All The Classic Signs Of A First Date
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“Meet a guy online. He asks me to dinner at a tapas place, I agree because I’m bored and he seems nice enough; we’d been texting for a couple weeks and it seemed chill. I get there and he’s late to meet me. Looks nothing like his profile (about 100 lbs heavier, bad skin, and is just dressed really sloppily) but I told myself not to be shallow. We are looking over the menu (which was fantastic btw) and I suggest a few things I’d like to eat and he begins saying he doesn’t eat sweet potatoes, aioli, capers, salmon, radish, arugula, kale, balsamic vinegar, etc.–basically all ingredients except for bread, meat, and cheese–and that he won’t eat any food if that’s what I order. I tell him to get what he wants then and I’ll get something for myself. We get our food and he is the messiest eater I’ve seen in my life, getting crumbs and food bits all over his shirt and the whole table and it was just painful to watch. He also kept insisting I try his food, but I’m pescatarian and lactose intolerant so I declined, at which he began berating me and my food choices and being a ‘picky eater’.
They clear our table for dessert and he then gets down on one knee and tries to give me a promise ring because he ‘felt a special bond with me and wanted to pledge his life to me’ after having met online a few weeks before. Yeah, no thanks. Politely as I could, I declined, to which he started calling me expletives in the middle of the restaurant and then ugly crying and finally, he stormed out. So I had to pay for the terrible date HE asked ME on because I didn’t want to accept a pre-engagement ring.”
First Date Nerves
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“I went out with a girl to a nice Japanese restaurant. I got there first and waited at the bar. She walked in, saw me, and walked out immediately without a word. I went outside and asked her if she was ok and she told me ‘I can’t really be in there right now.’
We went to an Irish pub instead and had some very awkward small talk filled with long silences. After about 45 minutes I told her I thought it was pretty clear that this wasn’t working and we didn’t have to stay, we could just go. I took her back to her car parked at my house and we said goodnight.
Right before I opened my front door she asked if I wanted to get a drink at the bar across the street. I said sure, we got hammered, went back to my place and had a brain-meltingly good time.
We’ve been married 10 years now. She has some pretty serious anxiety issues that come and go, and for whatever reason, the crowd/atmosphere at the Japanese place really set it off and it took her some time to recover.”
One Fact Made This Date Incredible Awkward
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“Once I talked to a girl on tinder that I hit it off with pretty well, and we made plans to meet up later in the weekend. We’ll call her Sarah.
The next day though, another girl that I’d talked to, that we’ll call Sophie, told me she’d be out at a bar close to me. She told me to come and join her and to also bring a friend. So I brought my roomie and went to meet Sophie.
As we got to the bar, I spotted Sophie sitting there with another girl, whose back was turned to me. Went up, gave Sophie a quick hug as I sat down next to her and motioned for my buddy to sit on the other side with the other girl.
It was only then I actually looked at Sophie’s friend. First noticing the intense stare I received from over the table, I realized the girl was Sarah, the girl I had made plans to meet up with the following day.
I could see she was equally taken aback as me, and for what felt like an eternity we sat there with the biggest deer-in-the-headlights-look before the silence was broken by Sophie, saying ‘Hey (me), this is my bestie, her name’s Sarah!’ Which led to us nervously shaking hands, exchanging names, not knowing what else to do.
Already having shaken hands as strangers, neither of us really knew how to proceed, not wanting to mention the elephant in the room, since Sophie and my buddy had no clue what was going on.
It actually did go alright in the end, my roomie and Sarah ended up talking and hitting it off. It seemed we’d reached a silent, yet mutual agreement not to mention the glowing mammoth in the room.
In the end, the girls actually ended up going back to our flat with us, spending the night.
I only told my roomie the reason I had looked so confused after they had left the following day. But yeah, that was such a strange date, which somehow worked out.”
He Was Set Up By His Friend But Not In The Way He Assumed
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“My freshman year in college I had a crush on a girl from my high school. When I asked her out, she informed me that she only dated women (I am male). She insisted that we were still friends, she just didn’t roll that way. She offered to be my wingman and I gladly took her up on the offer.
A few weeks later she had set me up on a semi-blind date with one of her friends (we’ll call her Monica). The three of us met at Arby’s (because we were fancy) and my friend tried playing matchmaker.
‘He loves theatre and so do you, Monica!’
‘Monica loves music and so do you, (my name)!’
The date was going fine, so my friend decided to leave Monica and me alone. We talked a bit more and decided to go see a movie. I didn’t have a car at the time so I hopped in Monica’s passenger seat and we went on our way.
That’s when it all became weird.
