Dating is getting harder and harder. With everything being online it's easier than ever to get fooled by a fake photo on a profile. Even if you meet up in person with someone you met online, they could be a completely different person than they portray themselves online. The people in the following stories went on dates, and within minutes of meeting the other person, they wanted to get out of there ASAP.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
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“I met the nicest German girl in a club and in the process of getting to know her, she had her bag stolen. I managed to chase down and get the bag from the guy who took it. And she cutely called me her hero with the accent, and at the end of the night, she asked for my number. I wasn’t really into her, but she was sweet, so I put it in her phone and grabbed her a cab. She’d left her friends to stay and talk with me, so I felt responsible for making sure she got home okay.
Anyway, I met up with her again a few days after one day after work.
I had a great time, and I figured I’d give it a shot, so we went on a date. During the conversation, she started talking about a bunch of things I had an interest in and being quite specific. It eventually twigged that she must have checked my Instagram for stuff I liked/did. I figured this was fine since had we met on Tinder or something that’s pretty standard.
I went back to her place, and her housemate looked shocked to see me, like, terrified.
When we had a moment alone, she beckoned me into the hallway and showed me a picture, of me, that was circled in quite a violent fashion and asked me, ‘Is this you?’
What ensued was the most terrifying argument I’ve seen between two women ever at which point I left as quickly as possible, drove away, and did not ask questions. I hope that there was a reason for it all and it just came off as weird, rather than the sinister explanation I’d assumed upon seeing it.”
Our Special Guest On Our Date Tonight
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“A cute guy from work asked if I wanted to hang out and I was into it. He didn’t have a car, so I went over to his place. We were hanging outside his place with a couple of his friends for what felt like forever; I was under the impression we were going to eat at this pizza place by his house, and I was starving. The friends finally knocked off to do something, so I was like you want to get something to eat maybe? And he said, ‘Nah, I can’t I’ve got a bracelet,’ and showed me his parole monitor.
I should’ve left then but I was young, and he was hot, so we went inside the house to his bedroom and were listening to music and making out a bit, so far so good. I heard someone coming downstairs to the basement where his bedroom was and thought it was his parents, getting a little nervous but things were little too intense to stop.
Then the door flew open and standing in the doorway was my MANAGER from work, staring at me on this dude’s bed while he had his hand up my shirt. She didn’t say a word, just backed away and closed the door.
I was like, ‘What the? Why is she in your house dude?’ He said, ‘Didn’t you know she’s my sister?’
No, no I did not.
I finally got to eat on the way home; Taco Bell helped me get over the disappointment.”
It’s “Your Type” For A Reason
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“I took some well-intentioned advice to ‘date outside my type’ and went out with a guy via a dating site who was different from my usual type in many ways because, well, why not.
When he first walked up, he tried to full-on chest-to-chest bear hug me. I dodged it and turned it into an awkward side hug. He got offended.
He ended up being a bully during our lunch date. He complained a lot about ‘special snowflakes’ and bragged about being a combat veteran with PTSD (scary). He picked on me for overeating (I barely ate half of my meal, which was a pretty normal-sized portion of Asian food). He paid little attention when I talked in between giving me ‘wow you’re stupid’ looks (clearly I should not date outside my educated bookish geek type). He played the ‘oops I didn’t bring enough cash, sorry’ card and I had to scrounge for change to cover the bill (I never carry cash). Then he had the gall to harass me repeatedly about going back to hang out at his place or at least go to the coffee shop at his apartment complex.
As I poked at the ice in my drink while trying to summon the courage to turn him down, he said in a bullying tone of voice, ‘Well, you can sit there and awkwardly poke at your ice, or you can answer me,’ and laughed.
My face went from neutral to a scowl so fast you could almost hear it. I told him, ‘That’s not funny.’
He said, ‘Fine, you can come with me, or if you are done, you can leave.’
I picked up my purse and walked out.”
… And I’m Out
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“I talked to this girl on Myspace when I was in my late teens. She was cute and ‘edgy’ – if you used MySpace, then you know what I mean. She had a cool profile that played KMFDM and some nice artistic looking pictures. She showed up, and she looked like me, or maybe a twin. It was not just a little creepy. I’m not a feminine looking guy or anything, but when I was 17, I looked 14. She looked like me with a wig.
