DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a single man in my 20s who goes on many blind dates with women to whom I have been introduced by mutual friends. I often do not pursue a second date and had always assumed that the proper way to do that was not to call for another date. But a woman I went out with only once told me she was hurt and offended because I didn't call to tell her I would not be asking her out again.
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I was shocked by her suggestion that it would be polite to specifically phone her to deliver an unsolicited rejection, and there was certainly no relationship to break off. It seems to me more polite and less hurtful to just not follow up when one has had only one casual meeting.
Of course, if I go out with a woman a few times and thus establish the beginnings of a friendship or relationship, I would always tell her honestly and directly if my intentions changed. But, when dating is just casual, under what circumstances is a breakup conversation called for?
GENTLE READER: Do you promise Miss Manners that your exit line on the date wasn't, "I'll call you"?
The meaning of that has long been a source of contention, as gentlemen believe it means "Goodbye," while ladies believe it means "I'll call you" and are mightily miffed when no such call is made.
There is also a dispute between those who want everything spelled out and those who can pick up simple, conventional social signals. Thanking a lady for a pleasant evening and saying goodnight with no mention of the future should make it clear enough that nothing more is planned.
In thinking she wanted more, the lady was hoping to spare herself a week or so of waiting for the telephone to ring. Miss Manners thinks she ought to consider how much longer the memory would last of having been told, however delicately, that she just wasn't all that interesting.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have an odd question, or at least everyone I have asked thinks that it is. My grandmother had the habit of signing all of her correspondence "Mrs. John Brown." I always thought that this was terribly romantic and now that I am married would like to do the same.
I married a man who shares the same name as his father (e.g., John Doe Jr.). When I sign my married name, should I add the "Jr."? I would be embarrassed to confuse someone, who may think that I was married to my father-in-law instead of my husband.
GENTLE READER: What would be odd here would have been if your grandmother had actually signed her name as "Mrs. John Brown."
That is the way she would have been addressed formally, and she might have put it in parentheses under her signature on a business letter so that her correspondents would have known how to address her. But her signature would have been "Evangeline Brown." Those who disapprove of a lady's using her husband's full name do so on the grounds that it erases her identity, but it does not confiscate her given name entirely. Oh, and yes, you take the "Jr." along with his name as long as your father-in-law is alive.
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