Pro Tip: Drive Separately On The First Date
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“After my freshman year of college, I met a guy on OKCupid. We went to get dinner at Friday’s as our first date. He offered to give me a ride, but I said no.
He was a couple years older, well dressed and started talking about how he’d started his own business after college and it was going well. Good for him! He was bragging a bit, but hey that’s an accomplishment.
So after we ordered, he said, ‘Let’s play a game – we’ll each take out our wallets and compare what’s in them.’ This wasn’t a joke. He literally started showing me his credit cards and bragging about the high limits. He ended with, ‘Clearly you can’t afford to pay for this dinner, but don’t worry I can cover you.’ I was so angry and protested, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
As we left, he said he wanted to show me his car. Unfortunately, it was before mine in the lot, so I had to walk by it. It was a white, windowless serial killer van. He begged me to hook up with him in it, right there in the Friday’s parking lot.
I was pretty glad I drove separately.”
He Gave Her A Rock, But Not The Kind You’d Expect
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“A guy I knew through a few acquaintances asked me out on a date. He lived in Philly and I lived in Jersey at the time, about an hour away. I had nothing to do that night and he was kinda cute, so I thought I would go. What’s the worst that could happen? Awkward conversation and a free meal? I figured what the heck and I went.
I got down to Philly and picked him up at his place. He didn’t have a car so he apologized for making me drive. We went out to a super posh restaurant and had an amazing meal. I was about 19 at the time, so most of the dates I went on did not involve $200 meals, so I was basically floored with the baller status of this kid. No one had ever taken me out to a restaurant that fancy, except when my dad took our family out on Christmas Eve.
After we ate, he was like, ‘On the ride home, I just have to swing by my friend’s house, I just have to run in and drop something off. Do you mind? It’s right on the way. I’ll even drive your car there since you don’t know the city.’
For some reason, my dumb 19-year-old self agreed to this and let him drive my car. As we’re driving there, it’s plain to see that this neighborhood was totally sketchy. He pulled up in front of a run-down house and told me he’d be right back. I was sitting in the car freaking out at this point. He came back five minutes later, and said, ‘Here, hide this in your purse.’ He tossed a large baggie at me and inside there was a GIANT ball of crack. I’m talking the size of a softball here. Just at that moment, a police cruiser pulled up behind my car, obviously running my plates. I’m sure the cops figured the only reason a Jersey car would be in that section of Philly would be to score some kind of substance. My date drove off and the cops followed us for a few blocks and then, finally, turned off down another street. The entire time, my heart was in my throat. I just kept thinking about what my parents were going to say. I was a pretty good kid, never really messed around with anything illegal, so I was beyond scared.
We got back to his apartment, he took his giant crack rock and I went straight home back to Jersey. He called me for a second date. Needless to say, I didn’t go!”
The Car Wasn’t The Only Thing That Got Wrecked That Night
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“When I was a teenager, I worked at a retail store in the mall and a guy who worked a few stores down would always come in and talk to me. He was super sweet and genuine and would randomly take me to lunch/bring me coffee and the like. It was nice to just have someone to talk to and who seemed genuinely interested in me and what I had to say. He asked me on a date a few times and I always declined. I don’t like the idea of dating someone who I work with/work next to, just in case it goes sour.
After a month or two, I finally agreed to go on a date with him, because good guys are hard to find! I couldn’t just let him pass by. He picked me up at my house and on our way to dinner, we got into a car accident. The driver’s side was t-boned pretty badly and we ended up having to go to the hospital where he contacted his roommate…who then contacted my date’s girlfriend.”
The Date Went Great…Until It Wasn’t A “Date” Anymore
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“So I’d known this guy for almost a year now, not really good friends or anything, more of casual acquaintances (we had a bunch of common friends and saw each other from time to time at parties, etc). A couple of months ago, he started messaging me, first on Facebook, then by text (he got my number from a friend, he didn’t ask me for it). Most of the time, I responded just to be polite. He was nice enough, but not really my type. So when he started dropping hints about meeting up, I just turned him down and said I was busy, or we’d just catch up the next time there’s a gathering with our friends, that sort of thing.
Fast-forward to last week. He asked me out again, which was like the sixth time in the past two months. I finally decided to at least give him a chance, because, hey, what could go wrong? Worst-case scenario, it would be awkward, but we’d talked more than a few times so I was thinking it couldn’t be that bad and we could actually have a pleasant time.
