The Infamous Dinner Party Set-Up

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just came back from a dinner party at a friend of my sister’s house that I had met before. In attendance were the friend, her husband, and thier friend, “Paul”. SisterRiddles and I had met “Paul” at a previous dinner party at the same friend’s house.

After leaving, my sister gave me the “I’m so nonchalant” look, and asked how I liked “Paul”. “Same as before. You are SO transparent.” It’s not that I didn’t like him (he’s plesant enough, a touch on the short side) it’s the set-up aspect that pisses me off. The fact that my sister and her friend felt it necessary to discuss my love life, or lack there of, and THEN took the initiative to play matchmaker, possibly inviting “Paul” under the guise of a set-up. ARGH.

Anyone ever had a sucessful set-up? I’m not talking about a blind date when you go in knowing you are being set-up, I’m talking about a sneeky set-up.

Off to plan ways to enact revenge upon SisterRiddles.

A little persistance goes a long way. Announcing:

“I go on guilt trips a couple of time a year. Mom books them for me.” A custom made Wally .sig!

2

The only positive set up I’ve ever had was one I lobbied for myself, so there was nothing sneaky about it whatsoever. I must say that if anyone tried to pull that covert setup shit with me, though, I wouldn’t be havin’ it, but that’s probably just 'cause I have a contrarian streak the size of Nebraska.

“Are you frightened of snakes?”
“Only when they dress like werewolves.”
-Preacher

3

Three times:

  1. Went out with a group of friends who just “happened” to bring along some tall, dopey blond guy that they thought I might be interested in. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking - it was like talking to Moose from the Archie cartoon strip.

  2. Recently married friends invited me to a New Year’s Eve party. Every other guest there was with a spouse or a fiancé except for… Nick. Who was an OK guy, except that he clearly had issues about not being able to cope without some sort of female by his side. Frankly, it was a little creepy to have someone sitting on the floor next to my chair & tickling my feet when he only met me 3 hours earlier. It also bugged me that he’d clearly been told a lot about me when I knew nothing about him.

  3. Other friends who thought they’d invite a co-worker to dinner with us. Nice enough guy if a little quiet, but I was just so ticked that they’d done this that I refused to go along with it later. Maybe my mistake, who knows?

I found these and other less subtle set-up attempts to be really annoying. (Thought bubble over my head: do my friends think I’m so pathetic that I’ll never find someone without their help?)

But the most frustrating situation I ever faced was actually a bit different: someone I considered a good friend (and ONLY a friend) apparently felt something more for me, and actively told other people we were seeing each other. Including a really fun and attractive guy that I would have loved to date… unfortunately, he asked my friend if I was available, and my friend told him no. The kicker to this story is that I didn’t find out about this until almost a YEAR later, by which time it was too late to track down Mr. Fun Guy and make amends. My “friend” was not a friend for much longer after that…

I am happy to say that I have a wonderful sweetie in my life now, and I found him ALL BY MYSELF. :slight_smile:

4

Well - yes & no…

Some of my friends decided to set me up at a party, but then couldn’t keep themselves from telling me about their cunning plan. I firmly, but politely asked them to tell me who the unlucky girl was, which they obstinately refused to do.

Big party, lots of unattached young women - fun! I ended up following this pretty girl home - and only later that day learned that I had found the intended victim all on my own. (Unless, of course, they had slipped HER some info ? - Naaaah!)

What the hell, it worked - we split up half a year later, but even so…

Norman

5

I was once set up by a very nice friend who thought I needed to be paired off. She bugged me until I very reluctantly agreed to go out to dinner with her, her husband and this guy. A dozen times I must have asked her, “Did you tell him I was fat?” Not that I feel the least bit apologetic about my fatness, but I always want to avoid anybody who is going to be a jerk about it. She brushed me off, perhaps thinking, “He couldn’t be that shallow…”

We met. She obviously hadn’t mentioned my physique, since I could see his ratty little face fall at the sight of me. We loathed one another on sight, which made for just a wee bit of an awkward evening.