Another time I asked a girl out to eat, and she stated that she was broke. I said to not worry about it, and she showed up with her snotty sister who I also had to pay for.
One time I connected with this girl over chat, we lived near each other, so we set up a time to meet. She wouldn’t send a full body shot, and the pictures of her face were the kind where weird angles are used to make her less heavy than she was. I asked her if she was big and that it was cool, she said no, she was 120 pounds and short. I asked why she couldn’t send a full body picture (in clothes, mind you) and she said she used to weigh a lot, and she lost all of the weight and has saggy skin and stretch marks. I go to her apartment to pick her up, and she wasn’t short, she was about 5-feet-8-inches. She had a lazy eye, and she was about 250 pounds. I was not interested, not because she was chunky, but because she lied about being short and lied about her weight. Even the eye thing didn’t even bother that much. We went upstairs, and she said she wanted to finish getting ready. I sat on the couch, and then she sat next to me, and she wanted me to pull myself out, and I was like, ‘Uh… okay?’ She wasn’t joking. So I said, ‘I would, but I’m seriously hungry,’ and she stuck her hand down her pants and like did this fake moaning thing. I felt like this wasn’t right like she had some disorder or something.
Instead of going to a nice restaurant, I take her to a Subway near her place, and she called someone and said, ‘You know that guy I was telling you about? We’re dating now, and making it official.’
I was like, ‘Time to get out of this one.’ I texted a friend to call me and said it was an emergency and to come home right away. He did, so I made an act out of it and went to take her back to her apartment instead of just leaving her there. We get in my car, and she’s like, ‘Just come upstairs for a minute,’ I told her I have to go and left. Pretty much a nightmare. Her roommate left me nasty voicemails for about a month about how messed up I was, and I should have done it with her on the first date. Around two more months go by, and the roommate wants to hang out.”
Doomed From The Start
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“We met at an art gallery after meeting on an app. She saw me, walked past, sent me a message saying, ‘I’m here where are you?’ Then when she sees it’s me who is walking towards her, she rolls her eyes. We proceed into the exhibition, and she walks/runs at least ten meters ahead of me at all times. Her pupils are massive, we don’t speak to each other for about two hours, except for her to say, ‘Move here now,’ or, ‘yeah,’ in a valley girl accent despite being Australian and us being in Australia.
We progress through the exhibition and simply don’t speak. Several times I lose her because she’s running ahead of me and I don’t know where she is. She starts to take selfies for a solid 40 minutes while I stand by myself.
We finish the exhibition after an excruciating three hours of silence and physical distance. She then tries to lock me in a storage closet by tricking me into going in, which I obviously didn’t fall for. Then she wants to get food together, so we head to food. She asks me a question for the first time in now four hours, and as I answer she starts singing loudly on top of my voice so she can’t hear. I ask if she has siblings and she pauses for two full minutes then says ‘I’m not sure.’
We end the date eating food awkwardly while she tells me about how much she loves her ex. I get fast food on the way home and will probably never get over how bad it was.”
Run Man, Run!
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“It was the second date I had ever gone on with someone online. They sounded great, looked my type, we had quite a bit in common, and we even hit it off for a couple of weeks before meeting for a dinner date.
It turned out she didn’t have an indoor voice; it was obnoxious, snobby almost. She ordered a spinach dip for an appetizer while looking over our menus more. And thank god we kept looking at our menus because I would have felt bad leaving after having dinner ordered.
She chewed loud, with her mouth open, and double dipped her chips. Then, just to top it off, She sipped her empty cup of ice being obnoxious to get attention for a refill and order our dinner.
All took about 15 minutes. When the waitress came, I threw $40 on the table for our two drinks and app, and I just left. Best part was the waitress had a little smirk on her face after I put the money down as in, ‘I don’t blame you man, run.'”
Kissing Cousins
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“I ended up on a date with my cousin once. Noped right out after we found out.
I have a huge family. My grandparents had 43 brothers and sisters combined, I have 20 aunts and uncles from my mom’s side alone, all of which have a ton of kids. I don’t know 99 percent of them because I didn’t grow up with my extended family. I moved back before college.
