Last night, I made the ultimate horrifying mistake. After a relatively mediocre date, I went to send a text to a friend about why the date had been mediocre. The reasons were somewhat legitimate, somewhat superficial, but all the same, I sent the text to the wrong person. Instead of sending it to my friend, I sent it to the person I had been on the date with. Ouch.

Now, there's no way to come back from that and I looked and felt like a reallllll jerk. I apologized profusely, but the damage was done. Not that I wanted to go on more dates with this person, but if there was any shred of thought in their brain that I did, that was gone, which made me wonder: is it better to be (brutally) honest with someone or lie, saying you're just "busy" or "not ready to date" or something cliche?

Judging by how horrible I still feel about the mishap, I'm going to go with either a very, very cushioned form of honesty, or sticking with lies. Sure, lying is wrong, but no one really wants to hear the real reasons someone doesn't want to go out with them again. What I did was, although an accident, wrong and immature—as adults, do we really need to hash out every detail of every date with our friends? Maybe, maybe not, but I could have done so in a much nicer way and avoided the entire situation.

The next time you find yourself absolutely not wanting to see someone you went on a date with again, try and refrain from letting it all out—whether it was their hairstyle, their job, a certain part of their lifestyle. Your opinion here only matters to you—they're not going to, nor should they have to, change any aspect of themselves for you to like them. Let someone down easy if you don't want their company. It might be a little weak, but it's better for everyone involved.

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