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Auntie SparkNotes: Can I *Not* Take My Significant Other to Prom?

Dear Auntie SparkNotes,

This may be the earliest prom-related letter you have received yet! So here is my situation: I am going into senior year and some of my friends are already throwing around prom ideas. This makes me remember junior prom.

I went with them to junior prom last year and brought along my wonderful and amazing SO, let us call them K. K came along as a favor to me and did so with no resentment but….K is not really a party person and they go to a different school and did not know these friends of mine and did not mix with them (K is pretty shy around new people). I felt very awkward about leaving K at the table to dance sometimes and trying to integrate K into conversations. I don’t have fantastic social skills myself so it felt like an exhausting balancing act trying to keep my SO included and have fun with my friends. Furthermore I did not have fun dancing with K, only with my friends.

I may be jumping the gun on this (because we might be broken up by then) but is there any way to not invite K to my prom and just go with my friends? Maybe I could just have the after prom stuff with only my friends? Does this make me a terrible person?

Oh, Sparkler. Of course it doesn’t! That is, unless you omitted the part where you plan to not only attend prom without your significant other, but to rob a convenience store, burn down a hospital, and drop-kick a bunch of baby animals off a bridge on your way there. (In which case not only are you a terrible person, but I am calling the police because you belong in jail.)

But if all this comes down to is going to prom with your friends instead of your squeeze, because you know from experience that you won’t have any fun in the latter case, then let me be the first to assure you that your good-personhood does not hang in the balance. The worst-case outcome of your prom plan is not your karmic ruin, but simple disappointment on the part of your SO. And that’s an outcome you can most likely avoid, if you just, y’know, talk about it first.

I know. THE HORROR.

And with that in mind, here’s your job:

a) to let K know that you’re leaning toward a platonic group prom night with your friends, without
b) being a jerk about it.

And happily, neither of these things are that hard to do. A good first step would be something like this:

“My friends are starting to talk about senior prom and I’m thinking that I’d like to just go with them this year as a group thing. Would you be super upset if I didn’t take you, and we had a date night the next weekend instead?”

And a good second step, of course, would be to not mention the part where you want to do this because K was so awkward and exhausting and anti-social at your last prom that it made being dateless look good by comparison. Not because it isn’t true, but because saying so out loud in this particular context would be both mean and counterproductive. In a situation like this, being tactful isn’t just the decent thing to do; it’s also your best bet at getting what you want with minimal fuss and no hard feelings involved.

Which is not to say that no hard feelings are guaranteed. There are certainly scenarios in which this conversation could turn out to be less-than-wonderful, especially if K is the type of person who puts a lot of stock in the symbolic value of things while caring very little about their practical reality. (If you’re wondering what that might look like, picture a person who vocally and emphatically hates all things outdoorsy; now picture her getting super upset because her boyfriend is planning a camping trip with his buddies and didn’t invite her along.) In other words, K doesn’t like parties, doesn’t fit in with your social group, and didn’t have a great time at the prom last year—but if all of that is less important to her than the symbolic status of being your date, then she might conceivably be unhappy to hear that you’d rather go with your friends.

But even if that were the case, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It would just be a conversation, and a useful one at that, for what it’ll reveal to you about your relationship. And more importantly, and more realistically, that is already a pretty big “if”. Because the likeliest outcome is that this plan is not just what you want, but what K would prefer — because a person who only attended prom last year as a favor to you is a person who’s almost certainly going to be more relieved than not to be off the hook for it this time around.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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