These dates are nightmare fuel!
All posts have been edited for clarity.
Overbearing Parents
“I met a girl online, everything seemed okay and the conversations were good so a few days later we decided to meet for coffee and go for dinner later.
I showed up at the cafe about forty-five minutes early and ordered a coffee, intending to read for a bit. While I was reading I noticed an older man staring and taking far too much interest in me before leaving. It was odd but he left so I didn’t worry too much about it. I continued to read until about ten minutes before I was supposed to meet up with the girl. I texted her and let her know I was already there.
Shortly after, the odd older guy came back in one entrance, and this set off my Spidey sense so I made my way to the other entrance when my date caught my arm to say hi. I told her we should step out for a minute because I was getting a bad vibe from this guy and she asked which one, so I described him.
It was her dad, doing advanced recon for her dates at twenty-four years old. I was a bit sketched out at that but thought maybe she had some bad dating history that possibly made sense. I met her dad and he said they wanted to make sure I was who I said I was and to enjoy the date. He left and she said being an only child had its downsides. It made enough sense so we got coffee and chatted for a bit then walked in a nearby park and decided where to go for dinner. We got to my car and she asked if I could take her home to grab a jacket before dinner. No big deal.
We arrive at her place, she lived with her parents, and I talked to her mom and dad while she grabbed a jacket. They seemed nice, but definitely overbearing parents. My date called me back to her room to meet her cat, and the entire time I was meeting her cat, the parents were hawking nearby obviously eavesdropping and it became obvious the date was dragging her feet for some reason. I said something about getting out to dinner before the rush and her parents who ‘happened’ to be walking by asked where we were going before they started a dialog on local restaurants, which pivoted to ordering delivery or carryout and how we should just do dinner together at their place.
I told them no offense, but I would greatly prefer to dine in someplace relaxed and get to know their daughter. They seemed really resistant to this. I was agitated at this point and asked if this was how her dates normally went. They said, ‘No, normally we don’t let her go out with men, but you passed the background check and your messages to her made you seem nice like you’d have dinner with us.’
I was flabbergasted, they ran a background check on me, read our exchanges online as well as the advanced recon, and expected me to have dinner with two additional people I hardly knew when I was expecting a date. I told them that will absolutely not work for me and that they are being extremely over the top with their expectations and precautions. I left.
Later I received a torrent of text messages and calls to the general sentiment of, ‘You were supposed to be better than this.’ I didn’t respond for a day before telling her and her parents it was not normal or healthy, I refused to be any part of it and would be blocking their number and filing restraining orders if I found them lurking around.”
“It’s Nice To Finally Meet You”
“I met this guy at a Halloween party and we ended up hitting it off. We decided to go on a date together and scheduled it for three days later. On the day of the date, he started being very vague about where he was taking me for dinner while talking over text. He picked me up at my place and told me he was taking me to a great restaurant. As we are driving around downtown, he said, ‘Oh I need to make a quick stop, do you mind?’
I said it’s fine, thinking he wanted to pick up chapstick or Advil or something. Ten minutes later, we pulled into a cancer institute parking garage. I told him that I could wait in the car, but he insisted I come in. I asked why we were there and he said, ‘I just promised someone I’d come see them today, it will only take five minutes.’
He kept telling me to come up with him, I started to feel bad and decided to just go in with him. We got to the hospital room and I said I would wait outside. I waited for about two minutes when the door opened and a woman introduced herself as his mother and said, ‘It’s nice to finally meet you, we know you’re really important to our son.’
I was so embarrassed and had no idea what to do, so I just went in as she kept ushering me inside. She pulled me into a long hug that I wasn’t really participating in. I quickly realized through the conversation with his mom that his dad was in the hospital bed and dying from brain cancer. My date’s mom kept saying things about how good it was to finally meet me, and how they wanted his father to meet me before he passed away. I was flabbergasted at what was happening and stayed silent about the truth of their son. I realize through the conversation that he had been pretending to have a serious boyfriend for the past nine months, and they all thought it was me. I was speechless but finally muttered, ‘I think I should step outside and let you have your family time.’
My date then immediately said we were leaving and gave his parents a hug and kiss. We walked down to the garage and he said, ‘I just have one more stop.’
