No one can feel the love tonight with these people. Some folks have rotten luck, especially when it comes to first dates. These poor people tried to leave the date as soon as they could, but were instead subjected to a truly outrageous evening. Try to imagine the least romantic scenario, then double that in terms of awkwardness. Content has been edited for clarity.
Unpacking The Layers Of Odd
“This is completely true, no exaggerations. Her profile was pretty standard, with no red flags. We exchanged a few messages and then I asked her out, offering to pick her up since she didn’t have a car (which wasn’t unusual because she lived near the metro) and take her to my favorite ‘first date’ place in the city. I arrive at her house, which actually turns out to be her parents’ house (she was in her mid-20’s), and she’s sitting on the front porch talking on her cell phone and smoking. I don’t smoke, and her profile said non-smoker, so that was an unpleasant surprise. She waved as I walked up, smiled and mouthed a hello, and she continued her phone conversation. I stood there for at least five minutes as she kept talking, and it wasn’t anything important, just chit-chat nonsense. Keep in mind, this is our first ‘impression’ of each other. She got off the phone and apologized, as if it was a work emergency and I hadn’t just been sitting there listening. Between the phone and smoking, I’m already feeling the wheels coming loose, but she seemed so sweet now, and she was well-dressed, with bright eyes and a big smile. So the night went on.
We get in my car head to dinner and I start with the normal ‘early first date’ conversation topics, but shortly she started zoning out and casually pushing and turning every knob and button she can reach. AC, heat, stereo, seat warmers, defroster, everything. I ask why, she says she wants to hear music. The radio was already on but I show her to the tuner buttons anyway. We’re five minutes into the car ride and I thought that this first-date might be our last, so taking her to my favorite ‘first date’ place might not be a good idea, maybe someplace closer to her house instead. She starts saying she’s a musician and loves to perform. She asks if I want to hear her sing, and all I could do at this point was say sure. She starts literally whispering along with the song for about half a verse and a chorus and then looks at me ask asks what I think. I assumed she was joking, so I said, ‘Hah, that was great!’ and the smile immediately disappears from her face. She looks like I just slapped her, which was ironic because she then punched me hard in the arm and called me a monster. Then she cranks the volume up and starts screaming along while giving me the evil eye and calling me a monster again in between lyrics.
I’m making a logical guess that she must be on something. She didn’t smell like any sort of drink, so maybe it is pills, no idea. All I know is that this woman that I’ve known for less than a half hour has violent tendencies, is not thinking clearly, and she’s still in my car. I’ve got to get her home without being attacked or puked on or whatever. Right about when I find a place to make an illegal u-turn, she leaned over and started licking the side of my face from my neck up into my ear, while rubbing me and whispering something incoherently. Now I’m completely terrified. I’m gripping the wheel, straight ahead speeding back to her house. She eventually loses interest and gazes out the window, humming to herself.
We pull up in front of her (parents’) house and she doesn’t seem to notice, just gazes out the window and then all of a sudden snaps-to and says, ‘Wait, are we home?’
I said something like, ‘Yeah, tonight just wasn’t going to work out, sorry.’
She got out of the car with a sort of confused happy look on her face and went inside.
I went home, had several strong drinks, and went to bed. I woke up the next morning and there were about 100 missed calls on my cell phone from a number I didn’t know. I got in my car to go to work and that is when I found her cell phone on the floor of the car. It also had dozens of missed calls, but on her phone they all came up as ‘mom’. When I got to work I messed her online. ‘I found your phone, will get it back to you ASAP,’ and then I deleted my number from her contacts list, put it in an envelope with no return address, and overnighted it to her house. Never heard from her again.”
Hysterically Awful Dinner Date
“Back in college, I met this girl and asked her if I could take her out to dinner. She said yes. I was ecstatic. Well, then I had to figure out where to take her to give her an idea of who I am and what I’m about. So I tried to do something that was thoughtful. I’ve learned that there are two types of gifts: expensive and thoughtful. If you can’t do expensive, which I couldn’t, then you’d better go hard on the thoughtful. This was taking place in the south, but she was a freshman from Pennsylvania. I started thinking about things that be new and interesting to her. The answer came to me in a flash. Bojangles! I would take her to Bojangles. It’s cheap, it used to have fairly decent food, but most of all it’s southern, and we’d be able to discuss regional differences in food and culture. Of course, it’s also fast food. Really awful fast food.
