Dear Luv Doc,
I re-entered the dating scene a few years ago after a drawn-out divorce. Being of a certain age, I find myself seeing a lot of the same men at events/clubs, etc. Most are very respectful of my time and my space, but there are certain men who always try to monopolize my time. It doesn’t matter if I am out with friends or alone, they will engage me in a conversation and then try to cull me from the herd, so to speak. These are generally nice guys, but they don’t seem to get the message that I don’t want to spend the whole night talking to just them. My subtle hints don’t seem to work, and I can only claim that I have to go to the restroom so many times. How do I make a graceful exit from these unwanted conversations?
– Nice Girl
I would happily tell you how to make a graceful exit, but I am fairly sure I have never made one. I am not even entirely sure they exist – like Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or intelligent Trump voters. Leaving someone pretty much implies you have something more important to do. That’s never a very easy message to deliver – even to someone who knows you really well.
Life itself begins with a miraculous, but extraordinarily ungraceful exit. It’s like the Hairy Thunderer/Cosmic Muffin thought, “This wonderful world I have created is a bit of a shitshow. How can I make it seem more attractive? I know! Childbirth! I’ll squeeze the baby’s head in a vaginal vise-grip until it has a splitting migraine then expel it in a giant avalanche of blood, urine, and feces!” An exit like that would make even Eden, Texas, seem like … well … Eden.
Is it any wonder, then, that we as a species are exit-challenged? We’ve been exposed to bad modeling. The mouth? Pretty decent entrance – especially with some orthodontia and the right shade of lipstick. The anus? No amount of lipstick is going to fix that pucker. And death? Death is a little awkward, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s extremely awkward – like when your friends and family accidentally find out about that masturbation fetish you have.
Comparatively it would seem nipping a boring conversation in the bud would be relatively easy, but for reasons outlined above, no one wants to seem like an asshole, so we suffer through boorish and intrusive behavior a lot more than we should. It’s not nice to tell someone to piss off because they’re cramping your mingle, but it also sucks to be shadowed by a conniving cockblocker all night long, so here’s my advice:
Find a break in the conversation and say, “Well, it’s been really nice talking with you, but I am going to go chat with some other friends.” If that fails and he sidles up to you again, you can jokingly say, “It feels like you’re stalking me!” If that fails, tell him very earnestly, “I need you to give me some space.” If he still doesn’t get the message, say, “Piss off, dude, you’re cramping my mingle. I’m looking for some quality D.” It might be graceless, but I am pretty sure it will be effective.
This article appears in September 21 • 2018.
