How to end a date—quickly

By Bob Strauss

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the concept of the “ejection seat,” that big, red button in the cockpit of a fighter plane that, when pressed, squirted out the pilot like a watermelon seed, whereupon he parachuted down behind enemy lines and snuck his way back to friendly territory. Much later I found out that ejection seats killed as many pilots as they saved (especially if the plane’s roof didn’t open in time), but it always struck me how useful that big red button would be in other situations: Job evaluations, dentist appointments, and, yes, bad dates.

The fact is, no matter how long you’ve corresponded online, how many three-hour phone calls you’ve had, or how dear the friend who set you up may be, there are still times when you meet your swain for drinks or dinner and you know, instantly, that there is No Way things are going to work out. How do you eject yourself from the situation with your dignity, and your date’s feelings, intact? As tempting as it is to be brutally honest (“I’m sorry, but I just don’t think we have anything in common”), few folks have the courage to deliver this line at the beginning of a date—and I certainly never have. At the other extreme, begging off drinks because of a sudden recurrence of Dengue Fever (or activating the ringer on your cell phone and pretending your mom is in the hospital) is just bad karma. Here are some less stressful strategies:

Make a preemptive strike. Don’t plan an evening-long date; instead, meet up in a way that allows you to easily slip away after, say, 30 minutes if things aren’t going swimmingly. This is especially true when you have early doubts about how well the date will go. Even an inexperienced dater should be able to sense possible disaster in the making (a profile’s fuzzy picture taken at a weird angle or significant lapses in phone conversations). If you listen closely to that small voice deep inside you, you’ll know whether to block out a lengthy meal at a fancy French restaurant or a 20-minute flyby (sitting down optional) at your local coffee joint. The odds are that the other person will feel the exact same way and will be grateful not to waste an entire evening on a dubious prospect.

Stage a caper. I’m ashamed to admit it, but sometimes I don’t follow my own advice and persist in arranging a “date” date with a mysterious prospect who had an engaging (but reserved) online profile. The last time I did this, though, I had a plan B: I met my date at a bar where I knew a female friend would also be on a potentially-disastrous rendezvous and we arranged to “accidentally” run into each other at the first sign of trouble. (Typically, my date quickly grew bored and left, while hers persisted in mooning after her and asking me, drunkenly, “So, do you think Natalie likes me?”)

Know your boundaries. As convenient as it is to blame a disastrous date on the other person, it’s also unfair; most of the time it’s simply a matter of incompatibility (as in, “I have a sense of humor and she doesn’t”). In these cases, you really don’t have any choice but to grit your teeth and stick it out to the bitter end. The only things that entitle you to end a date before it starts are active deception (say, a guy being 20 years older than he says in his profile) and undisguised hostility, like the woman who responded to my inquiry about what kind of books she liked to read by declaring, loudly, “Well, I guess if I’m going to start dating again I should learn to answer questions like that.”

If there was a big, red button at hand, I would have pressed it right away—only it would have sent her chair flying out of the restaurant, not mine.