I did something stupid. AKA: Why you don’t need a pineapple to escape a bad date.
from the Wilde Files
Look. I am all for romance. I’m a big fan. Huge supporter. Would recommend.
I am also all for not getting trapped in conversational quicksand with a man who treats every sentence like a LinkedIn update he’s workshopping out loud at me while I slowly lose the will to chew.
So yes. I had an exit strategy.
And yes. I thought I was about to pull off the most flawless escape in modern dating history.
(Narrator: She was not.)
It was a Tuesday night, and I had agreed (voluntarily, with my whole chest) to meet a guy from an app whose texts read like a thesaurus being held at gunpoint.
Still, his profile said “sapiosexual” and “good listener,” so I thought, how bad could it be?
(I need to stop asking that question. Every time I ask that question, the universe takes it as a personal challenge.)
Before I left my apartment, I texted my friend Mia.
“If I send you the word pineapple, call me with a fake emergency. Sell it. Broadway-level commitment.”
She replied with, “🍍Do you want crying or just urgent breathing?”
That’s friendship. That’s the real love story here, honestly.
We meet at a wine bar. He orders for me without asking. Not in a suave, old-Hollywood, I-know-exactly-what-you’d-love kind of way. In a “I’ll have the Malbec for both of us” while I’m literally mid-sentence pointing at the menu kind of way.
Cool.
Strike one.
He launches into his “side hustle” pitch like he’s auditioning for Shark Tank and I’m all five judges. I learned more about his cryptocurrency portfolio in eleven minutes than I have ever learned about anything I didn’t want to know. And I once sat through a two-hour timeshare presentation in Cancún for a free breakfast buffet, so my tolerance for nonsense is medically significant.
Strike two.
Then he explains, while swirling his Malbec like a man who has practiced this in front of a mirror, why women “overthink commitment.”
My soul quietly opens Zillow and starts browsing apartments in another dimension.
Strike three.
I slip my phone under the table. I type pineapple. I hit send like I’m triggering a silent alarm at a museum where they keep my remaining patience behind velvet rope.
Thirty seconds later, my phone lights up. Mia, an improv goddess, a woman who was BORN to deliver fake tragic news on live television, does not disappoint.
“Your plants are dying. You need to come home. Now.“
I gasp. Loudly.
“Oh my God, not Gerald!” I clutch my chest like Mother Nature herself just slapped me across the face and stole my wallet.
(For the record, Gerald is my fiddle leaf fig. He is absolutely thriving. He gets more consistent love and attention than any man I have ever dated, and he has never once texted me “wyd” at 1:47 AM.)
The guy blinks. He’s probably wondering if Gerald is my boyfriend. Or my cat. Or a very sickly uncle. I don’t clarify, because I am already up from my chair faster than a toddler who just spotted cake at a birthday party that isn’t theirs.
I toss cash on the table. I murmur something that sounds like an apology but is really just the word “sorry” aimed vaguely in his direction while my body is already facing the door. I stride out feeling like I just cracked a vault without tripping the alarms.
Mission accomplished. Heist complete. Ocean’s Eleven could NEVER.
The Brooklyn night air hits me, and for about ten glorious steps, I am high on my own cleverness. I’m basically a genius. I should teach a masterclass. I should write a TED Talk. “The Pineapple Protocol: How to Exit Any Situation Using Tropical Fruit and Audacity.”
But then step eleven happens.
And something starts gnawing at me. This annoying little feeling in my chest. Not anxiety, not guilt exactly, just… awareness. Like when you catch your reflection doing something you wouldn’t post about.
Why did I just do that?
Not the leaving part. The leaving was correct. That man talked over me, ordered for me, and mansplained relationships to me. Leaving was the right call. Gold star. No notes.
But why did I ghost in person? Why did I invent an elaborate plant tragedy instead of just… saying the thing? The real thing? The actual words that were sitting right there in my mouth the entire time?
“Hey. This isn’t working for me.”
Six words. Six completely free, non-dramatic, no-fiddle-leaf-fig-required words.
The pineapple plan wasn’t about safety this time. It was about avoiding discomfort. Specifically, his discomfort. I manufactured an entire Broadway production so that HE wouldn’t feel awkward. So that I could leave without him feeling rejected. So that I could exit the scene without anyone having to sit in the tension of me saying what I actually meant.
I prioritized his comfort over my honesty.
And if that doesn’t sound familiar to you, then congratulations, you are not reading the right blog. Go be healthy somewhere else.
(I’m kidding. Stay. We need you for morale.)
But for the rest of us? The women who have ever laughed at a joke that wasn’t funny because it was easier, or said “no worries!” when there were in fact MANY worries, or stayed an extra forty-five minutes at a dinner that died on arrival because we didn’t want to be rude?
This is the pattern.
Avoiding discomfort is how you end up staying too long in the wrong jobs. The wrong friendships. The wrong relationships. The wrong wine bars with men who think crypto is foreplay.
It’s how you become your own side quest.
So I turned around.
I know.
I know.
I walked back into the wine bar. My Malbec was still there. (His Malbec was also still there. He had not, in my absence, discovered a personality.) I sat down. I looked him in the eye. And I said the thing.
“I want to be honest with you. This isn’t working for me. I think you’re looking for someone who’s fine being talked over and told what to drink, and I’m not her. So I’m going to head out. For real this time.”
Then I left. Again. But different this time.
No fake emergencies. No tropical safe words. No wondering on the subway home if I’d been “too much.” No replaying the exit in my head and softening it. No editing myself into someone more palatable for a man who ordered me a wine I didn’t want and then explained my own nervous system to me over it.
Just the truth. Clean. Final. Mine.
Ghosting (even the in-person, pineapple-coded kind) feels like control. It feels like you’re the one with the power because you’re the one who left. But it’s not power. It’s a performance. It’s you leaving the building while making sure nobody’s feelings got hurt on the way out. Including the guy who just told you that women are statistically overrthinking commitment these days.
Truth is actual power. It doesn’t need a code word. It doesn’t need a friend on standby doing emergency theater. It just needs your voice. The one you’ve been rehearsing in the shower, in the car, in your Notes app at 2 AM.
I know this because I almost didn’t use mine. I was ten steps into a clean getaway and I turned around. Not because I’m brave. Because I’m tired. Tired of softening the truth. Tired of building elaborate escape routes when the front door was right there the whole time.
Every time you choose honesty over a comfortable exit, you build the muscle. The boundary muscle. The one that’s been atrophied from years of “I’m fine” and “it’s okay” and “no worries!” when there were, again, SO many worries.
You don’t need a pineapple.
You just need your own voice.
(But keep the group chat. The group chat is sacred.)
Suffering is optional, babe.
Ares
P.S. Gerald is fine. I watered him when I got home, to thank him for his service. He remains the most reliable male presence in my life, and unlike every man I’ve dated in the last three years, he has never once needed me to explain what “consistent” means.