Date night came and we met up in the city after work. We had dinner at a nice, cutesy Japanese place. The conversation was okay. I was certain at this point that it’s really not going to take off. He really wasn’t my type, but I was having a pleasant enough time and he was a total gentleman and not bad to talk to.
After the bill came, I suggested a quick coffee before heading home. However, he said that there’s something he’d made an appointment for us for and we needed to rush off to make it in time. I was a bit intrigued and excited. I wondered, ‘Was it a movie, or a show, a play?’ We hurried off and he took me to a high-end luxury mall with an attached wing for offices. We went to the office lobby…
It was a freaking weight-loss center.
So he explained that he’s part of this company (he works for them on a part-time basis as a distributor) and he wanted to introduce me to their products which would ‘revolutionize’ my lifestyle and make me healthier than I’d ever been in my entire life (FYI I’m 5’5″ and 135 lbs). I was totally stunned at this point so I was just nodding like an idiot the whole time we were walking inside. He then left me with his smarmy ‘teammates’ who proceeded to give me an orientation about their company and a run-through of their health supplements. When he got to the part where the weight-loss products are, the smarmiest one said, ‘Oooh, now this is what you’ve been waiting for, I saved the best for last!’
I just sat through it because I knew that if I started to say something, I was definitely going to burst and make a spectacle of myself (there was a seminar ongoing and we were at a little table to the side). After I flat-out said that I’m not interested in any of the products and frankly don’t believe that I need health supplements (I eat well and exercise regularly), they started on the 2nd phase: introducing me to the ‘business’ aspect of it. Basically, it was a networking model of business where you not only sell the products, you also recruit people to sell them and they would be under your ‘team,’ and you get a commission for every sale they make. They rhapsodized about the wonders of the product, how easy it is to sell, and how much money I could be making because they could tell I had the right kind of ‘personality’ and ‘network’ for it. Registration was only $1,000, and it was consumable in products which I could either use or sell to get my registration money back immediately.
I wish I could say I flipped the freaking table and screamed at them that I hoped they overdose on their products, but no… Right after the ‘talk,’ I just said I should head home since it was getting a bit late.
The guy actually messaged me to say that he had a good time and he hoped to see me again…and that I would reconsider their products and the ‘business opportunity.'”
The Wild Date With The Man-Child
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“About a year and a half ago, a guy from work asked me out. I had been his manager for a while and always considered him kinda cute. At the time, our company was going out of business, I was three months single, and there was no real reason to turn down his request for a date. I was a little nervous because this was my first time out after a 4-year relationship, but he seemed sweet.
The first red flag should have been that despite owning a car, he let his license expire because ‘driving scares him.’ So I drove an hour to his house, picked him up, and asked where we are going. He directed me to the nearest shopping mall.
I was thinking, ‘Okay, maybe we’re just going to go window shopping and grab a coffee and goof off. Kinda teenage but maybe I could use something less serious right now.’
We get there, and the first thing he does is point out a sculpture that looks vaguely reminiscent of male private parts. Okay, I guess it’s silly that we seem to be the only two shoppers who notice it, but he keeps laughing about it waaaaay after the humor dies, just keeps pointing at it and laughing to himself.
Then he walked me straight to the corner of the mall where the Rainforest Cafe is.
We walked through the gift shop to where the host was standing and Guy immediately requested to be seated next to the animatronic gorillas. I must have given him a weird look because he turned to me and said, ‘They’re my favorite.’
We got seated next to a family of rubber gorillas that keep making awkward robotic motions which made him laugh, and at this point, I asked him if he planned on getting a drink, to which he replied yes. So I asked our waitress to bring me a mixed drink to sip before the food came out. He then asked the waitress if he was allowed to order off the children’s menu. She said yes. Next thing I know, she was bringing back one mixed drink and one child’s plastic smoothie holder with a giant, cartoon orangutang head as a lid, from which a pink silly straw was protruding. It was filled with Coca-Cola.
‘I, uh, thought we were both getting a drink?’ I asked, feeling kind of sheepish because now I looked like I was a mother taking the son I apparently gave birth to at age two out to dinner.
‘Yeah, I don’t really like those kinds of drinks. And this came with a toy I wanted,’ he said, showing me that you can twist off the bottom of the cup and there’s a plastic monkey inside.
The rest of the meal was spent with him trying to convince me that we should tell the waitress it’s my birthday so we could get a free sundae with a sparkler on top because sparklers are so cool, and me using my napkin to casually wipe away tears of regret. Then I drove him home.”
