aren’t feeling very well and need to cut things short. After you’ve escaped, you will need to do a follow-up. Particularly if your date was a nice person, you really owe him a note or phone call saying it was nice to meet him, but you don’t think the two of you have much in common. Something like that.
In the end, if you really don’t want to date this person again, you might consider simply telling him. No need to arrange some sort of elaborate distraction; just thank him for his time and say you don’t think the two of you are right for one another. In most cases, he will probably feel the same way. If he does like you more than you like him, at least he’ll know he should move on and not waste anymore time or hope on you. It’s the best approach of all because it frees both of you up immediately. Then you can get right back on the horse and go find someone who really gets your motor running. And if they can a phone call and have to leave the date suddenly, you’ll know you’re not his cup of tea.
Photo via mrjoro