The evening of the date arrived. I drove her to the place and talked all about fried chicken and the south and tea and how it must be different from the north. We got there and ordered at the register, then moved down to pick up our tray of food. We waited. And waited. I tried to make some small talk. You know, the small talk you make when something could interrupt your conversation at any moment. Then we waited some more. And more. My dinner (fried chicken) was on the tray. The drinks were on the tray. Her sandwich was not. So we stood there and stood there with the silence growing more and more awkward. Minutes rolled by that felt like ages. Finally, an employee noticed us standing there and said, ‘Did you need something?’ I said yes, that we needed her sandwich. The employee turned around and grabbed the sandwich from the place it had been sitting THE WHOLE TIME WE’D BEEN STANDING THERE and put it on the tray. It had been there since the beginning. Not a great start.
I picked up the tray and started walking back to a table with her. BUT there was an issue. Bojangles used to have the best sweet tea, so I always got a large. The cups they use for the larges are the kind that are smaller at the bottom, so they’ll fit in your cup holder in your car. That’s great for a car, but NOT so great for balancing them on a tray. It fell over. Fortunately, it fell over on to the tray, but not before knocking HER drink off of the tray onto the floor. She had gotten the smaller drink, which came in the waxed paper cup instead of the plastic cup that the larges are in. That’s important, because it means that when her cup hit the ground at about a 30-degree angle, the cup crushed and LAUNCHED the liquid inside out like a cannon. Onto her foot. Drenching her in Pepsi or Coke or some soft drink.
Being gentlemanly, I went and got her a new drink. Got back to the table and started trying to eat. I had ordered fried chicken, which I realized would mean that I had to eat with my fingers, which was stupid on a first date. Not wanting to look more dumb, I decided I’d try to avoid eating with my fingers by using the plastic cutlery provided by the store. Which would have been a fine idea if not for the fact that Bojangles only provides you with a spork. Not a fork, not a spoon, not a knife. A spork. A plastic spork, to be exact. I’m trying to pry the chicken off the bone with this plastic spork and it’s going nowhere. I can’t get the chicken off the bone. I dug in a little deeper and really pulled, which bent the spork back a little, which served as a spring to launch my chicken across the table. I actually caught it before it could hit the floor.
I remember thinking to myself, ‘Well, just enjoy this chicken because this date is going NOWHERE.’
I decided to just forget it and eat the dang chicken with my fingers. She was obviously not going to be going out with me anymore, so I decided not to worry about impressing her, just try to get out of the situation without looking any dumber than I already did. I reached down and pulled off a nice piece of chicken with my fingers. And I missed my mouth. Seriously. I jammed the chicken onto my face. I don’t know how I missed it, but I did. I just missed. Which of course smeared chicken grease all over my cheek. The girl was looking at me like she was waiting for me to tell her, ‘It’s just a prank, bro!’ I felt so dumb. We finished eating in silence. Finally, I said, ‘Well, let me take you back to your dorm.’ I gathered all the trash on the tray, walked over to the garbage can, and accidentally threw the whole thing into the trash. All of it, cups, the spork, napkins, THE TRAY. All of it. I looked at the girl, she looked at me, and we both ran to the car.
I’ve had some other bad dating experiences, but this one took the cake. I also remember being shocked when the car started when we were leaving. After the night I’d had, I was fully expecting to have to walk the several miles back to campus in the dark.”
How Is This Man Real?
Went on a date with a guy I met online. He took me to a restaurant and when the waitress asked for my order, he put his hand out to cut me off and said, ‘She’ll have a salad.’ He got shots for us. My mother had just been hospitalized after being hit by a negligent driver (which he was very aware of), and I told him I didn’t want him driving under the influence. He took two shots anyway. When we get into the car, he puts on a gaudy gold watch. I asked why he was just putting it on now. He said, and I quote, ‘Because I gotta let em know!’ Let who know what?!
He got us front row tickets to a baseball game (I’m not into baseball) and wanted to be on the big screen, so he got on his seat and twerked every 10-15 minutes. He was in the army and his lead (not sure what his position was, my date just said he was a high ranking person) happened to be sitting just a few seats down. I could tell he was judging my date for his outrageous behavior. When my date went to the bathroom, the two ladies behind me asked if I was okay and if I felt safe. IF I FELT SAFE. That should be very telling about how crazy my date was acting. He takes me to the beach after the game. He brought drinks and a watermelon but dropped everything. Not gonna hate on him for that but it was pretty funny considering how awful everything else was on this date. It was cold on the beach, so this man says, ‘You can put my hands on my chest,’ and proceeds to put my hands in his shirt on his chest. What on earth?!
