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Miss Manners: "You Can't Have It Both Ways"
Source
Dear Miss Manners: Is it acceptable for a girl to decline an invitation to a dance, only to later accept another invitation to the same dance? This is for a high school dance or prom.
Gentle Reader: If you are the parent of a young gentleman to whom this has been done, Miss Manners can confirm that the young lady is indeed rude, and that however crushed your son is, he is better off. She would be capable of committing another rudeness, such as breaking the date later.
If you are the parent of a young lady who proposes to do this, it is still rude, but Miss Manners has more to say.
You should tell your daughter that as the idea is to avoid hurting the young gentleman’s feelings, in theory, she should be able to do this if he would never find out. Then ask her how she would decline without being unkind or untruthful. And remind her that there are no secrets in high school.
There is another lesson you might give, even though she will not believe it. That is that some law of nature makes the least popular boy in high school into the most desirable man later in life, yet, no matter how successful and glamorous he has become, makes him remember and continue to smart from having been slighted.
Dear Miss Manners: Is it acceptable for a girl to decline an invitation to a dance, only to later accept another invitation to the same dance? This is for a high school dance or prom.
Gentle Reader: If you are the parent of a young gentleman to whom this has been done, Miss Manners can confirm that the young lady is indeed rude, and that however crushed your son is, he is better off. She would be capable of committing another rudeness, such as breaking the date later.
If you are the parent of a young lady who proposes to do this, it is still rude, but Miss Manners has more to say.
You should tell your daughter that as the idea is to avoid hurting the young gentleman’s feelings, in theory, she should be able to do this if he would never find out. Then ask her how she would decline without being unkind or untruthful. And remind her that there are no secrets in high school.
There is another lesson you might give, even though she will not believe it. That is that some law of nature makes the least popular boy in high school into the most desirable man later in life, yet, no matter how successful and glamorous he has become, makes him remember and continue to smart from having been slighted.
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Plus there's a horrible thread of "the guy is entitled to the girl as his date because he wants her, regardless of what she wants!". Just, no.
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Some guys are unpopular. But some are bullies, creeps, date-rapists, disrespectful of boundaries, or otherwise someone to avoid. And you know what? Bullies, creeps, and date-rapists do not get better with age.
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(If she, as ~inlovewithnight wondered, lied about not being able to go at all, then that's a bit uncool - lying to people whose feelings you care about is not cool, and if you don't care about his feelings, why are you lying about your rejection anyway? But she's still utterly within her rights.)
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Seriously, "the idea is to avoid hurting the young gentleman's feelings"? No, the idea is that girls get to say no. If you can do that without hurting the other person's feelings, that's good, but often you can't, and in those circumstances you still get to say no.
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If a guy hasn't learned that not every person he likes is going to like him back by...well, sometime in elementary school, he is so relentlessly clueless as to not be worth bothering with.