PHave you ever given your phone number to a guy, only to decide later that you don’t want to date him?

You don’t want to grab a latte with him at Starbucks.

You don’t want to give up an hour of your time in any setting.

Let’s be honest.

We’re not pleasantly honest in this world.  We always have to come up with some type of excuse.

What’s wrong with telling him, “Hey, look.  We exchanged phone numbers and I’m just not that excited about it anymore and you seem like a really cool person and maybe we’ll just run into each other again and be friends and whatever it might be.”

Oops, but therein lies excuse number one:

‘Let’s be friends.’

Think about it.  You meet somebody.  You’re not excited anymore.  You talk to them a little bit on the phone and you just decide they’ll serve you better as a friend.

Really?

Name all the friends that you have right now that were once potential dates.

Go ahead.  I dare you.  Write them down.

Face it: you don’t want to be friends with him. So don’t say that.

Another excuse for plenty singles out there is the holiday excuse.

You meet someone during some type of holiday season.  It could be any holiday.  Hell, it could even be St. Patrick’s Day.

But people love to use the excuse, “We’ll get together after the holidays.”

Meanwhile, it’s December 1st.  And the holidays aren’t for 24 days (unless you’re Jewish). You don’t have any time that month to go on a date.

Then there’s the work excuse.  That’s always a good one.

“I’m just so busy with work right now.”

Meanwhile, you’re sitting around in the office on Facebook. You’re looking at Yahoo!’s home page and discovering out that it changes every five and a half minutes.

We make all these excuses because we don’t want to go out with somebody.  We exchange phone numbers with somebody that we’re no longer thrilled about.  So we make up excuses instead of just saying, “Hey, I just don’t feel it.”

So try telling the truth next time and see what happens.  Watch the respect you get  the next time you run into him on the street. He’s not going to give you the evil eye because you gave him some lame excuse that he could read right through.

Since you were honest and cool, he’s going to invite you to his holiday party where you have the opportunity to meet someone you’re actually thrilled about.

All because of honesty.

Imagine that.