What is the point of a phone call exactly? Is it just to set up the time and place for a date? Or is it also to gauge whether you want to go on a date?
“Just set up the date,” my father insists.
“Because after our first phone call I didn’t want to go out with him,” my mother explains.
My second cousins concur. “I thought we were just going to set up when I’d pick her up,” the He said. “An hour and a half later I was like, ‘What just happened?!’ and thought the date was going to be miserable.”
His wife just laughed.
I’ve had my share of conversations where I hung up and thought, “I’ve had more intelligent conversations with an iPhone.” Still, I let them call again, or we go out, albeit with misgivings. And, in spite of it all, awkward telephone callers do get more interesting with acquaintanceship. Soon enough you find out that they’re smarter than a smartphone. Although, thus far, I still haven’t met an awkward telephoner I wanted to use to round out the list of marriages above.
IMHO, if a guy works up the nerve to give you a call, you can give him a date for it. But I have a pretty lax criteria for dates. If he’s orthodox, male, and doesn’t work in the same field as me, I’m game for at least a first.
Many others are pickier about how they spend their evenings, preferring to stay home and play Angry Birds rather than spend an evening in a lounge with a male they are convinced they will never marry. To these folks, the telephone conversation is an opportunity to gauge whether this potential date is worth the cathexis of an evening. And if he’s not… well:
“…I asked [Female] if she’d like to meet for coffee in a few days and she said yes. An hour later, the shadchan emails me to say that based on the phone conversation, the [Female] feels we’re not a match and doesn’t want to waste my time with a date.” – A Dude
Wrong? Right? Shallow? Rude? Who knows. But if she already made up her mind, to the point where she’s ready to cancel the date, she’s unlikely to change it just by meeting him. In which case, she really is saving Dude a trip.
Don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s her.
Bad for Shidduchim 