Communication matters.

I had dinner recently with a new friend. We had met online, enjoyed a real-life meeting, and wound up subsequently getting thrown together again by circumstance. More recently, we had tried a little bit of physical intimacy, unexpected and very experimental. Two people who didn’t know what each other liked, poking at the sampler platter.

They called the morning of dinner day to give me an opportunity to back out, because they had decided that we were not sexually compatible, and wanted me to know that that was not on the menu for the evening.

It’s certainly not fun hearing that someone has decided things don’t work in that way, especially since it wasn’t the most thorough or planned of tryouts. (No, really, I can do better!)

But I realize that the person was actually doing a great favor. By saying that in advance, rather than letting their date for the evening have expectations (I didn’t, but many might), they were being gracious. Some would call it being friend-zoned. I don’t; I call it being honest and communicating well. And dinner was pretty good.

(Oh, and much – so much – better this than that they went through with some further activities they thought were “expected” and maybe even pretended to like them but didn’t. That’s never the right answer.)