At this point, I was fully convinced I was with a crazy person and just agreed to not upset him and put myself in danger, all the while wondering if I should just run away. I used to work with Schizophrenic patients and sometimes the best way to get out of a scary situation is to participate in their delusion. I got in the car and started to feel bad that he was going through all of this, and wondered how I was going to get out of this situation. Instead of going to a restaurant we pulled up to what I found out was his sister’s house and as I was sitting in the car, the same thing happened. His sister came running out to the car, introduced herself, and told me to come inside and visit. The same type of conversation ensued where everyone assumed I had been dating him for nine months, and how it was great to finally meet me. All the while, I was completely weirded out and started to question my own sanity. I finally got enough courage to speak up and say we needed to get to our dinner reservation.
He had originally picked me up at six o’clock and it was almost nine o’clock. We got in the car and I decided to ask why he was telling his family we had been dating for nine months when I had only known him for three days. He ignored me, turned up the radio, and started singing loudly along to the music. I got up the courage to turn down the music and say I wasn’t feeling well and asked him to take me home. He said okay, but then pulled into a McDonald’s drive-thru moments later and said, ‘Geez, you must be so hungry, we forgot to eat.’
As we were sitting in the car, I realized I needed to get out ASAP. I unlocked the door and ran. He quickly pulled out of line and almost hit me as he drove up to me. I quickly ducked into a coffee shop.
He parked, walked in, and said, ‘What’s wrong? Why are you acting crazy?’
I told him I requested a ride share, I didn’t actually request one yet, and that I was going home. He kept insisting I come with him and started pulling at my arm. There were a couple of customers inside and a few baristas. He started yelling loudly and I said I needed help. A wonderful barista intervened and told him he should leave or she would call the police. He started uncontrollably crying and saying I was stupid to do this to him after nine months of ‘bliss.’
I kept repeating I didn’t know him and he needed to leave. He finally got into his Land Rover and sped off.
I sat there for forty-five minutes drinking a cup of coffee and told the barista about what just happened. He kept calling and texting me over and over and I blocked his number. The same night, I put in a request to change my locks at my apartment, a three hundred dollar fee. Since he had been in my apartment for about ten minutes when he came to pick me up and my spare key sitting on the counter was nowhere to be found. Thankfully, I never saw or heard from him again, but that was the worst date I have ever been on.”
Ex-Girlfriend
I started a new job and met this super cute guy at work. He had a previous girlfriend, who he broke up with about six months before we met. She would sometimes randomly come into the shop, and he would always tell her she couldn’t be there, they had been broken up for months, and she needed to leave him alone. Anyway, he and I started talking and flirted for several months. After about three months, he finally asked me on a date.
We went out to dinner, and he was so sweet, cute, and adorably awkward. I really liked him. After dinner, he invited me back to his place to talk. I agreed, and we just chilled at his apartment talking and talking, no hanky panky. I was sitting on one sofa and he was sitting on the other. All of the sudden there was a pounding on his door. He calmly got up and locked it, and I heard a female yell, ‘Did you just lock the door on me?!’
It was the ex-girlfriend. I was sitting on the couch while he calmly asked her to please leave through the door. All of the sudden, the front window slid open, she stuck her head in and started screaming at him. At this point, he was still calmly asking her to leave, while I was still sitting on the sofa, clutching my mace. She then climbed in through the window and I saw this woman and I thought, ‘Oh no, I’m going on get my rear end kicked!’
Then she saw me and said, ‘Who on Earth is this?’
All the while, he was still calmly trying to get her to leave. She went ballistic and started tearing down pictures in the living room, trashing them. Then she moved to the bedroom and I could hear her screaming, throwing things, breaking stuff. All the while, my date was standing in the doorway of his room trying to get her to stop. He never raised his voice, and it seemed like this wasn’t the first time this happened.