He then tells me about all the girls he slept with at my university and told me if they were good or not. There was so much wrong with this date. He was convinced girls didn’t date him because he was short (he was about 5’4). No honey. Girls don’t date you because you’re disgusting. A few days after the date, he sent me a video of him singing (poorly) and using a weapon as a beat against his desk. What bolt went so loose in his head that he thought this was attractive?!”
Constant Head Games
“I had an old college friend come to visit me and stay for a weekend. I knew her from college. She was amazingly intelligent and fascinating, but we were both spoken for at the time. Years later, I got social media and she was one of the first people to find me. Both of us were single. She asked if I wanted to date her. I said heck yes! I was thrilled at the prospect. The weekend we met up was spent listening to her narcissistic nonsense. She told me jokes that are as old as the internet, reworded to sound like personal life anecdotes. She told me all this insane edgy stuff she used to or still does, like taunting police or sneaking Cuban products back to America when the embargo was still in place. She tried to start a fight with a bouncer when we went to a bar and she forgot her ID back at my house (a block away). We visited some of my best friends, and the moment we parted she talked poorly about them non-stop. My brother came by and hung out. She talked to him for quite a while. He left, then she spent the rest of the night talking about how attractive he was. At this point, I was just counting the hours until she left. I was no longer interested in her. She FINALLY left, and I get a text that night:
‘You failed all my tests. You laughed at my jokes that weren’t really jokes, You didn’t defend me against the bouncer, and you aren’t interested in my passion (fighting bouncers and cops), and you sat there and took it while I talked about your brother. Also, I don’t find you physically attractive.’
I didn’t reply. I just cut my losses and fell asleep. Several months later at 4 a.m., I get another text from her. It was the same text as I just wrote, only this was out of nowhere. I really let her have it, and I blocked her on all social media. She then made duplicate accounts and threatened me on those too. She gave up eventually, but I dodged a massive bullet.”
Creepiest Dinner In History
“I matched with this guy online, and he offered to take me out to dinner. I thought that sounded nice, so later that night he picked me up. We were driving and he asked me where I wanted to go. I told him I was fine with anything. He agreed and simply pulled into the Subway. He then told me that he wasn’t hungry, but that I should eat! So he stood outside the Subway and watched while I went in and got myself food. At this point, I was already mentally done, but I wanted to see how much worse it would get. Spoiler alert, it got so, so much worse. So I’m sitting in the car with the stupid sub sandwich on my lap, and he decided that it was a great idea to drive around, specifically through a dark, isolated ravine that was nearby. He drove for about ten minutes into the ravine, parked the car next to an abandoned tennis court, and said, ‘Okay, you can eat now.’
I was just thinking, ‘I really don’t want to die here,’ so I choked down the soggy sub while he stared at me. The second I was done, he pulled the car out and drove me back home. I was so grateful to make it home in one piece that it took me several days to process how messed up the entire date was. The cherry on top: at 2 a.m. that night, he came back to my house uninvited, carrying a bag full of stale donuts, and asked me if I wanted to hook up (but it had to be without protection since he didn’t have any). Hard pass.
Unwitting Pawn In Her Game
“So I was in Shanghai for work, and decided to see what was happening online. I matched with a girl and chatted briefly. She asked if I wanted to meet at her hotel for a drink. Alarm bells should have been ringing in my head. So I shower up, pop a breath mint, and flag down a cab. I get to her hotel and to my astonishment, she is the woman in the profile, waiting for me at the hotel bar. We have a few drinks and things are going well, she’s friendly, seems really into me, then she asks if I want to go up to her room for some more drinks. Jackpot! So we make our way upstairs and she doesn’t waste any time and jumps straight in.
When all was said and done, I’m putting my clothes on and about to leave and she says, ‘What about my money, baby?’
My heart sinks. I ask her what she means. She replies with an amount equivalent to $500. Uh oh!
So a heated argument begins and I’m planning my escape. She starts screaming at me, and hotel security arrive on the scene and hustle me down to the lobby. She follows in tow, demanding her money, screaming, yelling, and making a scene. Everyone’s looking. I’ve really hit rock bottom here.
