You're all an upfront lot

2005-12-14 - 4:16 p.m.

So, the story about the survey.

I'll preface this by saying that I've never been a big dater. I spent the first five years of my adult life with my ex-husband, so I skipped much of the early dating scene. Even once I was single again I've ended up in several relationships (or pseudo-relationships) after having already been friends, so I've not really had as much traditional dating experience as most other folks I know. It's more a rare thing that I end up out with someone with whom the getting-to-know-you phase is combined with the romantic preliminaries.

So the conversation was about what to do if, after the first date, he's still interested and calling and/or emailing and you're not interested in a second date.

Previously I've always responded. It's awkward but I figured it's more respectful to reply than to just ignore them. Unfortunately this backfired once a few years ago. Someone decided to argue the point. It was a pretty rotten conversation as he made pleas and threw them against my brick wall. Not pretty and I don't think either of us ended that conversation satisfied.

But lately I've had several folks tell me they thought it was much kinder to just not reply. Instead of an outright rejection, he still can take it that there's some other reason you didn't call back. Maybe your phone was flushed down a toilet. Maybe you were hit by a bus. Or he can put it down to you being a bitch and then the weight's off him that way too.

So I started thinking about the merits of the no reply and thinking maybe I've been wrong all this time. But most of you seem to disagree and think direct rejection is the best policy after all.

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Pretend it's 10th grade. Leave me a note.

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