(no subject)

[geminigirl]

Thanks guys, but I still think I have to write a "Sorry, my Mom is an idiot and I'm not interested," e-mail to this guy.

It was manipulative of her to do it in the first place, and when I spoke to her on the phone, she was very apologetic. If I'd been living at home, she'd have done something equally manipulative that wasn't quite so easy for me to get out of. This is mostly harmless, it takes little or no effort to write that kind of an e-mail. It would be embarassing to her if I didn't, and possibly really rude and hurtful to him.

There's an old Lea DeLaria bit about how her parents keep inviting men over for dinner, pretending to ignore the fact that she's a lesbian, because if they invite enough men over, she'll eventually find the right one. This kind of reminds me of that...

Comments

[malte.livejournal.com]

Well - here's another thought - that kind of presupposes that he's a nice well-brought-up guy who expects nice emails from nice girls. I'm not sure I'd want to be sending email to strange men no matter who'd found them for me.

[geminigirl]

And that would be why I said "might be" instead of "is"...

[fj.livejournal.com]

You have a public journal on the Internet. While the LJ system gives you some indirection, it isn't that much more than what an e-mail address gtives you. I think it is too late to assume unreachability.

[geminigirl]

If I wanted complete anonymity, I certainly wouldn't be on the internet like I am.

[valacious.livejournal.com]

It would be embarassing to her if I didn't, and possibly really rude and hurtful to him.

Do you think it would be really rude or hurtful to him if you just didn't write? I'm just curious how. It's not as though you've made any commitment to this person. I think if you want to write, that's great. But I highly doubt he's sitting around waiting for random girl down in DC whose mother promised an email from, to send an actual email. And if he is...well, that's quite a statement in itself.

[geminigirl]

If someone makes an introduction, even like that, it would be rude not to follow up and say "it was nice of so and so to think of me, but I'm not interested." It's not that he'd be waiting around for me to write. It falls under the whole not burning bridges thing.