Anyway, I was on fall break one semester and was on hot or not (old school Tinder), and matched with this super cute blonde. We exchanged numbers, texted a few days then later met up. We went to this restaurant for lunch, got to talking about family, etc., and she mentioned her mom. Weird, I have an aunt with that same name, and this girl’s last name. I asked about her aunt, she pulled out her phone and showed me a picture of her mom standing beside my mom. I asked her who the woman beside her mom was (my mom). She said, ‘Oh, that’s my aunt!’ I pulled out my phone and showed her a picture of my mom and me, and her face was as pale as a ghost. We both freaked out and went our separate ways.
We’re close now though, and we talk about it from time to time and laugh our butts off. She got married a year or so ago, and the best man (her brother) brought it up when the pastor said, ‘Does anyone object to the wedding?’ We all got a kick out of it.”
That Was Fast
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“I was seeing this guy for a short while; we maybe went on two or three dates before the last date where I ‘noped’ without a second thought. He wasn’t that great, he had different hobbies than me and had a horrible minimum wage job with no ambitions, but I wanted to give him a chance. Well, we went back to my place, and we’re getting a little frisky when out of the blue he proposed to me! I was flabbergasted. I said no and asked him to leave. He hounded me for weeks after that but eventually got the hint that I wasn’t interested and we lost touch.”
Hide Your Eyes Everyone!
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“We were in the middle of watching a movie in a crowded theater. It was opening weekend for a highly anticipated film, so it was a crush, lots of families, not one seat open. Maybe 15 minutes into the movie, my date, who had been oddly squirmy since we sat down, muttered something about being bored. Then he unzipped his pants, whipped it out, and forcibly put my hand on it. I just froze for a moment because who does that and he started thrusting against my hand and moaning. I just stood up and walked out. He tried running after me, but I ducked out the side exit, got in my car, and drove off without him. The unfortunate thing for him was that I would have slept with him that night had he just acted like a civilized human being for the rest of the date.
He tried apologizing in a phone call the next day. I almost bought his contrite act until I realized that he was pleasuring himself while I was telling him how disrespected and violated I had felt. I blocked him immediately.”
Too Much Too Soon
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“The plan was to have a relaxing evening, talking and getting to know each other better. Nope. Not even five minutes into talking, she told me that, ‘this one time I did it 11 times a day with my ex, and after that day everything hurt.’
I said, ‘Okay then. Why are you telling me this?’
She answered, ‘I Dunno. Just thought about it.’ There was an awkward silence for around 30 seconds (felt like hours).
She started talking again and started talking graphically about another time she did it with the same guy from her last story. I told her that I don’t feel comfortable around her and that we should drop this right here and now and go different ways.”
You, Me, And Your Ex-Girlfriend
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“I’m gay, so I went to a gay club with my buddy and saw an older woman there who I thought was attractive. We eyed each other up for a while and then she came over to buy me a drink. We talked for a bit and then she launched herself at me, and we started kissing. Only she wouldn’t stop kissing. I kept trying to have a conversation with her, but then I’d find her tongue down my throat instead of an answer. Oh well, I thought… she’s pretty attractive, no harm no foul.
She invited me back to her place, and being young I said sure, why not? We got to her place which was pretty nice, and as she was pouring me a drink her phone rang, and it was her ex-girlfriend. Instead of sending it to voicemail she answered it, so I spent the next hour listening to them argue about why their relationship went wrong. I was so bored and cold and uncomfortable, and she just couldn’t read the signs I was giving off that I was pissed.
Nothing kills a romantic moment quite like that. She finally got off the phone, and I demanded that she either call me a cab or drive me home, because whatever we had going was dead in the water. She called and called over the next few weeks, but I told her straight up that that phone call ruined things and if she thought it was appropriate to have a row with her ex-girlfriend for an hour on our first date then she was not someone I wanted to get involved with.”
You Can’t Say You Didn’t Try
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“I was trying to get back into the dating scene about three months after having my heart broken pretty badly, AND all my possessions lost in an apartment fire within the same week. I knew I was going to be a bit nervy, so I tried to tell myself just to be calm, pleasant, talk about positive things, avoid griping about the ex who burned me or the fire that burned my stuff up. I got a match off Match.com, she seemed nice enough on the phone, so we arranged to meet for dinner and drinks at a restaurant.