The Double Date Was Going Well…Until She Started Drinking
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“My friend scored a date with a girl he’d had a crush on for years. She was a super hot girl with a strict and religious family. He told me he needed me to come on a double date because she would only go out with him if her cousin could come along.
Well, off we went. Her cousin was surprisingly hot, too. This whole thing seemed to be working out in my favor. The plan was to start with an ‘Irish picnic’ on a private beach (we sat on benches and drank). My date had one drink and started to act oddly. She told me I was so good looking, then she started whispering and giggling with her cousin. Then another group showed up and we all started chatting. Somehow, she offered to give one of the guys there a ride home as we were leaving to go do whatever was next. She pulled him into the back seat and her cousin, my buddy’s date, sat next to her for some reason.
We’re driving for like a minute when my buddy leaned over and whispered, ‘Dude, she’s blowing that guy!’ I looked back as a streetlight lit them up and yes, she was! To be clear, we were all in the same car.
Now we dropped off BJ guy, who was like, ‘Thanks, guys!’
And this is where the night got worse.
My buddy said, ‘I need you to just come with us to eat. I’m sorry, but I’ll pay!’
He’s super intense about it, but also I was starting to laugh about this blatant hussy and his date who just looked so embarrassed. So I grudgingly said fine.
We’d been driving for like five minutes and my ‘date’ was still trying to talk to me from the back seat. Then she leaned forward and started to kiss my neck! I pulled away and told her to stop. This happened maybe 10 more times and her cousin was restraining her and was mortified. I was leaning forward in my seat to get away from crazy. She was too crazy for a restaurant so my buddy decided to go to a nearby, local cheese-steak place that was pretty popular.
We got inside and my friend started laughing at me. He told me to check my neck in the mirror. Yes, I somehow had a hickey! I didn’t even have time to lose it on this girl because that’s the moment she hopped over the counter and started yelling an order into the microphone at the register.
We dragged her back out to the car and sat her in the back seat. I stood guard from outside the car (so she couldn’t blow any passerby or anything), while my friend had a dinner date. The whole time, the crazy girl was begging me to please, please bang her and trying to climb out. I thought less of her cousin for leaving her, but she said she needed to wait for her to sober up or whatever before they could go home. That took about two more hours of annoying.
I actually saw her the next day and she couldn’t look anyone in the eyes or talk to us. There was no second date for anyone.”
Dating Her Was Anything But Magical
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“I’d been seeing this girl for a few weeks and it wasn’t exactly fireworks, but we got on all right. It was the first time I’d actually tried dating someone after breaking up with my ex-fiancee, so I wasn’t looking for a home run. She’d told me she was pagan at the outset and I assured her I didn’t mind, as long as she didn’t try to force it down my throat. For her part, she was true to her word, but it should’ve been a red flag from the word go.
She told me she was leaving town to go to a pagan convention (or gathering or something) a few towns over for the weekend and she was excited about it. For my part, I wanted to try to be supportive and nonjudgmental about her beliefs, so I offered to accompany her, but she said she’d be fine and would call me when she got home.
So I was at home, playing internet video games in my underwear Sunday afternoon when I got a call from her (a day early) and she’s panicked and sobbing on the other end. It’s only after much bleating and confusion that she was able to get out that she needed to see me ASAP. So I went full hero-boyfriend mode, immediately dropped what I was doing (I even put on pants!) and raced over to her place, thinking something awful had happened.
I burst through her door rapid-firing questions like, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Who did this to you?’ and ‘How can I help?’ She eventually told me that she ran into an ex-boyfriend (also pagan) while at the convention and that they hooked up. I felt my gut drop out. Did he force her? One of my closest friends had been in a similar situation a couple of years prior and it was a nightmare I had no desire to witness again.
‘So you were assaulted?’
‘Well….no.’
‘But you slept with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know it can be scary to admit, but I’m not going to think less of you if you were assaulted. You can tell me.’
‘Well, I WANTED to hook up with him.’
Cue palpable confusion pause. I had to not only try to parse this new bit of information but also shut down the Assault Reactions going on.
‘You…wanted to hook up with him?’
‘See, it’s like this. I like you a lot and I don’t want to hurt you, but you have to understand he POSSESSED me.’
‘He…he what?’
‘He has a strong dark magic aura that I succumb to whenever he’s around. He makes me not myself.’
