Hi Joy,
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Just give it a chance,” about dating people who you’re not interested in. Friends and family say it to me all the time. On more than one occasion, I’ve taken their advice…and it usually ends with me firing these friends from their self-appointed job as matchmaker. Can you help me come up with a snappy comeback for the next time someone tells me this?
Well, you could give a snappy comeback if you want to. Or you could watch this video for other ideas.
From my heart,
Joy
What are some ways you can graciously respond if you don’t want to be setup on dates by the matchmakers in your life?
Do you have a matchmaking success story? Or, maybe, an awkward one? Please share!
Love and Respect (Now) is a division of Love and Respect. Please be considerate.
From My Heart
All of the Love and Respect Now Posts…In One Place!
Emerson & Sarah Eggerichs on Marriage, Parenting, Family of Origin, Work & Death
Fighting for Love (and Other Potentially Hazardous Cliches)
That is the most beautiful quote about unicorns I’ve ever heard. Thank you.
LOL!
I appreciated the effort of friends and family, but usually the guys they tried to introduce me to were interested in my girl friends.
I have a go-to response called the “punch-n-run.” Maybe not gracious, but effective.
ahahahhaa!!!
I am all for my friends realizing my awesomeness! (Ha!) I’m also all for forthrightness in the “set-up” process. Finding that a friend has manipulated a situation to try to achieve their desired outcome for you and hasn’t asked you about it, doesn’t always sit well.
* Picture a church group outing to the beach. Dude-friend and his wife start to walk with myself and 3 other guys down the beach to check out the tide pools. Dude friend says he can’t go any farther, he has an injured foot, so I keep walking, now as the only girl with the other guys. At the tide pools, one guy climbs a big rock to prove something and another feels the call of nature and must rush up the hill to a bush. Bush-guy is actually rather unstable and I am not allowed to move or look anywhere but out to sea and at the guy that Dude-friend thinks I should be having romantic feelings for due to his covert matchmaking skills. I looked at the ocean and heard “don’t turn around yet” from Bush-guy, for 5 minutes and was finally allowed to move. Bush-guy never actually accomplished his task and I got to try to not be involved in that conversation as we walked back to the bigger group. When we got back, Dude-friend was grinning like he’d pulled off a major coup and his foot injury had been healed in the meantime. The “mark” and I realized what we’d been thrown into and could laugh a bit, but also felt manipulated and awkward about the whole scenario and more awkward around each other.
The whole scenario could have been much less awkward if Dude-friend had been up front with me.
As for awkward stories…
There was this guy – the older brother of a girl I grew up with – who I knew about but didn’t really KNOW. His parents and mine were good friends, and his sister – when she first signed up for FB – was told by her dad “you can get FB, but only if your friends are also my friends on FB.” (For safety reasons).
Fast forward several years (over a decade, really). I posted an article from Boundless about productivity in singleness on my FB page. The Dad suddenly posts (on my wall!!!!) “It’s so nice seeing such a mature, Christian young lady. We have a Christian young man who would like to one day be married…We would be the perfect girl for him, and we really want you for our daughter-in-law!” I was mortified, and was sure that the son would be too!
(Not knowing what else to do, I called my Dad and told him “He’s YOUR friend, YOU deal with it!”) The post disappeared and the son never saw it.
Two months later, the son, who had no idea that all this had happened, was in town, remembered that I lived there, and messaged me about a good place to eat. I was babysitting, and didn’t get back to him til much later…but it ended up that we got married a year and a half later! My father-in-law to this day still boasts that he set it up.
Success… I don’t know if it was really match-making. I had a really good friend (both of us single), and whose grandma lived down the street from my uncle’s house. My Little Brother (6’2″, totally girl oblivious, and 23 years old) and I were visiting said uncle and so the three of us naturally hung out. After she went home, I told my brother “I want to be perfectly honest with you. Mary is the type of girl you should look for if you ever decide to get married. THAT type of girl – I’d love to have as a sister-in-law.” He took me literally, I guess, because the two of them gotarried within the year.
As for awkward stories…
There was this guy – the older brother of a girl I grew up with – who I knew about but didn’t really KNOW. His parents and mine were good friends, and his sister – when she first signed up for FB – was told by her dad “you can get FB, but only if your friends are also my friends on FB.” (For safety reasons).
Fast forward several years (over a decade, really). I posted an article from Boundless about productivity in singleness on my FB page. The Dad suddenly posts (on my wall!!!!) “It’s so nice seeing such a mature, Christian young lady. We have a Christian young man who would like to one day be married…We think you would be the perfect girl for him, and we really want you for our daughter-in-law!” I was mortified, and was sure that the son would be too!
(Not knowing what else to do, I called my Dad and told him “He’s YOUR friend, YOU deal with it!”) The post disappeared and the son never saw it.
Two months later, the son, who had no idea that all this had happened, was in town, remembered that I lived there, and messaged me about a good place to eat. I was babysitting, and didn’t get back to him til much later…but it ended up that we got married a year and a half later! My father-in-law to this day still boasts that he set it up.
Success… I don’t know if it was really match-making. I had a really good friend (both of us single), and whose grandma lived down the street from my uncle’s house. My Little Brother (6’2″, totally girl oblivious, and 23 years old) and I were visiting said uncle and so the three of us naturally hung out. After she went home, I told my brother “I want to be perfectly honest with you. Mary is the type of girl you should look for if you ever decide to get married. THAT type of girl – I’d love to have as a sister-in-law.” He took me literally, I guess, because the two of them got married within the year.
Jacinta thinks...
Oh man. I used to totally hate hearing stories about people who really didn’t get along falling in love; partly coz I could think of a few guys who I wasn’t really attracted to who I really wouldn’t want to be set up with. Nice guys, I just wasn’t particularly in to their personalities etc.
Now, I usually just smile awkwardly when people joke about setting me up.
I would prefer to pick the guy for myself to be honest.
I guess it’s the whole “you can lead a unicorn to a magical pool of water, but you cannot make it drink”. Especially if you don’t want to end up full of ‘corn holes.
Thems unicorns are mighty fierce.
| at |