51 minutes to leave a bad date? It shouldn’t take that long
That’s one minute to work out you’re not enjoying it – and 50 to come up with a plausible exit strategy
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Your support makes all the difference.Apparently, there’s a time limit on how long we can bear sitting through a date before deciding it’s a dud and leaving – and that limit is 51 minutes. Sorry, what? Shouldn’t that be 10 seconds?
But no – according to a new study of 2000 people, around an hour (less nine minutes) is the average time it takes to make your excuses and get out of there when you aren’t feeling it. At all. According to The Times, popular exit strategies include getting friends to phone with an “emergency” or claiming your pet is poorly (come on, we can do a lot better than that. How about faking your own death?).
Of those who actually go through with it, the poll found that 25 minutes was the average time most people took to decide on whether there was a “spark” – but 58 per cent stayed on the date anyway; out of “politeness” or “discomfort”.
What is going on? More crucially: haven’t we got dating all wrong?
I think so – and I’m speaking as someone who, during lockdown, went on many terrible first dates (it was, aged 39, my first time on a dating app – the horror, the horror). I also went speed dating (and wrote about it). And the moment I “knew” it wasn’t love at first sight, with anyone I dated? Well, I’ve already said it: it was in the moment. The first moment. The Moment That I Knew.
The Moment, in one case, happened within the first minute. My date shook my hand and I could barely feel the pressure of his palm against mine – it was an immediate “no” (the hand wants what it wants). Yet out of politeness, I sat through an excruciating, two-hour ordeal on a bench in a graveyard (did I mention it was lockdown?) listening to him talk through the specifics of the death metal scene in Milan. That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.
There were others (oh, there were others): the person who told me they were looking for a new partner because their wife was terminally ill; the man who – when I did, finally, make my excuses to leave the busy pub – hugged me and whispered into my ear, “you’ll get a lot more than that, next time”.
The guy who immediately talked about his “first love” (aged six), and then cried. Someone else cried, too – when lamenting the loss of his Brazilian girlfriend (because he’d cheated on her). Another spent an hour giving me a rundown of his medical diagnoses (ADHD, Tourette’s) and someone else had spent years in a sex cult. One was looking strictly for a “cuckold relationship – because it’s feminist” – and another was an arms dealer.
Did I enjoy myself? Not really, though the stories are (arguably) worth it. Did I want to leave? Yes. Did I, however, stay for what felt like an unreasonable amount of time? Also yes. Oh dear, I’m part of the problem.
So, here’s what I think the issue really is: I think we’re approaching dating completely wrong. By putting ourselves in situations that are widely heralded as being “good for a date” (a bar, a restaurant) we are in fact trapping ourselves in the very scenarios we are then so desperate to get out of.
Why give up a precious evening to a stranger you don’t like and won’t want to see again? If you drink, and you arrange to meet in a bar, then you’re probably going to knock back a very large Pinot Grigio in about 17 minutes. By then, you’ll either be too drunk to realise the time; or you’ll be “on it” and will end up saying “yes” to another wine, by which time you might do something you regret – like agree to a second date. (There’s a reason why, in most pubs, there’s a sign on the back of the ladies’ toilets giving women a code word to tell staff if they’re dating and it’s not going well.)
We’re far too nervous, too polite – some of us too awkwardly British – to be forthright and say that we want to go; that the situation isn’t serving us. So, we stick it out. For 51 long, slow, desolate minutes.
Here’s what we should do instead.
Don’t go out on a date in a bar: you’ll be trapped by the environment! You’ll be sitting at a table for two, contemplating doing a bunk out the toilet window, feeling guilty because you have to return a round if someone buys one for you, you simply have to. It’s an unwritten but crucial social code, it might as well be on the government’s British Values test. Meeting in a bar is only marginally better than meeting someone for the first time on a submarine (the horizon is rolling, you feel sick and you’re stuck there).
Don’t go on a date in a restaurant – are you mad? There are no good outcomes, here: either you fancy them (in which case, why would you risk something as foolhardy as spaghetti bolognese, this isn’t your Lady and the Tramp moment). Even if it isn’t love at first sight, a dinner-date is an investment. It’s a two-hour venture, at least (if you add a crème brûlée, and once you’ve gone that far, why wouldn’t you?).
No, don’t go drinking, go to a water park. I mean it. What we need is to take the best bits of speed dating (now speed dating itself is achingly passé) – and keep all first dates to a strict four minutes. Hence... a water slide: there’s no hanging about there; if there’s no connection, you only have to say you’re holding up the queue and have got to go and with a shrill “weeeeeee”, away you go.
Other fast-paced options: drive-thru dates, car washes, a cheeky takeaway Costa at Leigh Delamere services on the M4. Practical and purposeful and you’ll still go home with something (if not someone). Rollercoasters – what do they take, start to finish, 60 seconds? Ideal. Arrange to meet at the top and if you still like the look of them after you’ve seen their face in the post-Splash Mountain “gotcha” pic, you’re golden.
How about public transport? Couldn’t we invent some kind of reality TV show where people jump on the Tube, have a chat, travel two stops and then get off again? If you’re really wanting to multi-date, you could do the same with someone different, the next carriage down.
There are so many quick-fire options: having a chat on an escalator while both going the opposite way (or a travelator at the airport for the same effect). Flirting while waiting for your bags to come around on the baggage carousel. Going through a revolving door at a posh hotel. Winking at the checkout in Asda. Whatever gets you going.
The alternatives outside of the very usual awkward walk, awkward drink or awkward dinner date are vast and varied. You can choose any method – it’s the message, not the method.
Our real mistake is giving ourselves too much time – and the wrong environment. Don’t leave your evening open-ended, cut it to the quick. If you’re enjoying yourself, simply stay longer. After all, we really only need five minutes: one minute to decide (and the remaining four to run a mile).