The Fail-Safe Is-It-A-Date Quiz

Plans have been made. You’re going for a drink. It’s a date! Or is it? This handy pre-meetup questionnaire takes less than five minutes to clear up any ambiguity. Simply email, post or tweet it at your date 140 characters at a time.

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1. What is this?

a. A potential professional or creative relationship

b. A totally friendly drink, with no prospect for romantic entanglement

c. A friendly drink, where extenuating circumstances are eliminating the possibility of romantic entanglement

d. A way of deciding whether your feelings are friendly or romantic

e. A personal development challenge designed to help you “grow”

f. A casual sex thing

g. An ego boost

h. Looking for a future anecdote

i. Potentially the start of a romance

j. An important occasion you have been building towards for months

k. What you hope will be the last first date of your life

l. An escape from your housemates

2. Your current relationship status is:

a. Single

b. Really single

c. It’s complicated — not a fucking answer, please elaborate

d. Recently broken up

e. In a relationship which is rapidly disintegrating

f. In a relationship but looking to remember how it felt to be single

g. In an open relationship

h. In a very closed relationship

i. Married

3. On a scale of 1–10, how open are you to:

a. Casual dating

b. Sex buddy

c. Relationship — monogamous

d. Relationship — open

e. Polyamory

f. Mutual failures of communication leading to confusion and hurt feelings

g. Wallowing in mutually requited but unacknowledged love

4. On a scale of 1–10, how comfortable are you with the following forms of rejection?

a. Outright no

b. Outright no plus an honest justification

c. Outright no plus no-fault cushion justification

d. Outright no plus cliché lie about not being in the right place

e. Pretending not to understand a date was being proposed

f. Pretending you were asking me out in a friend way and postponing confusion/rejection or later

g. Saying yes but suffering from extreme scheduling problems

h. Complete blanking

i. Fake heart attack

j. And then the cage comes down

5. On a scale of 1–10, how comfortable are you:

a. Seeing me every day after the asking out if I say no

b. Seeing me every day after our relationship breaks down

c. Seeing me every day after three mediocre dates

d. Staying friends after we stop dating

e. Staying friends after a pregnancy scare

f. Staying friends after karaoke

6. Would you describe the status of your relationship with your mother as:

a. Close but not weird

b. Who?

c. Electra Complex

7. With regards to friends…

a. Please provide three references*.

*Wingman testimonials not generally accepted.