You’re at a party and start chatting with another guest.
Twenty minutes later, you’re still talking with them one-on-one. You feel trapped, and you wish you knew how to break away from the conversation.
Maybe the person is annoying, and you’d like to escape their tedious orbit.
But you also might be talking with a friend and are very much enjoying the interaction. It’s just that you want to catch up with some of the other guests, too. He or she might feel the same way, actually, but neither of you wants to risk seeming rude in ending the exchange.
So how do you navigate this situation? You ideally don’t want to break things off abruptly and leave the person awkwardly standing there on their own.
Here are some options from social and etiquette experts for politely bowing out of a conversation:
Option #1: Introduce the person to someone else.
In my AoM podcast interview with etiquette expert William Hanson, he said that his go-to strategy is to try to pair your conversational partner off with someone else. He described how this would go:
‘Brett, it’s been so lovely talking to you. I’ve just seen someone over there I’ve got to go and get and speak to before they leave. Have you met Susan, however?’
And I’ve sort of seen Susan floating around and I grab her as she comes past and go: ‘Susan, may I introduce Brett? Brett has just flown in from Sydney. And Susan, I believe your mother is from Australia. I’ll leave you two talking.’
And off you go.
Basically, introduce the person to someone else, giving both people a bit of context — a conversation starter — to kick off the new interaction before you slip away.
If someone you can introduce the person to doesn’t happen to pass by, you can actively lead them over to a new conversation partner: “My friend Rob is also in the cyber security field. I want you to meet him; I think you’d enjoy talking shop.”
The strategy of introducing your current conversation partner to someone else is a good one if you think the former and the latter will actually get on. However, if you’ve found the person you’ve been talking to a bore, it would, of course, not be very generous to pawn them off on a friend. It is well that Jeanne Martinet, author of The Art of Mingling, calls this technique “the human sacrifice.” If it’s not a situation where you want to throw an unwitting victim to the gum-flapping wolves, try one of the other options on this list.
Option #2: Use the buffet bye-bye.
When I talked to Martinet on the podcast, she noted that one of the most common categories of conversational exit is what she calls “the buffet bye-bye and other excuses.” That’s where you say something like, “I’m going to go grab a drink/some food. It’s been nice talking to you.”
Martinet says that this option can be effective, but carries a risk: the person may follow you to the bar/buffet line. So the excuse she recommends instead is to step away by saying you have to make a phone call:
Even in today’s age of smartphones, everyone knows that if you’re at a party you can’t just whip out your phone right there, so they know you have to go off by yourself. Then you actually have to go off and look like you’re making a phone call for a second, then go to another group.
You can also excuse yourself to use the restroom, though this one tends to read more nakedly as a way to make an escape.
Option #3: Say there’s someone you’re supposed to meet.
Another strategy Martinet shared goes like this:
You find a pause hopefully to interrupt, and you say, ‘I’m so sorry, but someone just walked in the room that I’m supposed to talk to because my boss made me or my girlfriend said I had to,’ or some excuse like that. So it’s like you have a mission, and you’re so sorry but you have to go.
Martinet calls this technique the “counterfeit search,” as you may only be pretending that there’s someone else at the party you’re supposed to meet (though that may legitimately be the case as well).
Your willingness to use strategies like the counterfeit search — or the phone call excuse from option 2 — will, of course, depend on how comfortable you are with telling a white lie in the name of social grace.
Option #4: Be self-deprecating.
Hanson says you shouldn’t leave someone on their own unless you truly do need to break away to do something like catch a plane. In that circumstance, he recommends making your exit on the back of some self-deprecating pretense:
You can make it sound like you are the bore. So I would say something like:
‘Well, Brett, look, I know I’ve monopolized so much of your time this evening, and I know there are lots of other people you want to go and talk to. But maybe we’ll see each other in a few weeks’ time at that fundraiser.’
Shake hands and off we go.
Acting a little apologetic for having taken up someone’s time is a graceful way to exit without causing offense.
Option #5: Travel together to a new group.
In a situation where you are enjoying talking with someone, and just want to be able to mingle with some other people as well, you can simply say something like, “I’m going to go sit down near Mike. Come with me.” Now you can talk to your current conversation partner and Mike as well. Or the person, who has also been waiting for an excuse to break away from you, will tell you that they’re going to go hit the buffet instead. This strategy works best when the person you’re talking with, and the person you’re going to go join, are mutual friends.
In addition to these options, a couple of other easy lines to use are, “You know, I’d better check in with the host before the night is through,” (a natural, legitimate reason), and “Well, I won’t keep you any longer — I’m sure you’ve got lots of folks to say hi to” (makes your exit seem complimentary to the other person).
Parties are for mingling. So rather than getting locked into talking to the same person for the whole night, use one of these strategies to set yourself free to enjoy both the full buffet of food, and of sociality.