He went and got his neighbor, and said, ‘I need help with her again,’ so the neighbor came over, but she didn’t do anything except stand next to me in the front doorway in shock. Meanwhile, we could hear things escalating with her in the bedroom. I feel like I should mention she lived with some pretty significant mental illness. He calmly walked into the bedroom, and after a minute or so he walked out of the bedroom with her in a bear hug, guiding her out of his house. Not shoving, not pushing, just as gently as possible moving her out of his home while she was kicking and screaming. She then went and laid down in the courtyard, rolling around in the grass, crying, and screaming, while the three of us just stood there for a minute.
My date then said he was going to call her cousin to come to get her, but before he could make the call, the cousin walked up. She brought her there and was waiting in the car the whole time. My date and his ex-girlfriend’s cousin went to her, got her calmed down, and convinced her to leave.
As she was walking by me, she said, ‘I’m sorry I called you a mean name, I don’t even know who you are,’ then left.
I sat with my date and we kind of processed what just happened, which is when his neighbor told me it was not the first time, and I encouraged him to call the police. I eventually left, and drove home about forty-five minutes later. He requested I let him know when I got home so I called him when I made it and asked if he called the police. He did, but not to report what happened, but so they would do a welfare check on her to make sure she was okay.
We’re celebrating our twenty-seventh anniversary this year. Twenty-seven years together and twenty years married. He is the kindest, sweetest guy, who has pushed old lady’s broken down cars off the road, helped people get unstuck in the snow, fixes friend’s cars for free, and would give you the shirt off his back. I love him!”
Ex-Husband
“It was the first date after my divorce. She was nothing like her profile picture and just a horrible person. But that was not the fun bit. She stalked me to my work van after the date and took down my phone number. On the way home, she asked if I would come back and see her. I said thanks but no thanks and have a nice life.
In the proceeding days, I received numerous texts and phone calls from her and had to have her number blocked by my phone provider. On New Years Day, at four o’clock in the morning, I receive a call from her ex-husband asking what was wrong with her. He told me she was a good person, etc. It turns out, they went out on New Year’s Eve, got hammered together, and decided to call me. I hung up only for them to keep calling me back. I ended up turning my phone off.
I woke around seven o’clock and turned my phone on. I had received over twenty voicemails that were getting more and more threatening. On the last one, I could hear them in a car saying they were coming over to get me.
Later, I spoke to my neighbor who got up early and had gone for a run. He told me there was a couple being arrested around the corner from our place absolutely hammered who had hit a light pole. The scary thing was I had my two daughters with me that night.”
Hockey Date
“In college, I hit it off with a girl and agreed to go on a first date to a school hockey game. When I met her there, I realized I had forgotten my wallet, so I had to borrow five dollars from her to pay for my ticket. Not a great start, and I could tell I had dug myself an early hole. Then, once we sat down, we realized neither of us liked hockey at all. I have no idea why we agreed to meet there, but we were both totally uninterested in the game. So we started talking about other things we were into, and I mentioned I liked board games. She said, ‘You sound like my grandma.’
At this point, it was clear neither of us were into it at all, but it was the first period of a hockey game that she had paid ten whole dollars for, and neither of us felt right leaving. We sat there and stonily watched the rest of the game. Afterward, we said, ‘Let’s hang out sometime,’ and then never messaged each other again.
Then, a few semesters later, my friend called me up all excited about a new girl he was dating. He wanted me to come to a get-together at his apartment and meet her. I walked in, and of course, he was sitting on the couch with his arm around the very same hockey-hating girl. I immediately grabbed my wallet, handed her five dollars, and said, ‘Thank goodness! I’ve been looking for you for two years!’
She laughed, and things went all right after that.”
Karaoke Date
“A guy asked if I wanted to do Korean food and Karaoke as our second date. I thought it was perfect because I love both. He picked the spots. He was forty-five minutes late, but I put our names in and he arrived at the restaurant around when our table was called, so no biggie. He complained he couldn’t eat much on the menu because he was vegetarian, and they didn’t serve adult beverages. I mean, that sucks, but he picked the place. He kept lamenting that another place close by has vegetarian options and we should have gone there.
When the food came, it became apparent he did not know how to use chopsticks but also was too proud to take a fork, so he visibly struggled to eat. The old couple next to us even tried to give him pointers because he was having such a hard time. I was feeling really awkward at this point, dinner felt like a disaster. I was looking forward to going to a karaoke bar and getting some drinks while laughing at hammered people singing. At least it would offer some distraction.