About two minutes after leaving Arby’s, Monica receives a phone call. She says it’s her roommate and she needs to answer it. She picks up the phone and I hear a man’s voice. I was a bit surprised, but it’s not too unusual for a girl to have a guy for a roommate.
Monica and her ‘roommate’ get into some kind of argument, and she pulls over to a gas station. Another car pulls in right beside us. Again, I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
Monica turns to me and says ‘I need to go talk to my roommate. Just wait here for a minute.’ I assume she just wants to be on the phone in private, but what happens next will shock you! Monica gets out of the car and goes to talk to the driver of the car that pulled in next to us.
This is where I start to freak out. What are the odds that her roommate happened to pull up right beside us?! I hear a bit of yelling and then I start thinking about an escape plan.
At this point, Monica opens my car door and says ‘Hey, I’m really sorry to do this but my roommate is going to have to take you home.’
Now, this is the part of the movie where someone in the audience screams, ‘Don’t you go with him! That’s how you get killed! White people always going with the strange man thinking everything will just be a-okay!’ I wish I could say I got smart, said, ‘No thank you, I’ll just walk’ and went home.
But I didn’t.
With some combination of confusion and curiosity, I get out of Monica’s car and head into the passenger seat of this stranger. We’re in my hometown, so I know if he goes any direction he’s not supposed to I can just bail out of the car and run to freedom.
The guy was pretty big. I was 6’2″ at the time and he was significantly bigger than me if that tells you anything. I don’t remember his name, but we’ll just call him Ross. Anyway, Ross starts driving back to my dorm and we’re sitting in awkward silence for most of the trip.
Eventually, he says, ‘So how do you know Monica?’
I knew something fishy was happening, so I wasn’t about to say we were on a date. I just say ‘Oh, we have a mutual friend!’ and hope Ross doesn’t get suspicious. He just nodded his head and kept driving.
Apparently, Ross was resolving some anger in his head, because out of nowhere he starts talking as if we were in the middle of a much more personal conversation.
‘Yeah… A lot of people at our church are upset that Monica and I live together. I think they’re just assuming we’re sleeping together or something. It shouldn’t even matter since we’re engaged, but it’s still annoying to hear stuff like that, you know?’
I just nod my head as I realize what just happened. Apparently, my lesbian friend set me up on a blind date with an engaged girl, and her fiancé came and picked me up to take me home.
I was silent the rest of the night. I told Ross the wrong dorm so he wouldn’t know where I lived, and I got out of the car and just walked around campus for a bit. It was definitely the strangest date I’ve ever been on.”
They Had No idea What They Were Getting Into
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“Well, this one time I took my date to dinner at (what seemed to be) a front for some type of illicit activity.
We had just moved to a new area, and we wanted to check out the local shops and restaurants. While we were wandering, we stumbled into a tiny Italian place. Back home, the small hole-in-the-wall restaurants always have the best food, so we were excited to give it a shot. Big curtains were covering the entry windows, so we had no idea what was inside until we trudged through the door.
Inside, we were met with emptiness and silence. We both immediately thought the store was closed, and I spun around and searched for the store hours posted somewhere on the door. While I was looking, we heard a heavy THUD as a young woman barked ‘I’ll be right with you!’
She appeared, greeted us confusingly, and asked us ‘what she could do for us’. Which, looking back is probably a red flag. But we were naive and hungry, so we said we were there for dinner. She looked puzzled but motioned us to follow her to a booth right by the entrance.
She then disappeared into the back, and we heard a muffled conversation between our hostess and a man. The consensus was basically they were not prepared for us or didn’t know how to proceed. I asked my date if she wanted to split, but she insisted we stay for the story.
A square-shaped balding man burst through the kitchen door with two glasses of water for us, and in a very loud and deep voice, he explained that it was his birthday, and we would eat what he felt like making us. We wholeheartedly agreed.
We waited around thirty minutes, and he again returned with three large bowls of spaghetti and meat sauce. He placed two bowls in front of us, and one next to me for himself. He sat with us and ate. We had light and awkward conversation with him during, and he kept asking us jokingly if we were cops or with the health board. He was incredibly nervous about us, so my date kept cracking corny puns or awful jokes because he would forcibly laugh at anything designed with humor. We talked about our lives, the cities we’ve lived in, our pets (he had a teacup Chihuahua named Princess) and his wife.
He decided we were good people and didn’t charge us for the meal. We wished him a happy birthday, he hugged us, and we went on our way. Easily the best spaghetti I’ve ever had in my life. The restaurant, unfortunately, no longer exists.”
