Contributed by: kellyseal on Thursday, July 12 2012 @ 07:59 pm
Last modified on
You saw his profile, emailed back and forth a bit, and now you’re meeting him for the first time. Unfortunately, you’ve only been together ten minutes and already you can tell things are not going well. Maybe he’s made some inappropriate comments, or he’s not quite what you pictured, but either way – you want to escape.
You contemplate standing up and walking out, but you don’t want to seem rude. Or maybe you should make up an excuse – like you’re feeling sick or you forgot it was your Grandmother’s birthday dinner that night. But that seems too cliché. What is the right thing to do?
Well, if you don’t want to have to text your friend to make up some emergency and call you, there are plenty of apps available to help rescue you from a bad date. eHarmony just developed a free one called appropriately Bad Date Rescue, which was surprising to me considering eHarmony does such a thorough job in matching its members. But dating is tricky – often you can’t predict certain behavior or outcomes.
Bad Date Rescue provides fake emergency calls during your dates if they aren’t going so well. You can even schedule a specific time in advance of when the call will arrive, along with various scenarios of plausible emergencies, like your mom calling to let you know your sister is in labor, or your neighbor informing you that a water pipe in your basement has burst. The app also comes with a fake voice on the other end of the line to make the call look more realistic. It also provides scripts to walk you through what you can tell your date once the call arrives.
While I love dating apps, and this kind of thing can be helpful if you have a hard time saying no to people, it really should be a last resort. Honesty goes a long way, rather than relying on excuses and apps to do the dirty work for you.
Instead of relying on an app, tell your date that you’re just not feeling the connection, thank him for his time, and excuse yourself. At least this kind of honesty will help you avoid those uncomfortable moments in the future when your date texts you saying, “had a great time – can you get together again this weekend?” There are only so many times you can excuse yourself by being busy with work or family.
Or worse, your date will recognize that it’s a fake emergency and then feel even worse than if you’d just told him you weren’t interested.
It’s up to you how you handle things, but eventually you’ll have to come clean and admit that you’re just not that into him.
To find out more about the dating site which released the Bad Date app you can read our eHarmony review.