CN Digital Studio
by Gena Kaufman, Glamour
Our reader has a problem I’m a little jealous of–canceling a date with one nice guy because she already found another–but it’s a problem she wants to deal with gracefully, nonetheless. She’s so nice, it’s no wonder all these men want to date her!
She writes:
“I just decided to give online dating a try about six weeks ago. I started talking to one guy over Christmas break, he seems like a nice guy and a good catch, but communication fizzled a bit over the holidays. He has in the mean time friended me on Facebook and followed and “liked” a lot, but that was it. In the meantime, I chatted and met up with another guy, we’ve been dating for a few weeks now. Guy A resurfaced and asked if I wanted to meet up, and I agreed to next week – I like Guy B, but we hadn’t had the “where is this going” talk so I thought, why not? A few days later, and now he’s started talking about wanting to be exclusive – which is fine with me, but I let them bring that up and work for it! Now my dilemma is, what is a nice way to cancel on the first guy without coming off as totally flaky? I feel kind of bad, but I’ve never even met him!”
First of all, you started online dating six weeks ago, and you’ve already found a guy you like enough to be exclusive with? I hate you. (Just kidding.) (Kind of.)
My thought on breaking this date is that honesty is truly your best policy here, even if it may feel a little awkward. But really, there’s a reason why inventing fake boyfriends is many a lady’s go-to excuse for a gentle rejection: it lets the guy down without making him feel like something is wrong with him. And in this case, you’re not even faking it, so it’s kind AND true.
I don’t know how you’ve been communicating with Guy A, but if you’ve spoken over the phone in the past, that’s probably how you should cancel the date. If you’ve only ever emailed/texted, you can stick to that method. At any rate, get right to the point: “Hey Guy A, I’m sorry to do this, but I’m going to have to cancel our date. I recently met another guy, and although things are still new with him, we have just decided to be exclusive and therefore it wouldn’t be right for me to meet you. It was really nice talking to you, and I apologize for the cancellation.” I don’t think that makes you seem flaky, and even if he thinks so, he’d probably think you were way flakier if you let him take you out and buy you drinks or dinner and then told him you had a boyfriend, right? Or if you made a series of flimsy excuses without ever outright turning him down.
So just pull the bandage off and do it! If he’s a good guy, he should accept your apology and move on. If he gets rude and immature about it, just calmly end the conversation and do NOT feel bad. You didn’t do anything wrong here-the timing just happened not to work out in this guy’s favor and you’re handling it the best way possible. It’s not your fault this guy didn’t get the “You snooze, you lose” memo.
