What to Say to Someone With Terrible Table Manners

—Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image: Liudmila Chernetska—Getty Images) At one of their first dinners together, Lindsey Hall watched the man she was dating take enormous bites, talk with his mouth full, and—horror of horrors—burp loudly without seeming to register it.

The evening was supposed to feel romantic.

Instead, Hall remembers thinking: “Have I made a mistake?” She tried to dismiss his behavior as a minor incompatibility.

But it continued, meal after meal, and gradually soured her feelings and attraction toward him.

Table manners had never seemed like a priority until then.

“I didn’t realize how important it was to me until I dated someone who just … doesn’t have it,” Hall says.

Terrible table manners might sound like a trivial complaint.

But eating is one of the most routine things we do with other people, and a habit that inspires disgust three times a day can quickly become difficult to shrug off.

The challenge is figuring out whether—and how—to address bad dining habits without making the person feel humiliated.

Here’s what psychologists and etiquette experts suggest.

First, consider whether the behavior is actually rude Table manners can feel like universal rules, but they’re shaped by culture, family, and upbringing.

“We talk about them as though they’re laws of physics,” says Gwenhwyfar Dunne-Henry, a psychologist in Dubai and author of Unbind Me: How to Break the Rules That Keep You Small .

“They’re not.

They’re social agreements.” Before correcting someone, think about whether they’re being inconsiderate or simply behaving differently from the way you were taught.