Then I see someone get out of a cab outside the hotel entrance. I gap it and leap into the cab, telling the driver to, ‘DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE!’ in the worst Chinese possible. I probably said something offensive. But the power of the all mighty yuan saves the day and he speeds off, taking me back to my hotel where I can catch my breath and take stock of what just happened to me. I shoplifted a woman of the night in Shanghai. Shout out to the cab driver who got me out of that sordid affair!”
Why Must He Be So Much?
“So last year after getting out of a horrible sort of relationship, I decided to try something casual and meet someone online. I got lots of responses, everything is going well. The dates were mostly lack luster and I figured I was just being too picky. So I decided ‘the next 5 people to ask me on a date get a yes!’ Bad move. So the first guy I’m able to go on a date with wants me to drive into the city (45 minutes away), so we would have more stuff to do. Annoying but sorta understandable, as I’m in a suburb without many exciting things to do. We meet, he looks like his pictures, we say hello, and he tells me that we’re gonna go play soccer in the park. Cool! I love sports. On the way we start talking and asking questions about each other, and I’m getting the vibe we aren’t such a great match. I love to travel, but he has no desire. He only likes obscure sports, I love them all. But hey, I’m here, so I’ll stick with it.
The entire time, he talks about how he makes so much money and how embarrassing it is for his friend to only make 60k a year at his dream job. I make half of that. I would have left considering the love connection, or lack thereof, but I figured I’d be polite until after lunch. We head out and we arrive. Dollar taco. Which don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to splurge. But he looked me up and down and said, ‘You gotta earn your meals first,’ and gave me a creepy smile. Nope. I feign a fake phone call and have to leave, but he insists on walking me to my car. We get there, and I try to shrug him off and get away, but then it happens.
He leans in for a kiss. But not just any kiss. Open mouth, tongue out. So I did what any caught off guard girl would do. I accidentally laughed in his mouth. Oops. I was too awkward to say anything and just got in the car, driving away.”
Everyone Is Out To Get Her!
My first ever online date! We had been chatting on social media and agreed to meet at a café. I showed up about 15 minutes early. She calls me and says she is going to be a little late. I say no big deal. 25 minutes later, she calls me again and says she is going to be late, as she locked herself out of her apartment. I wait and wait. At this point, it’s an hour after the agreed upon time. I see a woman who matched her picture enter the café. Before I can go up to meet her, my phone rings. I picked it up, and she proceeds to shout at me, ‘Where on earth are you?! Is this some sort of prank?’
I tell her that I am at a table in the back of the café. After making some small talk, I ask her how her day was going. She asks if I really want to know. I mistakenly say yes. She launches into a rant about how she got fired from her last job because people were plotting against her. A new job she signed up for was just a scam that stole her credit card information. She just got out of an abusive, physical-only relationship. Her 25-year-old sister was abandoning the family to move to New York City. My date was just kicked out of school because people said she was plotting to kill someone, but she swears she wasn’t. ‘People are always plotting to get me, it seems.’
I was too frozen to leave at that moment and stayed for about another hour trying to make the most awkward small talk ever.”
Most Awkward Text Exchange Ever
“I went out one night with some of my girlfriends. I was the young, naive girl in our group. We went to this bar that is on a lake and had a great time drinking. I met a guy. We danced, laughed, and we really clicked! My girlfriends were ready to go, but I didn’t want to. He was making promises that he could get me home, but the Designated Driver in our group put her foot down and said we had to go. We exchanged numbers and made promises to talk soon, and the DD took us girls home. The next day, I get a text from him! I’m so excited because he had to be interested if he texts the next day right?! We make plans for dinner and he offers to pick me up.
Him: ‘So, pick you up at the same address?’
Me: ‘Same address? What are you talking about.’
Him: ‘The house I dropped you off at.’
Me: ‘You didn’t drop me off?’
Him: ‘Shut up. We hooked up in your driveway.’
Me: ‘Um, no, we did not.’
Him: ‘Yes, we did!’
Me: ‘I’m really confused. And I think you are too, but I’m not the girl you went home with last night.’
So the date died before it ever got started. Grateful for the DD though! She was a lifesaver. He quickly realized the mix up and tried to back track by laughing. ‘Haha! I was just kidding about the hooking up!’ It was horribly awkward and cringe worthy. This part was actually a phone call (way back in the early 2000s). I mumbled something about having to go and hung up. He didn’t try to call back or anything.”