She ordered a drink and started right off griping about her ex. I tried to smile and steer back to more pleasant topics. She steered it right back to her ex-husband and how big of a jerk he was. I attempted to bring up sports since her profile said she was a sports fan. She talked briefly about baseball, then went right back to complaining about her ex. I was doing my best here, but things are not looking good.
About 45 minutes later, she started unbuttoning the top buttons of her blouse and doing a, ‘Is it hot in here, or is it just me?’ Line. At that point, I determine that I did care more about personality than her chest. I thanked her for the date, paid the check, and left. I couldn’t have brought anything negative up if I’d tried, I could barely get a word in edgewise.
A couple of years and I-lost-count-of-how-many dates later, I met my now-wife, so it did work out for me eventually.”
The Kind Of Misunderstanding That’ll Ensure There Wont Be A Second Date
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“I met up with a girl from Tinder in a pub in South London. Things started fine, she didn’t look like her pictures, so I’d be lying if I said I was that into her but we were in a cool place, and I figured we could still have a nice evening. We started comparing our worst tinder dates. Hers was a guy who, as the evening progressed, turned out to be a huge racist. Mine was just a girl who was crippled by shyness and just really, really boring. When we finished our stories I said, somewhat flippantly, ‘Well, I think I win. I’d rather go on a date with a racist that someone who is too shy even to hold a conversation. At least with a racist, there’s a chance you could have a stimulating debate, even if you don’t agree with them.’
For whatever reason, she took this to mean that I was saying I was racist. This was confusing because I was saying the opposite. No matter what I said, she just wouldn’t accept it. It was as if context and nuance meant nothing to her. I had to spend the rest of the date trying to convince her that I wasn’t racist. It was surreal, and it was like she was deliberately misunderstanding me so that she could feel outraged about something.
The pub was about five minutes walk from my apartment at the time, and I remembered I had drinks and ice cream at home, so I decided to call it. When we were saying goodbye, I told her, ‘Well, at least we now both have a new ‘Worst Date; story, so the evening wasn’t a total waste of time.’ She didn’t look too pleased, but to be honest, she seemed like the kind of person who hadn’t been happy in a very long time.”
His Competitiveness Can Keep Him Warm At Night
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“This one sticks in my mind because of how petty the guy turned out. This was the second date from another online acquaintance, and the shame of it is there should have been no second date as there was no spark on the first date, no zing, no ‘oooh’ moment. He seemed nice enough in a dull hotel-lobby-greet-in-passing kind of way, but that was it. He made little effort at conversation other than generic pleasantries and was quite frankly hard work to talk to. I held up both sides of the conversation which was exhausting. I don’t know why I agreed to a second date. I think it was a few weeks after the first date and the call caught me off guard. More the fool me.
I suggested that we went to a science and computer museum that was in the center of town which was on my to-do radar (free entry as well, bonus). We met at the entrance, and he greeted me with limp enthusiasm. My attempts at joviality were again received with damp monosyllabic responses, and the memory of the last date came crashing back. I decided to make this date a short one but to go round the exhibition with him to be polite.
Part way round was a section on gaming, including a couple of have-a-go-yourself booths on the good old Sega Mega Drive (which I used to love back in the day). He finally showed some enthusiasm for something, and I thought, ‘Brilliant!’ The date wasn’t going anywhere, but at least we can have a bit of a laugh before we never see each other again. He had one console screen, and I had another, both in single-player mode. He started making competitive remarks from his booth, and I thought, ‘Finally, a sense of humor!’ So responded in kind. I had the highest score when the credits rolled (more luck than skill to be fair). I turned to him to say something along the lines of, ‘Woooooo! The cake is on you!’ to find him glowering at me. It turns out he wasn’t jokingly acting competitively; he was deadly serious and apparently angry at not getting the highest score. In his silent rage, he decided to stop speaking to me altogether, so I bluntly cut the date short. He seemed to remember as we left the building that it had been a date and lunged his lips in my direction which I managed to avoid by skipping down a step. His aftershave was truly awful as well, saccharine sweet with an undertone of vomit. To my astonishment, he did contact me again to see if I wanted to meet up for a third time.”