Dating Is Like Shopping: Sometimes They Don’t Like What They Picked and Want to Return It

Online dating has turned romance into something suspiciously close to a boutique shopping: you browse profiles, choose someone who looks promising, and meet to see whether the attraction survives real life. And just like shopping, sometimes you take a closer look and decide you do not want what you picked after all.

That is the slightly rude part nobody advertises properly. A man can have a lovely evening with you, laugh, flirt, perhaps even kiss you like somebody who has just discovered a promising future — and then vanish with the efficiency of a customer returning something before the receipt expires.

You thought the date went well. He said it went well. The waiter probably thought it went well.

And yet, somewhere between dessert and Wednesday, the merchandise has apparently been reconsidered.

Early dating is still the fitting room, and you know this perfectly well when you are the one changing your mind.

A man can look elegant online and then spend forty-seven uninterrupted minutes explaining himself over dinner. He may be handsome but possess the conversational warmth of a parking meter. He may be perfectly decent and still inspire nothing in you beyond admiration for his punctuality.

You go home and think, Lovely man. Absolutely not.

The difficulty is that it feels much less neutral when somebody reaches the same conclusion about you.

If he disappears after one date, your mind rarely says, Apparently the fit was wrong. It becomes far more ambitious.

Was I too quiet? Too talkative? Did I mention work too much? Did I laugh strangely? Should I have ordered something other than the fish?

One man says you were “a little reserved,” and suddenly your entire personality is being reconsidered for spring. By Saturday, you may be wondering whether future dates require more sparkle and perhaps a completely unnecessary enthusiasm for kayaking.

This is an extraordinary amount of renovation based on one man’s opinion, especially when you have no idea whether that was even the real reason. Perhaps he met somebody else. Perhaps your laugh reminded him of his aunt Susan, and apparently Aunt Susan has history.

The funny thing about rejection is how quickly one man’s lack of enthusiasm can start sounding like an official review of the entire product.

He was not quite feeling it, and suddenly you are inspecting yourself for defects. Perhaps you should have been breezier, sexier, more mysterious, less mysterious, and somehow fascinating while appearing not to care whether he found you fascinating.

Meanwhile, you have done exactly the same thing to perfectly good men.

You have sat across from someone attractive, polite, employed, perfectly capable of using cutlery, and thought, I would rather alphabetize my spice cabinet than kiss you.

Nothing was wrong with him. He simply was not for you, a fact that becomes strangely harder to remember when you are the one being put back on the shelf.

Online dating makes the whole business even more ridiculous because there is always another shelf. You can meet someone lovely and still know that, with one small movement of the thumb, seventeen more possibilities are waiting nearby looking unusually photogenic in Portugal.

Give a man three women he genuinely likes and he may happily choose one. Give him three hundred profiles and suddenly the charming woman sitting across from him has shortcomings nobody noticed twenty minutes ago.

She is wonderful, but perhaps there is someone slightly more wonderful. Someone taller. Funnier. Someone who likes hiking but, ideally, not enough to expect him to participate. Someone exactly like you, really, except with one mysterious improvement he cannot quite identify.

So he keeps browsing.

You may have done it too. Endless possibility can make a perfectly nice human being feel suspiciously provisional. Why stop here when the next profile might contain spectacular chemistry and a shared enthusiasm for boutique hotels?

This is how you can have a wonderful date with a man who is genuinely enjoying himself and still never hear from him again. You were thinking, Well, this is promising. He may have been thinking the same thing — followed quietly by, I wonder what else is out there.

Dinner really was lovely. The kiss really was good. He may have meant it when he said he had a wonderful time.

He just continued shopping.

And this is where you may turn his browsing habits into a personal renovation project. Next time you will be more playful, slightly less available, perhaps more mysterious. You are not entirely sure what mystery involves, but presumably it means answering an ordinary question as though you have recently returned from Monaco under unusual circumstances.

Suddenly one man changing his mind has you redesigning a personality that was functioning perfectly well before dinner.

All because one shopper wandered back to the aisle.

Sometimes nothing is wrong with the item.

Sometimes the shopper simply wanted something else.