Catrandom, who is not bitter, really

6

Fillet, I hear ya. This is not the first time this has happened to me, a former roommate, who is engaged, met this guy at a party, showed him my picture, talked about me all night long, GAVE HIM MY NUMBER, and told him to call me. I felt like a freakin’ mail order bride. And she kept asking if he called, I had to start screening calls and deleting his number from the caller ID.

Then at work, a co-worker decided that the tech support intern was perfect for me. We had been flirting, but due to the matchmaker, we were too uncomfortable around eachother. ARGH. We totally would have hooked up if she hadn’t gotten in the middle of it.

Let’s form a pathetic club! Oh, wait, you found someone. Nevermind… : :off to eat pathetic cake alone::

A little persistance goes a long way. Announcing:

“I go on guilt trips a couple of time a year. Mom books them for me.” A custom made Wally .sig!

7

As a guy named Paul who can also be described as “plesant enough, a touch on the short side” I am vicariously crushed.

“My mind reels with sarcastic replies!” - Snoopy

8

I don’t know for certain if my situation was actually a set-up or not, but I suspect it was, and it was successful.

Way back in 1991, shortly after I moved here to Flint, I was living with my aunt & uncle, and they invited me along to a sporting event, a hockey game, to be exact. A friend of my aunt’s was working security, and got us good seats. After the game, we went out to a bar. The wife of my aunt’s came in to party, and she’d brought along her younger brother. He was a very tall, very quiet, very handsome young man, who barely spoke to me all evening. He got up to go to the bathroom, and I immediately assaulted my aunt’s friend, begging him to give the guy my phone number, as long as he was single, no wife, no girlfriend. He was. He he he.

The guy called me a week later. We had dinner. It was great. We were together for three years. The romantic relationship did not work, but this man and I had formed a very strong friendship. When we finally broke up, both of us confessed to not being able to comprehend life without ever seeing each other again.

He and I both work for the same place now. He and my husband hit it off immediately. My husband and I danced at his wedding, and his wife is a wonderful woman. This man was waiting on my porch for my husband and I, when we brought our first child home from the hospital, and our second. I expect I will be waiting on his porch as well sometime this fall, as I just got the news that he & his wife are expecting their first.

So yeah, I’d call that a successful setup. :slight_smile:

Cristi, Slayer of Peeps

I made my husband join a bridge club. He jumps next Tuesday.

(title & sig courtesy of UncleBeer and WallyM7!)

9

I have never been set up in my entire life, with or without warning. I want it known right now that I will not object if anyone wants to set me up
:smiley:

I do not merely dance. I bewitch. I seduce. I enchant and I bewilder. Throw money.
(Gee, Wally must have seen me dance!)

10

The thing about set ups that seems to be the number one complaint is that the person doing the set up thinks they have the perfect match for you, but their selection ability shows a complete lack of knowing anything about you. Often, they seem to pick someone they would be interested in.

It’s really sad when it’s a close friend of yours that demonstrates such a lack of knowledge about you.

I’ve been set up a couple times. Sort of. One the girl was very odd, and there was a long-distance thing in the way. It might have gotten interesting, but would not have worked in the long run, so it was probably healthier and happier that it really went nowhere fast. (Okay, it was fun for a few minutes.)

Another one the girl was super-incredibly shy and quiet. I thought we were hitting it off okay, and even got comments from my sister and her boyfriend that things seemed to be going well between us, but I found out after the date that I wasn’t her type. Of course she was too shy to tell me directly, so I heard it second-hand. Um, that kinda hurt, but I know it wasn’t intentional.

The latest near set-up is being discussed in another thread
http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/007287.html

It’s not really a set up, but I am being prodded a bit by someone who does not seem fully informed.

(Advice welcome in other thread.)

So far I am still open to set ups. So get to work on it. :wink:

11

A couple of people have tried to set me up. It was always with a guy. So much for that…

Heck is where you go when you don’t believe in Gosh.

12

Hey Swimmer, I thought that last night you were going to be Donna Reed, housemother to the gay dance. What’s up?

13

So, Swimming, you’re single?

I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.