The One Date He’s Run Away From
“I’ve had a few bad dates but the worst would probably be this cute blonde I met online, we had texted for four days and she seemed intelligent and interesting. We arranged to meet up at a Karaoke bar for drinks, chatting and maybe a little shared humiliation. I got there first and decided to wait at the bar, and I’m chilling there slowly sipping an old-fashioned when my date rolls up and shouts, ‘Is it really you?!’ and shoves her tongue down my throat while I’m trying to answer. I suggest we find a table and she’s says, ‘Sure, let me just get a drink first.’ This chick orders four shots and slams all four shots in a row like something from a sleazy frat house movie. I was honestly reeling from this chaotic energy that just waltzed into my life like a hurricane, but I figured I would feel the situation out a bit more. She actually leveled off for a while and we had some good laughs, if not entirely shallow conversation. Then it was time to do karaoke, she gets on stage and apparently decides to ‘remix’ the song by singing it in offensively stereotypical bad accents and shouting all the racial slurs she knows. People are definitely looking around and getting upset. I shoot her a quick look, thinking maybe she was too wasted and needed reigning in, but she waved me off and doubled down on her prejudiced show and tell. This was the one and only date I’ve legitimately ran away from. I didn’t even try to split the bill, just bolted and left her to deal with it.
Another ‘date’ was this really sweet girl that desperately wanted to meet up near my place, so I took her to a bar I’m a regular at and was friendly with the staff. We sit down and chitchat a little, and then the bartender I’m friendly with comes over to take our drink order. When my buddy jokingly asks her for some ID she gets a little flustered and orders a coke instead, then she says, ‘I didn’t think they’d check ID here, I’m not old enough to drink.’
Couple things, I was 27, and her profile said she was 23, I’m in Canada, where the drinking age would mean she’s still in high school, and I work for a school board, so even the accusation of spending inappropriate time with a minor would be an immediate termination. 5 years later and that bartender still won’t let me live it down.”
Six Hours Of Romantic Torture
“So I talked to this guy for a while, I was still very new to online dating and hadn’t learned a few of the basic rules yet, like meeting for just coffee on the first date. Anyway, he seemed pretty normal when we spoke and he told me he was also an accountant like me. He invited me out for ‘dinner and a movie’, and I thought sure, why not. So he picks me up from my place (second no-no, that’s a mistake I’ll never make again) and I swear before we even leave my street, I realize he’s a bit weird and I’m not really keen at all. Whatever, I’m here now, so may as well get dinner and sit through a movie. In the 20-minute drive there, he tells me about his job, which sounds absolutely nothing like accounting at all, like he doesn’t even know what an accountant is. He goes through his dating history and his last ‘girlfriend’ who he had dated for THREE WHOLE WEEKS, still spoke to her ex and brought her kid along to their ‘romantic weekend away’. So for ‘dinner’, he takes me to the drive through of McDonald’s. Not even the walk in, the drive through. He then informs me the movie we are going to see is actually a movie marathon of the last three fast and the furious movies at a drive-in. At this point, I’m wondering how on earth I’m going to get out of this.
So we drive from McDonald’s to the drive-ins, which is only about 10 minutes away. Before we even get there, he’s told me about how often he and his ex used to hook up and asked me in my relationships how often I had it. Obviously, I told him I didn’t want to talk about that stuff on a first date. The movie starts and I’m practically leaning out of the window to stay as far away from him as I can. He puts his hand on my leg and I push it off. I’m seriously considering just making a run for it, but I had no way home and I had just moved to my city, so I didn’t know anyone to call to come and get me.
After awkwardly sitting through two of the three movies, I tell him it’s late and I need to go home because I have to work in the morning. So on the most awful drive back to my house, he tells me he’s had a great time and asked me if I ‘want to be his girlfriend’. Thinking I better just say yeah so he doesn’t ditch me in the middle of nowhere I say, ‘Yeah maybe, let’s see how it goes.’ FINALLY, we pull up in my street and I practically run out of the car saying thanks, talk to you later, bye! And I bolt into my house. I immediately block him and remove him from all social media thinking THANK GOD that is over.
He messages me not even 15 minutes later asking why I blocked him. I try, politely to say that he’s way too full of himself and I’m not interested, and he replies with a tirade of, ‘This is the third date this week that’s gone wrong. I’m never dating again!’
The kicker? He messages me online somehow a few months later with a ‘Hey babe, what’s happening?’
When I reply with, ‘Are you kidding me?’, he is like ‘What?! We haven’t even met yet, why are you being so nasty?’
I tell him that in fact, I had the distinct displeasure of being stuck in a car with him for over six hours, and to never message me again.”