How To Bail Out Of A Bad Date

[Contributed by: Most Brave Girl]

You've been there: stuck on what feels like the longest date of anyone's life, face-to-face with someone that you know you never want to see again. What did you do? Suffer through the bad date or pull the plug? Here are a few ways to ditch the zero and get with the pizza by yourself at home.

Don't Plan Ahead
Alright, this won't help you if you're already on a date with a dullard, but you should definitely plan dates (at least first dates) that expire at a certain time in the night. You can meet for a drink, make no mention of any other activity to be attempted after you are outside of said drink and then sail away, sprightly as a hummingbird in the springtime, free to pursue the leisure diversion of your choice. Always, always plan your first dates so that you have an opportunity to call it a night after an hour or so.

If it's a second or third date and you're not sure if you're game to stick around past the first cocktail, you should plan your date in stages. Don't decide on the same restaurant for happy hour and dinner; Choose two different places so that if you aren't feeling it, you can save yourself a lousy evening. If you like your date, great! You can happily carry on from one restaurant or activity to the next to extend your evening as long as you please.

The Clichés
Don't pull the friend-called-to-tell-me-my-roommate-is-barfing-up-motor-oil-or-some-shit-and-I-have-to-go-take-her-to-the-mechanic card. That's predictable. There's not a chance that your date will believe and/or pardon you because everybody knows that it really means that you're punking out after phunking with your date's heart. The old phunk-and-punk.

However, the sick card cliché is still fair game. Who would ever presume to know how you're feeling better than you? If your date tries to call you out on it, they'll immediately sound like a jerk. Just make sure you lay the groundwork. Make it a habit to preface every first date with a disclaimer about your overall well-being and it's frailty. Pepper something ominous into the dinner conversation like, "Oh my God, I'm so tired. I didn't sleep at all last night. I hope I don't get sick." Then when you drop the bail-bomb, your date won't be quite so blindsided because it won't look like a sudden development.

If you're down to embarrass yourself a little bit (you know the saying about desperate times), fake a case of food poisoning. Make a mad dash for the bathroom when you're mid-sentence and stay in there for ten minutes. Splash a little water on your face and neck (and collarbone and armpits if you're a true salesman) and shakily return to the table. No one likes thinking about someone else throwing up, so your date is just going to be glad that you didn't lose your cookies on the dinner table. It's also a more believable excuse. Why would you embarrass yourself like that if you didn't have to?

Do Something Insane
Start crying. About anything. Then keep crying and excuse yourself for the evening. Or get off the charts offended when your date offers to split mozzarella sticks (They're made in a sweatshop you pig). Or do anything else totally nuts. Use your imagination and show no mercy.

The one absolutely foolproof way to get out of a bad date is to make your date get out of it for you. You have to do something so bonkers that your date wants to ditch you right away. It's going to take some nerve but it'll be worth it. The following behaviors will almost always make someone run for the hills:

Talk about how you're still in love with an ex.
Explain your best sexual experience in painstaking detail.
Take a firm pro-Voldemort stance.
Ask for your date's home address, fax number and social security number unsolicitedly.
Say that you want to take your relationship to the next level, by demanding that your date define your relationship, make a commitment to you or plan a couples trip somewhere far and expensive.
Ask how much money your date has in the bank and then scoff, no matter the answer.
Mention that the only thing you like more than Jesus is PONIESPONIESPONIES.
Refuse to order off the menu because you only eat bugs. Proceed to invite your date into the shrubbery outside the restaurant to take a stand against the bourgeois swine and find some real dinner ("the people's food").
Choose one topic and one topic only for conversation: Nicolas Cage, improv comedy, your gender reassignment surgery, lava, how smug your grandmother is, the Boston Tea Party, etc.
Insist on instagramming literally everything: the host stand, the bar, the table, the menu, your date...
Call your mom and make your date talk to her.

Use as many of these as you have to. Or, do the one thing that should repel any self-respecting dinner companion: Reveal that your favorite show is The Big Bang Theory.

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How To Bail Out Of A Bad Date

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