A boy whom I know through friends, but for whom I have no romantic feelings, offered me a free ticket to a show. It was not presented as a date, but I worried later that he might consider it one. I agreed to go with him as I enjoy his company and wanted to see the show. Was I wrong to accept? Or am I right in thinking that the event is not a date unless announced as one?
It’s like this: when a man offers you a ticket to a show, and you know him only through friends, it’s not necessarily a formal date. But it’s certainly testing the water. It’s the dating world’s version of the conman at the doorstep gauging how gullible a potential mark is; or an internet spammer shovelling out e-mails to see whether anyone takes the bait and replies.
When it comes to single men and dating, human males act the way that animals in the wild do towards food. Just as carnivores on the savannah kill prey and gorge themselves even when they’re not hungry, because they don’t know when they’ll next get a chance to eat, so single human males conduct their lives on the basis that they don’t know when their next date will be, and therefore no potential opportunity with a suitable prospect must go untapped.
This boy isn’t counting on your treating the outing as a date (he knows that he can speculate all he wants about whether or not he’s on a date, but that it’ll be the woman who decides – just as a painter can slap oil on a canvas, but it’s the person viewing the canvas who gets to decide whether it’s art). But he probably wouldn’t be upset if you did. Are you right to think an event is not a date unless it’s announced as one? Now you’re pushing it. If men said what they really had in mind every time they asked a girl out, cinemas and restaurants would run out of customers.
What’s your view and do you have a dilemma of your own?
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