Etiquette of Setting Someone Up

[Outdoor Girl]

I'm single.  I would be very happy for someone to set me up.  I would not be so happy if I didn't know about it ahead of time.  Inviting me to your mingling party where there is a single man you hope I hit it off with?  Fine.  Inviting me to your dinner party and not letting me know that everyone else is a couple and you've added this single man for me?  Not so fine.  If you've let me (and him) know that's the situation and we're both OK with it?  Fine.

[supotco]

re question 3, I would definitely be tempted to intervene.

I have had the novel, albeit hideously embarrassing, experience of a would-be matchmaker asking me how I could be so cruel to poor P, when all I did was decline a social invitation.

[Emmy]

I think most people would feel uncomfortable with knowing they were 'set up' with a stranger.  It would be especially rude and invasive to let people know they had a 'date' when they arrived at a party or event.  Besides the awkwardness of being expected to make small talk with a stranger all night, the 'matches' may feel awkward mingling or meeting others because they already have a date.

I had a bad experience by a would be matchmaker.  Matchmaker and I had a mutual friend who I was not attracted to romantically and never gave any indication that I was.  She somehow decided we would be perfect together and encouraged him to ask me out without my knowing.  Now because of her 'great idea', I was in the position of having to turn this nice guy down.  I have a friend who had a different type of bad experience.  She was single and was matched with a guy who was single.  Somehow the matchmaker didn't take into consideration that she was smart, college educated in her early twenties, and had a job while her 'match' had no job, did drugs and was a few years younger.  I guess this matchmaker felt single + single must be a match with taking nothing else into consideration.  When matchmakers get overly enthusiastic, especially if the person they are trying to set up does not seem interested, the matchmaker is probably doing it more for themselves then the other person.

A good way to try to set people up is invite people you feel would be good matches to a party, rafting trip, or other event both would enjoy and introduce them with no mention of a set-up.  I would tell your overly eager friend that deliberate set-ups make most people feel uncomfortable and that she should just try to invite potential matches to events without mentioning a set-up or trying to force one to happen.  Friend should also accept that a person may not be interested in dating at all.

I've also been put in the position of reluctant matchmaker.  The worst was Friend #1 who heard Friend #2 had a single brother.  She frequently asked about Friend #2's brother was so insistent on meeting the brother and being set up, that Friend #2 and I asked her to come to a party to meet him (he was OK with meeting her).  She had been talking about it for several weeks at that point.  Friend #1 met him and instantly decided he wasn't her type after weeks of asking us to set them up.  It was very awkward and I felt bad for Friend #2's brother.

[Bethalize]

I'm single.  I would be very happy for someone to set me up.  I would not be so happy if I didn't know about it ahead of time.  Inviting me to your mingling party where there is a single man you hope I hit it off with?  Fine.  Inviting me to your dinner party and not letting me know that everyone else is a couple and you've added this single man for me?  Not so fine.  If you've let me (and him) know that's the situation and we're both OK with it?  Fine.

This is why I'm very careful with my placement. I would never sit two singles together for the simple reason that they'll assume I'm setting them up.

[DavidH]

I agree, inviting two single people to a large gathering isn't necessarily a set up, and so should be fine.  Even an event like bridge might be okay if there is a mix of couples and singles and the couple don't all play together, so it is just tables of four with two teams of two people.  If you're setting up a double date, then you absolutely must get the permission of both parties you intend to set up before hand. 

[Lynn2000]

Although a general group gathering would definitely be preferable to something where people have to pair up--I'm not sure if I would prefer to know that there was a "potential match" in the group or not. On the one hand, knowing in advance would definitely make things a bit awkward--"Oh, you're the guy she thought I might like. Let us now proceed to judge each other." But on the other, there's every chance I just wouldn't attend a social event I was invited to, because I didn't know there was anything "special" about it. Kind of like if a couple springs a surprise wedding on guests at what was supposed to be just an ordinary BBQ, and some guests who declined are mad because they didn't make much effort to attend, thinking it was just a BBQ, and now they've missed the wedding.

There was this male friend a co-worker kept talking about once, and one day she said that he was thinking of taking a class I had already taken, and would I be willing to have lunch with him and tell him about the class, so he could decide if he was interested in it? I said no, because I wasn't going to have lunch with a total stranger--plus, I'd never heard of anyone investing that much time to investigating an ordinary, undergrad college class (lecture-based, not like a field trip overseas or something). I said we could exchange a couple emails about the class instead, if he had questions, which is what happened--one email from him, one email from me, thanks from him. The end.

Later another friend told me she wondered if the lunch thing was supposed to be a set-up for a date, which I completely (and unknowingly) blew out of the water. The co-worker claimed it wasn't and that she wouldn't do such a thing without checking with me first; looking back I kind of wonder about that, because the way she described him was superficially similar to me, and it was just such an odd plan on her part. But, weird stuff happens sometimes. I wouldn't have agreed to go on a lunch date with him anyway, if that was the plan and she'd told me in advance; I know that's the whole idea of a blind date, which some people enjoy, but I think I would be very uncomfortable with it. Plus, frankly, some of the stuff she'd said about him did not seem very positive or flattering to me.

[artk2002]

If you don't know the person well enough to know that they would like to be set up, then you don't know them well enough to set them up. Did that make sense?

If the friend has said "I'm just not meeting people," then you say "Oh, I know a few. Would you like me to introduce you?" If they haven't said that, then stay out of their business. I dislike the idea of situations set up for the specific purpose of two people meeting (that is, if one or both of them doesn't know that's the purpose.) I'm fine with having an event, that would have happened anyway, and having one or more people that I thought would get along. See the difference? The focus of the event or situation has to be the event or situation, not the setup.

[LilacRosey]

I would be so happy to have a friend set me up with someone nice but they never do! I think I'd like a casusl group event though instead of something else and It doesn't hurt to ask!, LilacRosey

[shivering]

think I shall approach our next get together with a vat of bean dip and be prepared to give single friend a heads up if necessary.

If A has made it her mission to set up B (and you're friends with B), I'd probably give her a heads up. At least that's what I would want in her situation. Maybe she's open to meeting someone; maybe she's not, but if she's aware of A's "plan", she can decide how to handle it.