I was pretty hopelessly lost at this point. I’d tried to respect her beliefs up to this point but this was a bit of a tough pill for me to swallow. I tried to gain solid footing one last time.
‘Possession sounds like it was against your will. If that’s the case, it was assault, and we should go to the police department.’
‘No no. It wasn’t assault. It’s just that the dark magic clouds my mind with desires.’
‘…So, basically, you’re openly admitting to me that you slept with another guy, and you’re trying to rationalize it with something you know I don’t believe in.’
At this point, she blew up on me. She was furious that I wasn’t more sympathetic to her dark magic plight and couldn’t believe I could be so callous and selfish. After about ten minutes of cyclical yelling, I just turned to leave and told her to have a nice life. I’m not normally this witty, so you’ll pardon me for including my snarky exit one-liner.
As I opened the door, she screamed at me, ‘What, you don’t even LIKE ME anymore?! Just ALL OF THE SUDDEN?!
Calmly, I turned around, gave her a sarcastic grin and made jazz hands and said:
‘It’s like magic,’ and then I left.”
Clearly Not On The Same Page
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“I met a girl through a hook-up website. I wasn’t at a point in my life where I wanted a relationship, but hookups weren’t off the menu.
The messages got hot and heavy. First online, then in text. I wasn’t thinking with my big head, but my not-so-big head. It went from 0-60 in just a few texts and I was getting full on shots of her recent Brazilian wax texted to me. I thought she just knew the deal and was as into it as I was, and eager to get the festivities started.
She was about a 45-minute drive from where I live. I was going to pick her up, we were going to have dinner and see where things went from there. We hadn’t had any conversations in text aside from the explicit.
She got into my car and on the way to the restaurant, said, ‘I think I’m already falling for you.’
I had to tell her a few times, ‘I’m not really looking for a relationship right now. And I don’t move that fast. You met me on a hook-up website. I thought you knew the deal.’
All during dinner, she kept saying it, pressuring me to admit that I wasn’t just going to pull the old bag and bounce. Telling me over and over again that she wanted to be in a relationship. Asking me if she could come to see me at my job (at the time I was working as an EMT for the local fire department, she wanted to come to the firehouse and bring me food when I worked).
I got through dinner (somehow), paid, and drove her back to her place while she asked me questions about what our kids’ names would be. Then she asked me what my last name was. What my brother and sister’s names were. I gave her all fake names. She, multiple times, showed me she wasn’t wearing any panties and was grabbing at my junk through my jeans during the car ride back to her place.
At the end, I left her at the front door of her apartment complex and gave her some excuse about not wanting to move too fast physically. I almost peeled out of the parking lot, happy to still have my hair and skin intact.”
This Is Why You Keep Your Friends On Speed Dial
“In college, this guy from one of my classes asked me to go out with him out of the blue. We’d never even talked before, but he was pretty cute so I said sure. We exchanged numbers and he said he’d call me with details.
He called the next day and told me we were going to a restaurant that was WAY out of my price range. We’re talking like, no way this bill will be under $100. I tried talking him out of it, saying I couldn’t afford something like that, but he insisted and told me not to worry (this all really should have been a clue to me). So I said fine and agreed to go.
We got to the restaurant and the waiter came over. I went to order the cheapest thing on the menu but my date stopped me and said, ‘Ignore her, we’re both having the steak.’
‘But I don’t like steak,’ I protested.
He said, ‘She’s just saying that because she’s poor. We’ll have steak,’ and shooed the waiter away.
I was mortified, angry, and wanted to leave, but he was my ride. He tried to make conversation and just proved to me that he really was a jerk. Then he said he had to go to the bathroom and left. I was sitting there for a good 10 minutes before he texted me, ‘Hahaha I got the runs from drinking last night, don’t eat without me.’
That was the last straw. I called the waiter over, paid for my meal, and went to the Starbucks down the street to call my friend to pick me up.”
When Your First Date Is Part Of A National Broadcast…
“I went out with a girl for a first date. She took me to a Kumdo lesson, which is a Korean sword fighting sport. I thought that was cool, but it was an advanced class and I made somewhat of a fool of myself but all in good fun. It turned out that she was bringing me there because she wanted me to be part of a documentary about foreigners in Korea. So my looking like a fool was broadcast nationwide.
We then visited her grandmaster’s house for makgeolli and the film crew started interviewing me. They were basically focusing on my relationship with the girl I was going out with. They didn’t seem to understand it was only the first date. So there I was, trying to answer awkward questions without embarrassing both of us on national television.”