Pantastic started a thread a few weeks ago, “Acceptable reasons not to date someone” - and the responses were near unanimous - ***any *reason is a good reason not to date someone.
**Projammer **then asked:
That’s the question I’d like to pose, too. Is there any *unacceptable *reason to refuse to date someone?
It’s a stretch, but I suppose if you were refusing to go on a first date with person A to get back at person B, that’s not really fair to person A. You usually see that as only dating person A to make person B jealous, though.
It’s gotta be a rare case though. Can’t be very effective either. I’m imagining the following scenario:
Al: “Hmm, I could really go on a date”
Betsy: “Hey, my friend Jane is looking for a boyfriend.”
Al: “Screw her then, I’m not dating any of your friends, and I hope you have to listen to her cry about it”
Although really the problem there is Al is being an asshole rather than refusing to date someone.
Typed out this sounds really dumb, but maybe someone can have a laugh at my expense for it.
There are some reasons not to date someone that would make the refuser a bad person. But in that case, the refusee is spared from dating that person, so it’s still a win.
IMO, no. There’s no such thing as equal opportunity, nor should there be. Besides, would you really want to date someone who is only dating you because it’s “wrong” for them to turn you down and they’ll probably just come up with some other lame excuse instead later?
Maybe someone doesn’t want to date someone because of their race, but I don’t think that’s necessarily racist in and of itself either, though it very well may correlate with certain racist attitudes. If they refuse to date a black person because black people are icky, then sure, it’s racist. If it’s just because they generally don’t find certain features attractive, then I don’t think so. Or, hell, I’ve known someone who was iffy about dating a certain race, not because they found them unattractive or were racist, but because they had concerns about how their family would deal with the interracial relationship, since this person’s family was pretty racist.
The only ones I really see much more difficulty justifying is when there’s some hypocrisy involved. For instance, I know a guy who has slept with several women, but thinks it’s inappropriate for a woman to have done the same. Or, perhaps for something less lopsidedly sexist (don’t see many women having that same sort of standard for men), someone who doesn’t do much to take care of their physical appearance, but refuses to date a guy who isn’t ripped or a girl who doesn’t stay in shape and do all the beauty stuff. Or someone who is lazy and underemployed but will only date someone who has a good job or has money. It’s like some people believe that somehow they deserve better not realizing that they’re basically saying the other person necessarily deserves less.
NM, wrong thread
Maybe if you’re sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor, and you know that you need to knock her up in order to save the human race. Except she’s really not that into you, so you need to woo her a little bit, show her the charm, make her want your future-dick. You need to take her out on a nice date.
Except you really prefer redheads.
There you go, that’s unacceptable. NO FATE BUT WHAT WE MAKE, PEOPLE!
There are reasons someone can give that indicate that the person has some bad stuff going on, but I think it’s still reasonable to not date for that reason. Like if a person is racist, I think that is a bad thing, but it’s perfectly reasonable that they don’t date whatever race gets their ire.
“She had man hands”?
No, because whatever the reason is it really boils down to “not my type.” They might not be your type for a silly reason or you might be overly picky, but that’s not unacceptable.
According to some of our more … interesting … posters:
An unacceptable reason to not date someone is that they’re either grossly younger than you are, or that they’re below the legal age limit and you’re above it.
IOW, according to such “interesting” posters underage-ness is not a valid obstacle to dating. Rather the opposite.
Yup, it’s a matter of the heart, not a matter of the head, in most cases. Otherwise we’d be able to fill out a scan-tron and have it spit back our best match… and have it be accurate. And we all know it doesn’t work like that.
I can’t think of any unacceptable reasons not to date someone. Maybe sometimes though, I think people can be too picky and rule out someone who could have worked out for them if they had just gotten to know them better. I’m an atheist but on my dating profile I didn’t check the box to screen out Christians- I figured if a Christian would see that I’m an atheist and still want to date me, then maybe they are not a typical bossy, republican, mean, close-minded, racist, stereotypical Christian type, and I might be able to get along with them. After, the first date though I wouldn’t keep seeing them if they showed any of those mean Christian traits.
Sounds like you’re the one being narrow-minded and stereotyping here.
Ok. I’m a little confused but I think I’ve got my head around the double negatives.
Almost any reason is “acceptable” not to date someone - even if someone is the most attractive person on earth, you can just dislike them for being too perfect and turn em down.
Examples of unacceptable reasons :
If you don’t “date” that person, you and your children will starve to death. Thus, all your objections, whatever they are, are unacceptable if you really have no other choice. Back in the cave man days, if a cave man clubbed you and brought you back to his cave, either you say yes or die. So you can’t turn him down because he smells bad and has lice in his beard.
If you don’t “date” that person, humanity becomes extinct. There’s a theory that at one point in human history it was all down to just a couple on surviving men and women. It was all on them. Had the last few men and women in existence turned each other down because “girls are icky”, well…
So yeah, unacceptable reasons exist.
How about ‘unacceptable in modern real world scenarios’ then?
I’ve thought some about the question since I last visited the other thread and can’t come up with any that are really unacceptable. Plenty that I would consider stupid and more than a few that would make me not want to associate with the objector. But none that would be widely derided by the general public.
In order for there to be unacceptable reasons, it seems to follow that someone has a right to expect to date you which by not dating them you’ve unjustly denied. And we can pretty much all agree that’s pretty silly.
It’s a date not a marriage. You’re either going out with someone for an enjoyable evening or you are not…the reasoning to or not to do such is entirely one’s decision which is always acceptable. There is no unacceptable reason.
It’s unacceptable not to date someone you are attracted to because you’re still working on a high score in a videogame.
They’re not a horse?