Miss Manners: First Date on His Birthday

[ermingarden]

Dear Miss Manners: I have a date with a guy I met three years ago. We have communicated on and off, and now he is coming to town and has asked me out. The date is on his birthday, and I don’t know whether I should do something for him!

Asking someone for a first — or first-in-a-while — date on one’s birthday is like bringing along your parents: It skips necessary steps on the way to developing a relationship.

For that reason, Miss Manners would have changed the day, had she known. Because it is too late for that, you should bring a token gift — inexpensive and lighthearted — while he should insist that he has never attached much importance to the day — which is not really plausible, because he must have been the one who told you.

Comments

[xenacryst]

I agree with MM that this is a slightly awkward situation, but I’m becoming less convinced as I get older that avoiding awkwardness at all costs is better than facing it straight on. Maybe it’s fine here, but I would present an alternate script for the LW to choose between:

“I know this feels a little awkward, but I hope you aren’t expecting me to bring a birthday present on our date. I don’t really know you well enough yet to know what would be good, and it just seems like it would be better to spend the time actually getting to know each other than to fuss over something trivial.”

I mean, I know some people are perfectly fine with awkwardness-avoidance behaviors and building a relationship on them. Go them. In my own life, I’m coming more to the view that, hey, if we can name this awkwardness now, and set it aside before it blossoms into a huge awkward stink flower in the middle of the room that we’re all afraid to take out to the compost, maybe our lives would be a little more peaceful.