A potentially bad blind date setup

[bdk3clash]

The fiance of one of my good friends wants to set me up with her a friend of her sister. Being the shallow prick that I am I looked on Friendster and found her profile. Her photos were less-than appealing. Further complicating matters is the fact that I'm not drinking for a little while, so my standards will be a bit higher than usual.

How should I handle this situation? I'm leaning towards sucking it up and meeting up for coffee, perhaps to be pleasantly surprised but more than likely just to get it out of the way to keep things smooth.

[diebitter]

Meet and get it over with.

[RunDownHouse]

Is it really important to you to keep your relationship with your friend's fiance smooth as glass? How much will saying, "No, I'd rather not do any blind dates right now," really affect that relationship?

[bdk3clash]

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Is it really important to you to keep your relationship with your friend's fiance smooth as glass? How much will saying, "No, I'd rather not do any blind dates right now," really affect that relationship?

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At this point I'm trying to do less lying to people I care about in my life. (This is a relatively recent development for me.) I am in fact interested in blind dates right now. I do care about my relationship with my friend's fiance, and it's a nice gesture of her to set me up on a date, so I'm leaning towards just doing it.

[Blarg]

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Is it really important to you to keep your relationship with your friend's fiance smooth as glass? How much will saying, "No, I'd rather not do any blind dates right now," really affect that relationship?

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At this point I'm trying to do less lying to people I care about in my life. (This is a relatively recent development for me.) I am in fact interested in blind dates right now. I do care about my relationship with my friend's fiance, and it's a nice gesture of her to set me up on a date, so I'm leaning towards just doing it.

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If you're interested in blind dates, you're basically signing up for this exact same thing anyway, so you might as well get used to it. You've lost the deniability of not going for that kind of thing.

There's an off chance that your buddy could quash the deal by saying to his fiance that you're not her type, and her giving up on it.

I'm not a fan of blind dates and think they're usually a way for people to pass off their uglier friends and enjoy a little drama and busybodying doing it. And women are totally dishonest on how a woman looks, especially if they're friends with her, and will say a 3 is a 7 or 8, no problem. But if you're going for them, you have to put up with this kind of thing and might as well suck it up.

There's always the alternative of being honest and saying you saw her picture and weren't interested, but that sounds like it takes more nads than you're willing to exhibit. I think going through the motions on a date you don't want to be on would be worse, but it sounds like you don't.

[bdk3clash]

Blarq: I appreciate the input you've given to this discussion, but I think this:

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...that sounds like it takes more nads than you're willing to exhibit...

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was out of line. Frankly, I've got "nads" enough to do all that you've suggested and much, much more, but I'm trying to break out of some old habits and patterns.

I think there are more benefits to going through with this setup than the immediate possiblities with this particular girl, even if it is in fact predicated on the "lie" that I'm interested enough in this girl to go out on a blind date with her.

On a side note, my friend told me he has never met her, so he's more or less in the clear on this one, though I will tell him he needs a better screening process in the future if necessary.

[Blarg]

Sorry, you caught me before one of my typical edits I do to make some things sound less harsh.

For what it's worth, I don't think the remark should be taken too hard, though. Occasionally exhibiting lack of perfect nads in every situation is nothing but the norm, and not a matter of great shame, unless we think probably a lot higher of ourselves than virtually anybody really warrants. I've been a gutless wonder in my time and I'm sure there's every chance that will repeat, or at least threaten to, pretty much constantly until the day I die. And I take it for granted that not always being perfectly strong or admirable is exactly the nature of everybody else too. I don't idealize anybody, starting with myself. All that sounds like a lot of words, but I do sincerely mean that this comment didn't have near the negative intent that you might have ascribed to it. And, in case it might have, I edited it out so it wouldn't be taken as harsher than I meant it, but wasn't quick enough. At any rate, it wasn't meant to be a vicious jab or anything; I take us all as deeply flawed creatures and don't even find thinking or saying so remotely remarkable or worthy of a second thought, though I know from experience before this that saying so can grate on the ears pretty hard.

Back to the main issue of the thread, I'm not sure why you think there are benefits to doing this that outweigh the negatives. I'm more of the school of thought that goes "Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive." I think keeping it simple and taking your medicine up front is usually so much better in the long run than making things more complicated and untruthful and hoping either ordinary circumstances or bad luck don't really bury you and in a way give you what you were asking for and deserve when you start screwing around and playing games. Even well-intentioned games. And I think in a very real way you demean yourself and deserve a little less of whatever pride you've got when you indulge in not being straight about things.

And -- you kind of demean her, too. I strongly believe that going out with someone you don't want to be with is not doing them any favors. And that your feelings can show, especially to women, who tend to be more sensitive to things like that than guys are. I can easily see the girl being more disappointed by a date with someone who doesn't want to be with her and afterwards doesn't want to see her -- rejects her actually KNOWING her, in other words, and seeing her having a chance to be at her best -- than she would be by simply having a guy go, Nah, I'll pass, right up front. An anonymous rejection by who knows who seems a LOT less hurtful to me than a rejection by someone who you've put any kind of emotional investment into and spent any time with at all. I just don't see how going through with the date is the kindest solution.

I do suspect that there's a strong element in here of your not wanting to weather the repercussions of saying no up front, and putting it off to another day is a way of kidding yourself it will be any easier and nicer. In fact, I think it will almost certainly be harsher to her, even if it is easier on you, and think the kinder thing would be to absorb the blow yourself rather than spreading it around by doing this chick the "favor" of dating her then insta-dumping her regardless of how nice and personable she really may be.

Whether this should be described as having nads or not, or whether it makes any difference if it is, doesn't get around that it sounds a bit like you are trying to take it easier on yourself in a manner that is also very likely to make it harder on her.

There are so many good reasons here to, please forgive me here, man up and take your punches up front rather than shifting them off to tomorrow guy and letting her eat a few punches along with.

If there's a way to make that sound better, I'm afraid I'm not up to it. I do think it's a bit of failure of nerve and kidding yourself, and a bit at the chick's expense. But I'm not demonizing you because I think you're making a mistake or anything. Mistakes are what people do. They're sure as hell what I do. I just think this is one of them.

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Further complicating matters is the fact that I'm not drinking for a little while, so my standards will be a bit higher than usual

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Easily the best part of this post. How long is "a little while"? Perhaps you could put off the meeting?

[swede123]

As a rule you should always stay away from blind dates organized by your buddy's woman. If the buddy himself was the one doing the setting up I'd be less worried, but more often than not the buddy's fiancee won't know what you are looking for etc. and it ends up being a bad match. That being said, why not go the coffee or lunch route. At worst you'll have wasted 45 minutes of your time and you might have a good story. At best she's the woman of your dreams.

Swede

[bdk3clash]

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As a rule you should always stay away from blind dates organized by your buddy's woman.

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So true, although I do have one female friend who told me that a friend of hers wasn't my type, and when I asked why, she said "Because she's fat." Now that's a good friend.

Anyway I think the rest of your advice and analysis is spot on.