It’s easy enough to shrug and say “maybe” when someone thinks they met me years ago, and we can all have a laugh when someone realizes that wasn’t me they met last Tuesday at the bowling alley. But is there a polite way to handle someone rewriting my entire biography because I look like someone else?
“I’m afraid you are mistaken,” said as many times as necessary until your accuser gives up — or you find it necessary to excuse yourself in exasperation.
Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I have many couple friends, and I have many women friends who are single. We’ve found that whenever we invite a single woman to join us when we go out to dinner, there is an expectation that the couple (us) pick up the entire check. This doesn’t happen with single male friends, nor when we go out with another couple. In those cases, we either split the check or ask for separate checks before we order.
When I go out with my friends by myself, there’s never an expectation that whoever makes the invitation picks up the check. But it has always been the case that the single woman expects to be treated. Am I missing something? I’ve stopped asking my single friends to join us for dinner.
That will teach your friends not to show up to dinner single again.
Miss Manners concedes that the double standard here is vexing. (Perhaps it is a holdover of the sexist adage that a single woman is to be pitied, and these women are seeking revenge.) Or perhaps it is the number of people (a single meal vs. two) that makes it unbalanced and tempting to let the couple pay, if offered. But rather than participate in this kind of sexism — and also not engage in outright single-ism — maybe set some ground rules in advance. As in, “We’ll get this dinner, and the next one can be on you.”
New Miss Manners columns are posted Monday through Saturday on washingtonpost.com/advice. You can send questions to Miss Manners at her website, missmanners.com. You can also follow her @RealMissManners.
