Miss Manners: His food love crimps conversation

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am dating a lovely man who is perhaps all I could ask for in terms of character. I am always reassured in terms of how he handles difficult topics, moral dilemmas or anything having to do with our relationship.

I greatly value him for this. And we have interests in common – we are both athletes, love to entertain, and he’s active in his community, as am I.

Unfortunately, I am bored by his conversation. He runs a restaurant, and while I am interested in business and love to cook, he talks endlessly about the preparation of food. There is a significant discussion around every meal, where he can find this or that item, what he will eat this morning, this afternoon, tonight, as well as a litany of topics related to what is served at his restaurant.

Clearly, he is in the right industry! He obviously enjoys these conversations, and I see the value in many of them, but not 10 times a day. Is there a way for me to politely divert him? Or are we a mismatch?

GENTLE READER: You soon will be, if you let on that his conversation bores you.

It is not that Miss Manners lacks sympathy or is unwilling to rescue you. It’s too bad that she cannot invoke the etiquette rule against talking about food at dinner parties (not that anyone obeys it) because these are private conversations.

What you could try is carrying on about how much you would enjoy being surprised by what he makes, and allowed to guess the ingredients.

This should eliminate the preliminary talk.