If you are just plain not interested in someone, you have a whole other conundrum to deal with. How should you let this person know you aren’t interested? From our interviews, it seems there are three big approaches: pretend to be busy, say nothing, or be honest.
In every stop on my tour, from San Francisco to London to Wichita, I asked audiences which method they used. In total, this was more than 150,000 people, and in every audience, a sample size of a few thousand, the response was always the same. Overwhelmingly, most people practice the “pretend to be busy” and “silence” methods. Only a small sliver of the crowd would say they were honest.
However, when I flipped the situation and said, “Okay, now pretend the situation is reversed. Someone else is dealing with you. How do you prefer they handle the situation? Clap if you prefer they pretend to be busy.”
A smattering of claps.
“Clap if you prefer they say nothing, that they give you silence.”
A smaller smattering.
“And finally, clap if you prefer that they are honest with you.”
Basically, the whole audience would applaud.
Why do we all say we prefer honesty but rarely give that courtesy to others? Maybe in our hearts we all want to give others honesty, but in practice it’s just too damn hard. Honesty is confrontational. Crafting the “honest” message takes a lot of time and thought. And no matter how delicately you do it, it feels cold and mean to reject someone. It’s just easier on many levels to say nothing or pretend to be busy until people get the picture.
Do we really prefer to get the cold, hard truth when someone is rejecting us, though? We don’t respond well to rejection, especially when we’ve put ourselves out there and shown interest in another person, and it’s painful to read a message saying that someone doesn’t want to date you.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we realize that, however bizarre, we actually prefer to be lied to. If someone lies and says they are dating someone or they are moving to another town soon, you don’t feel rejected, because it’s no longer about you.
This way, our feelings aren’t hurt and we aren’t left confused or frustrated by silence or “pretend to be busy” issues. So I guess what I’m saying is the next time someone asks you out and you aren’t interested, the nicest thing you can do is write back: “Sorry, can’t do dinner tomorrow. I’m leaving on a secret mission with the space program! When I return to earth, I will have barely aged at all, but you’ll be seventy-eight years old. I just don’t think it’s a good time for me.”
WHAT HAPPENED WITH TANYA, THOUGH?
The thing to remember with this nonsense is, despite all your second-guessing about the content or timing of your message, sometimes it’s just not your fault and other factors are at play. When I was dealing with the Tanya situation, one friend gave me the best advice, in hindsight. He said, “A lot of times you’re in these situations and you second-guess the things you said, did, or wrote, but sometimes it just has to do with something on their end that you have no clue about.”
A few months later I ran into Tanya. We had a lot of fun together and she eventually told me that she was sorry she didn’t get back to me that time. Apparently at the time she was questioning her entire sexual identity and was trying to figure out if she was a lesbian.
Well, that was definitely not a theory that crossed my mind.
We ended up hooking up that night, and this time she said there would be no games.
I texted her a few days later to follow up on this plan.
Her response: silence.*
CHAPTER 3
ONLINE DATING
As a public figure, I have never considered doing any online dating. I always figured there was a chance someone who was a stalker type would use it as an opportunity to kidnap and murder me.
I’m not sure how the scenario would go. Maybe my stalker (probably an Indian dude) sees my profile and thinks, Oh, here’s that comedian guy on OkCupid. FINALLY, I have a way to reach out to him and slowly plot his murder. He sends me a message pretending to be a woman. I see the profile. “She” likes tacos and Game of Thrones. I’m very excited.
What I imagine my Indian dude stalker looks like.*
We plan a date. I’m nervous, but in a fun way. I go to pick “her” up. He, wearing a wig, answers the door. I immediately realize this is wrong, but he knocks me out before I can react. When I wake up, I’m in a dark basement filled with dolls, and a creepy song like “The Chauffeur” by Duran Duran is playing. He then performs a face-off surgery and takes over my life.
I scream in agony and think, I knew this would happen.