The Worst Possible Way To Get Back Into The Dating Scene
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“Here’s the thing: I got married right after college. We ended up spending 10 years together, so by the time we separated and eventually divorced, I hadn’t dated since I was around 19. I had no idea how online dating worked. I meet a cute enough girl online (OK Cupid) – looks a little wild, perfect for where I’m at, and we decide to meet.
I go all out for this first date. We’re going to my favorite ‘upscale’ taco place and a movie after that I was excited to see. She called me about 10 minutes late and she’s really upset. She couldn’t find parking and now she couldn’t find the place. I excuse myself from the table, step outside, and try to look for her. I don’t see this girl anywhere, but I suddenly hear my name being called. I look over, and the girl who I thought was a slinky girl with pink hair looked almost nothing like her photos.
When we sit down inside the restaurant, she tells me the story. She’s gained about 45lbs since the baby (which she also neglected to tell me about) and had recently dyed her hair moss green, mostly by accident. I honestly wasn’t even sure that she was the same person, but she told me she was in beauty school and mixed something up. I don’t remember the exact details, because I stopped being able to pay attention to her story. Why? Because she had started to down $10 drinks like she was going off to war. Uh oh, bad sign.
She ended up ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, drinking $50 in about 5 minutes and started to get whiny and cranky. What would a normal guy have done? Maybe split the tab and call it a night. Me? Nope. I keep thinking, ‘Maybe she’s just nervous. Obviously, she’s been through a lot and is a bit of a mess.’
So, the idiot that I am, I take her to the movie. The movie has assigned seating, which lands us in the back of this theater. When we go to sit down, she falls over, much to the chagrin of a father and his pre-teen daughter who are sitting in the seats next to us. This girl is in and out of consciousness most of the movie. It was a great movie, but when she was conscious, she complained throughout it – loudly and childishly. The worst part of the movie, though, is when she got handsy and decided to start trying to touch me in the movie theater. Normally, this would be a kind of interesting proposition, but not when you’re sitting right next to a pretty buff-looking, angry father, and his young daughter. I had to pull her hand away maybe 5 times as this guy shot me looks of ‘I’m about to kill you’ before I finally took her out of the theater. I felt so bad that I bought the dad/daughter a gift card for the theater and wrote a quick apology before walking Miss #greenhairdontcare outside.
It only gets worse from here, sadly. She ends up having a horrific meltdown outside the theater. She’s crying and talking about killing herself for about 20 minutes. She’s calling herself fat and ugly, saying that I’m a pig and an idiot for taking her out, and asks me if I’ll sleep with her in her car loudly and repeatedly. I’m getting glares and the cops come over twice to make sure I’m not hurting her.
At some point, I just gave up. I called a cab, which she refused to get in. She hopped in her car, still going crazy, and sped off. I ended up spending over $200 for this night. By the end of this thing, I was ready to swear off dating entirely, especially after the next 3 days of her texting me depressing texts and pics of her lady bits out of nowhere. But, in the end, I had nowhere to go but up. Dating got a lot better after that and I’m in a very happy and healthy relationship now.”
RIP Sweater
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“I went on a Tinder date with a guy who is now in my contacts as ‘DoNotAnswer.’ Prior to the date, he seemed normal. We texted and talked on the phone then arranged to meet at a restaurant/bar. He was cute but definitely bitter about something. He was from California and apparently didn’t like this new city we were in. He started talking about relationships and complaining about how uptight everyone here is about sleeping with other people. He invited the waitress to a party his company was throwing, after sending back the French fries he ordered. I showed him a picture of my dog on my phone; he took out his phone and showed me a picture of his ‘manhood.’
We walked out of the restaurant together to get our cars from the valet. My car came first and I left. He texted me later that he had my sweater (apparently I ‘dropped it’ on the way out) and if I wanted to see it again I’d have to hang out with him. RIP, sweater.”
Don’t Feed The Musicians Or Their Exes
“Got asked out by a girl I knew and was sort of interested in, but didn’t really know all that well. We went to an open-air jazz concert, not really my thing but sure. Once there she immediately was all over me (hugging, sitting on my lap etc.) Things were going great (or so I thought). It was at that point when things started getting weird: several band members were giving us strange looks from the stage while playing their jazz music.
One piano player was mouthing things in our direction, but I couldn’t make out what he wanted. People were rude to me for no reason whatsoever while getting drinks. Long story short: my date knew just about all the people there and wanted to get back publicly at her (very large) boyfriend for cheating on her. Don’t hate me jazzholes, I’m just an innocent sucker!
Awkward ending: I met them both later that evening at the train station and she pretended not to see me.”
Did She Mention She Liked Pigs?