14

I dunno. Mrs. Pluto almost never sets me up with a date at dinner parties and I’m kinda disappointed.

Old Yakov Smirnoff joke:

“My friend asked me if I’d been able to get a date for my wedding. What a country!”

15

There’s this place here called “Jerry’s” where they sell ice cream, fish, cakes, etc. etc. One night my best friend, her guy and I were going to stop there and get some ice cream. They made a very strong point of going at a certain time, and as I’d never been there before I just assumed it was some bloody good stuff and they were anxious to get their hands on it. We sat down when who, but Jerry himself, comes to sit with us. He introduces himself to me with the whole, “You must be Megan” bizzo. Meanwhile I can’t take my eyes off the thickest thicket of fur which was pouring wildly out of his shirt.

I was certainly not impressed with either of my friends.

Hairy Jerry and I (surprise surprise) never did hook up.

“Organs gross me out. That’s organs, not orgasms.”
-the wallster

16

They sell fish at the same place where ice cream and cakes are sold?

“Hush, village idiot!”

17

No story from me.

It is interesting reading about these ‘set ups’

should i be worried my friends don’t like me enough to bother with a setup … or be grateful that they were nice enough to spare me?

I dunno. Swimming sounds nice enough, just unlucky. I’m single :slight_smile: I’ve got my eye on someone though. Swimming doesn’t want my pity I don’t think. How about a friend instead… I’ve got some great stories.

smirks

The Urge

If I go crazy will you still call me superman?

18

The dinner party was pre-queer prom. It was at the house of the people we (SisterRiddles and myself) were going with, a heterosexual married couple. Quite a strange four-some to go to a gay bar’s prom night, but this IS Vermont…
“Paul,” whose name was neither Paul nor Trion, was not going to the prom, which made his attendance at the dinner all the more suspect. If he had asked for my number, I would probably have given it to him, but there is nothing I abhore more than indecisiveness.

This set-up thing is a constant occurance with me, now that I think about it, my first date was a setup. He was an adorable, funny, charming drug dealer. He made me dinner, but his beeper kept going off, and I couldn’t handle it. Feh.

I guess it comes down to a feeling of helplessness, when you are in a situation, where everyone around you has more information about that situation than you do, you feel cornered. And I HATE feeling cornered. My natural instinct is to fight my way out, so it doesn’t matter how fantastic he is, the fact is that I feel sabotaged. (“Oh, my god, it’s a mirage…”)

I’d pretend to be gay to avoid these set-ups, but neuro-trash says even THAT doesn’t work. And she really IS gay, so I doubt pretending is going to do much good.

I need to go eat, this whole thread depresses me.

A little persistance goes a long way. Announcing:

“I go on guilt trips a couple of time a year. Mom books them for me.” A custom made Wally .sig!

19

SwimmingRiddles wrote:

:sigh of relief:

She also wrote:

FWIW, I know how you feel. Back in my Swinging Bachelor days (hah) I have endured the dreaded set up myself. My biggest complaint was the feeling that everyone is watching me. Here I am with this perfectly nice person and my supposed “friends” are waiting to see if we hit it off/fall madly in love. No pressure there.

If you can’t avoid the set-ups maybe you can reduce the pressure. How about if your friends give you the info on a guy along with his number so you can arrange a meeting on your own. Would SisterRiddles go for that? Or maybe she’ll just stop trying to set you up if you ask. Anything’s possible.

“My mind reels with sarcastic replies!” - Snoopy

20

I have a set-up story, too. A guy I knew, Frank, was on a rugby team that was having a Christmas party. I knew a couple of the players and it sounded like fun when the Frank told me to come by for a couple beers. Luckily, he made sure to tell me to wear something nice. Little did I know that I was the set-up for his buddy on the team. Turns out, it was a “dated” dress-up dinner/dance. My unexpected date was just my type: great sense of humor, pretty smile, blond hair, blue eyes, intelligent. He told interesting stories and did everything he could to make sure I had a great time. I called my parents the next day and told them I had been on the best date I had ever been on.

Two and a half years later, he asked me to marry him. We got married in October and Frank is a very proud guy.