If you’ve ever been on an internet dating site (I’m nearly certain you have!) then you’re at least aware of the profiles that seem too good to be true. This one seemed just that. She was tall, perfectly-built, seemed to have intellectual capacity and a sense of humor…and she lived nearby. The night we finally went on a date, I’d been working for the past four days straight and could barely function.
Don’t go on dates when you’re too exhausted to be yourself.
We went to a local restaraunt neither of us had been to before and were soon engrossed in conversation. I’d like to stress the grossness, because it was horrific.
My online goddess had morphed into a mean little sister ranting about how much she hated her older sister and went into detailed description of exactly what her sister looked like naked.
It’s a bad sign if you’re on a date and the conversation trails toward the nudity of siblings. If it starts to, change the topic.
I didn’t have the energy to turn the conversation so I tried to watch her mouth move instead of listening to her words. Yes, I know that sounds terribly cold of me, but I was knee-deep in a family rant and all I wanted was to go to sleep in a dark, cool room without this person near me.
As the evening wore on, we discovered a list of commonalities that would have put fire into any other date. But not this. Not this date with a woman I had somehow inspired to delve the parts of her family that made her most angry.
Even if you, for some reason, take a phone call from a distressed relative, do not share it with your date. Get out of the conversation and move back to more pleasant things. Continued impressions last longest and a date filled with pleasant interactions will do the most to fuel a line-up of later meetings.
The coffee was wearing off. It was getting late and she had to get up early to go horse-riding so it wasn’t too hard, thankfully, to get the check and pay. She didn’t offer to pay. She’d ranted about not being allowed to pay for things and wanting to be independent, but she didn’t offer to pay.
I typically go by a whoever invites, pays rule. This was not the case with another date, but that’s another thing!
As we drove down one of the roads near her house, I failed to notice an upcoming turn. There were no streetlights to illuminate the line of trees that jumped into the headlights of my car as my tired brain worked to process everything at once. There was squealing of brakes and a mental gnashing of teeth as I stopped the car in a cloud of gravel dust and turned to make sure my date was okay. For once, her eyes were wide and her mouth was a narrow line.
Perhaps my excellent exhausted-driver skills had taught her a lesson in priorities and she felt a new freedom in her personal and family life. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed anything the entire night. Maybe she was simply one of those profiles you see on online dating sites that you know are just too good to be true.
I deleted my profile the next day.
I couldn’t help but feeling a void that might have been filled with healing sleep. Next time I’ll take a taxi and know when it’s time to call it quits.
Have you run into any online terrors? I’d love to read about them!
~Seth
Wow! I haven’t run into any online terrors, unless you count my wife’s father. (I met my wife online, and met her in real life only shortly before meeting her parents.)
Glad that it didn’t turn into a serious accident!
Seriously, my all-time “best bad date” story was with a reporter who was witty and interesting on paper and morphed into an acerbic, bitter 28 year old man in person. He broke all first date rules, complained about his ex, insulted her merits as a mother, told me how much he made (unprovoked, of course), kept turning around to watch the game, told me how weary he was of reporting (“All these stupid events I have to cover! I don’t care about kids with cancer!”) and tried to purposely provoke an arguement about re-introducing wolves to the northeast (Tired of reporting, he envisions himself as a Ken Burns style documentary film maker. Apparently, wolves are his thing.). Cherry on top? He wants a wolf tattoo. Priceless!
Those are only rules for your first dates?
Seems to me like it’d be nice to avoid all those topics…perhaps for many years. Sometimes you run into people who really just need to talk to somebody. To vent. Whenever I’m able to catch onto that as being the truth of a situation, I tend to try a second date and see how they are now that everything is off their chest. If nothing has changed, I excuse myself early.
It’s wrong to allow another person to waste your time when, in your estimation, you’re doing them a favor from the start.
The irony will turn golden when you read his obituary in a few years describing his death by wolf attack!
Ahaha! No doubt! The date itself has already paid me back ten fold by allowing me to entertain others with it’s retelling.