JHE Solves Your Relationship Problems: Small World

Dear Jean,

I was wondering if you could advise on a sticky situation I seemed to have embroiled myself in - about a month ago I broke up with my boyfriend, and to try and get back out there, I was signed up to a certain dating website that helps you find love through friend recommendations. On there I began exchanging emails with , an engineer with a penchant for motown music. When he mentioned the engineering firm he worked for, I realised I had two friends who also worked there. It quickly became clear that not only did he know them, but we have actually met! What’s awful is that we met at a party where he tried to grind innappropriately with all the girls there (including some with boyfriends present), vomited out the third floor window, and passed out in a corner in the fetal position. How do I tell him I’m not interested without humiliating him or bringing up any of these gruesome details??

- I Wish I Could Forget

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Dear Miss Elephantine Memory,

I am now going to divide my response in to three sections.

1. That’s hilarious!

2. Good for you getting back out there. I think dating online can be really good for that - whether or not you find the person you are looking for, it simply affords you a chance to practice and become more open to the possibility of meeting people, which then may happen over the computer or on a bus or whatever.

3. You know, if you were getting along with him quite well until you realised this coincidence then maybe you should go for a coffee with him anyway. It may be that you just happened to run in to him on the worst night of his life and he is otherwise lovely. I mean, I guess we have all had one of those nights (2002, the student union bar at my university, I was so sick that I cried for my mother) and it would be terrible to be judged on that forever. But if the recollection of this event makes you think no way, no how would you ever like to see him again, the beauty of internet dating is that it is pretty much accepted practice that you can cut off communication with nary a warning. In this case, however, I’d encourage you to send him a polite sign-off - ‘Hey there, I think we’d better leave this one, all the best’ - since it is likely you might run in to him at a future social gathering. Hopefully one sans limoncello.