We started talking about what songs we like to do for karaoke and I said something like, ‘I like to pick songs that get the crowd excited and singing along.’
He goes, ‘Oh, you like doing karaoke in front of a crowd? I could never do that.’
Then it dawned on me, he was planning to take me to private room karaoke. Just me and this virtual stranger taking turns serenading each other from a vinyl couch. I was mortified. I would rather sing in front of ten thousand people than just one. I would like to say I noped out of that date then, but of course not. I followed him around to three different karaoke places as he tried to find one that would give up a private room for two people on a Saturday night. Hint, they won’t because that’s absurd.
Finally, he gave up and asked if I wanted a drink at a bar. I should have said no, but I had some misguided faith it might get better. He told me about a cool bar he knew nearby. We walked over and it turned out to be the same place we went on our first date. I drank one drink and then told him I had to walk my dog and left.
A few days later he texted to tell me he was sorry, but also that he wanted to be clear that he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend, just someone to take to dinner and sleep with. I was like, ‘Uh, okay no thanks,’ and that was the end. I mean, cool, but say that upfront, and also you’re a terrible dinner date.”
Hot Tub Time
“I met a guy at a concert who asked me out to dinner the next weekend. He said we could go to a restaurant halfway between his place and mine. He gave me the address which I printed out on Mapquest because this was before GPS was normal on phones or in cars. I got there and it was an apartment building.
I called him to say I think he gave me the wrong address and he said, ‘Nope! You’re driving.’
He took me to an Applebee’s because they had the cheapest happy hour, according to him. We had one drink and he ate potato wedges by himself. When I drove him back, he asked me where my overnight bag was. I said I wasn’t staying the night and thanked him for the beverage.
He took my keys out of my ignition and told me to go upstairs. I told him if he didn’t give me my keys back, I would start screaming and call the cops. He threw them in the front seat as he got out and told me I was missing out on hot tub time.
I thankfully never saw him again.”
New Year’s Eve Party
“I went to a New Year’s Eve party with a guy I had been chatting with for months. When we get there his friends asked him where his girlfriend was, and they were not referring to me. I went out for a smoke at that point and he went outside, said she was boring and he was going to break up with her. I didn’t hang out with him for the rest of the night.
I guess I should thank him because I hooked up with the party host instead and we’ve been together for seven years.”
Blind Date
“I got set up on a blind date once between mutual friends. She showed up to the restaurant already a little tipsy, ordered multiple appetizers, and only took like one or two bites from each one. Then she proceeds to order three or four more drinks and was visibly hammered at this point. She got up, said she was going to the bathroom, and staggered off.
About twenty minutes went by so I tried to call her several times but no answer. Finally, I decided to pay the check and just leave.
About two hours later, I was sitting at home and I got a call from an unknown number. It was the police department. She was picked up on her way home after she ditched me and gave the cops my number to see if I could go bail her out.”
Summer Job
“I was twenty-one and met a guy at my Summer job who was twenty. He was a super sweet guy and we got along great when we worked the same shifts together. Eventually, he asked me out on a date Saturday night, and I said sure. He said we would go out to dinner, hang out around town, etc. I was really excited because he seemed like a great guy and I never went on many dates.
I pulled up to his house and he came out with like three other guys. They all jumped in my car and I was like, ‘Oh, hello?’
They said they wanted to have a party that night and started directing me around to all the local stores so I could buy drinks for them. I was a shy, self-conscious girl with low self-esteem and I was always a people pleaser who didn’t stand up for myself, so I obliged. I drove these little pricks around town, picking up drinks for them while they sat in the car, feeling like a complete and utter idiot the whole time.
When we got back to my ‘date’s’ house, I parked and started taking off my seatbelt. They started laughing at me and said, ‘Who said you were invited?’
I was totally non-confrontational so I just said, ‘Okay, see you later.’
They hopped out of my car, took the drinks with them, and I drove home, totally burning in embarrassment.
I had a shift with the guy a few days later and he never even acknowledged it. Neither did I but our vibe obviously changed dramatically. I never saw him again after that Summer.”