“Met a girl online, talked it up, and while she seemed a bit immature, thought heck, why not? She casually mentioned she really liked pigs. What she meant to say was she was obsessed with pigs. OBSESSED.
Go to one of the best restaurants in the area for a first date (bad idea). Sometimes pictures are from someone 10 years prior, or the person hides things, etc. But that wasn’t the problem. She looked just like her pictures. But I didn’t even have to have seen her first, because everything else gave it away.
She came in a giant T-shirt that had a sparkly pink pig on it. Earrings? Pig earrings. Bracelets? Yep, pig bracelets–I swear her dad might have been Homer Simpson. She had this headband on with a little pig on it. Her shoes? Yep, pigs on the front of the toes! But best of all? She had a GIANT (or at least it seemed giant) pink purse with the face of a pig on it.
You could not stop seeing it once you did. And I’m sure everyone else in this nicer/classier restaurant saw it too. I felt overdressed with her but under-dressed with every other couple there. It was beyond embarrassing. For some reason which I have to convince myself was politeness not stupidity, we still had dinner. But seriously though, it was the fastest dinner I’ve ever had at a sitdown place.
Eventually, I blurted out something about how ‘oh, you really do like pigs…’ which she started giggling (oinking?) and going on about how everything she has is pig themed. Then she wouldn’t stop, and it became the dominant part of the conversation. There were a dozen other things that made it a train-wreck, but these were the clinchers to a solid 0/5 date. I remember afterward consoling with a friend of a friend because I had to tell someone; then I promptly buried this as my worst date ever.”
Dinner And A Show?
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“First date with a girl from the internet. Had never met her before, so we got coffee in what was usually a busy-ish cafe. The coffee shop was empty except for us and one guy sitting alone at the table right next to us, looking like he was both incredibly nervous and about to cry. We get our coffees and start in on the getting-to-know-you conversation when another guy shows up with a bag and sits down with the first guy. The second guy looks equally nervous and equally close to tears. We try to continue conversing, but their conversation is so compelling that we kind of give up and start eavesdropping.
‘Thanks for coming. You didn’t have to meet me, I wouldn’t have blamed you.’
‘It was the right thing to do.’ (hands bag to the other guy) ‘Pretty sure that’s all of it.’
‘I don’t need or want any of this back. I’m never going to look at it again.’
‘You think I want it around?’
‘No, it’s just… I know it’s not fair of me to say this, but it hurts. I miss you.’
(Quietly) ‘I miss you too.’ (Louder, more confidently) ‘But I can’t do this anymore.’
(Takes the other guys hands on the table, looks deep into his eyes) ‘I’m so sorry. I’ll never stop being sorry.’
(Looks back, eyes full of longing) ‘I want to believe you. We had a really great thing going.’
(Places hand gently on the other guy’s cheek) ‘It can be great again. I’ll do anything for another chance. Anything.’
These two guys went from breakup to the most epic, tearful, emotional reunion either of us had ever seen, right next to us. At the end of it all, they were making out and cuddling and crying with us and the barista just kind of staring at them in silence. Sort of overshadowed our date.”
She’d Rather Face Horrible Embarrassment
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“Met a guy online (of course) and after talking for a couple of weeks we decide to go out. I meet him at his house because (supposedly) his car broke down that morning. This guy is dressed like an extra greasy version of the Fonz. I try to look past this but secretly I’m devising ways I can destroy his leather jacket and dispose of his pomade. His house was also filthy. If you know someone is coming to your house for the first time maybe consider wiping down the counters and chucking the old pizza boxes.
While eating dinner he never once asks me anything about myself. He rambled on for at least an hour about his job as a customer service representative, repeatedly comparing it to my job as a 911 Dispatcher. Apparently, they are pretty much the same job. He also kept telling me how much smarter and more attractive I was than his ex-girlfriend who he repeatedly referred to as ‘the crazy ex.’
He wants to go to a movie afterward but I honestly could not imagine sitting through an entire movie right next to this guy. I don’t want to hurt his feelings so I tell him that I think I may have some mild food poisoning and I needed to get him home so I could escape. I realized that if I’d rather claim to have diarrhea then go to a movie with this guy it’s probably not going to lead to a second date.
Within a minute of leaving his house, he starts texting me about how great our date was, grilling me to get a time for our next date. I finally tell him that I think he is an awesome guy but our personalities don’t really mesh. He loses it and starts telling me that he’d never sleep with a fat, ugly crazy tease like me and I should be grateful that he lowered himself enough to go out with me in the first place. Oh, and he hopes I die. I no longer felt bad about not wanting to go on a second date. I haven’t been on a date since then… I’ve decided spinsterhood is more my jam.”
