If you’re single, the New Year will inevitably offer new opportunities for your friends and family to set you up with crazy people only a nimrod would deem dateable. While it’s honorable of them to try to help revive your love life, it also means you can’t just shout out “NEXT!” if you don’t like the person you’ve been set-up with. So, to assist you with any future awkward set-ups, here are a few tips from Caroline Tiger’s How to Behave: Dating and Sex.
Dealing with the Sneak Attack Set-Up
It’s nice that happy-couple friends want their single friends to also be halves of happy couples, but let’s face it: Your friends are not always the best judges of compatibility. Maybe it’s because they’ve known you since high school and haven’t realized that you’ve evolved past salivating over bad-boy types. Perhaps they don’t read people very well. Whatever the reason, what do you do when you find yourself invited to a dinner party and seated next to an obvious set-up who is not your cup of tea?
1. Once you’ve made the requisite small talk and found that the two of you are the only single people at the party, lightly acknowledge the situation. Say in a breezy, conspiratorial tone, “Oh, they must be trying to set us up” or “They’ve done this to me before, you know.”
2. Employ a gentle white lie. “They don’t know that I’ve started dating someone. I haven’t told people yet, because I don’t want to jinx it.”
3. If the match-ee fails to take the hint and continues to try playing footsie with you beneath the table, jokingly suggest that you might accidentally spill your wine in his lap if he keeps that up.
4. Pull your matchmaking friend aside at some point during the evening to list all the ways this person is not a good match for you. This is a good “teachable moment.” If your friend is going to persist in trying to set you up, he may as well know what you’re looking for.
5. If your meddling friend strikes out three times, put the kibosh on the madness. Tell him or her, “Thank you. I appreciate your help, and I know you’re trying to help, but I’d rather die alone than have to spend time with the total freaks you’ve been sending my way.”
