Remember Quin, the girl who snapped at a guy for breaking up with her over text message while the whole Internet called her crazy? She’s now doing a regular advice column here at Guyism because you love her so. Today she tackles the wonderful minefield that is matchmaking.
It is the wont of many women, particularly those who have a large, diverse array of friends, to set up those said friends with one another.
Two friends of mine, a guy and a girlfriend, recently mentioned to me that they’d be interested in meeting someone. They are very attractive, successful, and cosmopolitan — small business owners that travel extensively and have a long roster of languages in which they are fluent. Marriage is imminent for these folks, obviously.
We all met for drinks. The passion was completely lacking.
“Why don’t you like him?!” I asked my girlfriend. I just couldn’t understand why she wasn’t interested in such a good looking, sophisticated, and well-rounded guy.
“I don’t date men from [the part of the world from which he is from],” was her response. Shockingly, he had almost the same answer about her. The two are from different hemispheres, and apparently missed the memo that in America, it’s pretty nonstandard to talk this way.
Incidentally I went home with that guy that night. I suppose I didn’t realize the past four years I’d known him that I actually had a thing for him. He later admitted he was open to meeting my friend simply to spend time with me. It was all a strange and accidental case of matchmaking gone awry, then perfectly.
We’re scheduled to see each other again, and my girlfriend has no idea. She’d already voiced her adamant disinterest in him — what could possibly be the problem? And yet, I still feel uneasy about breaking the news.
There really is no way to win at matchmaking, is there? Save an actual successful committed relationship, nearly every party involved in a set-up gets his or her feelings hurt, one way or the other.