Everyone has experienced the perfection of foresight that happens after the inevitable breakup of a relationship doomed from the start. I remember a first date, while sitting watching “Mystery Men” in the theater, my date mentioned she was cold, so I put my arm around her. After having my arm around her for a while, she said “Am I hurting you?”… (she was a -larger- young lady, but very cute, and she certainly was not hurting me at all, all four times she asked)
Looking back, I was an idiot for dating her after that point, and the self-esteem issues were a pain in the ass, but I guess that’s how you learn. Anyone else with a first-date horror story that didn’t dissuade you from a relationship?
I went on a date with a not-quite-divorced man with whom I worked and had heard griping about his ex–that should have dissuaded me from even the first date, but I was young and stupid. We went to dinner and then went to a movie…“Jurassic Park.” It was in a way a good first-date movie because I spent a good bit of it hanging on to his arm (hey, it was scary!). But what really should have clued me in that more dates might not be a good idea was the excessive glee he took in the demise of the lawyer–you know, his wife’s lawyer taking him for everything, blah blah blah.
That movie kind of set the tone for the whole rest of the relationship.
He not only brought his room-mate, but his ex-girlfriend (who was also my room-mate) and a guy named Ted who had underwear stuck to his baseball cap. Somehow I should have known then I would always come fourth…pout, I didn’t even get to sit in the front seat!
I showed up at the theater first but didn’t get tickets because (and I don’t recall why now) there was some reason I thought he might not make it. In fact I think I was just hoping he wouldn’t… anyway, he showed, tickets were still readily available, but when I told him I hadn’t gotten them yet, he “playfully” almost shoved me off the curb.
I was more startled than anything else, and I should stress that the guy never did degenerate to hitting me. But that complete disregard for what might or might not be appropriate (and when is shoving somebody off a curb appropriate?!) set the tone for the few months we dated. Seems much more obvious in retrospect that it did at the time
(Whoo! This is #1000! Not an attempt at a hijack, I just felt the need to point it out ;))
Well, my first date signal didn’t happen technically on the date, but I think it still counts.
Guy at work asks me out. Date was fine…we went to dinner and then to see The Princess Bride at the theater. (This wasn’t that long ago…local theater shows different old movies every week. Not that PB is that old…you know what I mean…) We had fun, conversation flowed, etc. Date ended with one small kiss. No heavy make-out session or anything.
Next day at work, I get a dozen yellow roses, a poem, and a copy of the Princess Bride video. (Which, of course, I already owned.)
My first instinct was to run, run, run away as fast as possible. But I didn’t…thinking he was just trying to be romantic and had gone a bit overboard. Turns out I should have run. The guy was the most emotionally-manipulative, mentally abusive person I have ever met, and this was just his first step into controlling me emotionally.
Thankfully, I saw my way clear a few months later. But jeez, if I had only followed my first instincts I would have saved myself a lot of stress and heartache.
Ohh Lord. I don’t have many excuses for this one, except that I was young and inexperienced. In roughly increasing order of alarmingness:
He asked me out via e-mail. (I’ve since learned that this is a very bad sign indeed, although I’m still not sure exactly why.)
The next day he sent me another e-mail – the sexist and not particularly funny “Beer Contains Estrogen” joke.
We went to an English restaurant. 'Nuff said.
For the first hour, the conversation consisted of him reciting Monty Python scripts in a poor attempt at a British accent.
Then he told me about his two previous relationships, both of which were with women at least twenty years his senior, before he reached the legal age of consent. One was a secretary at his prep school, the other an Episcopal priest. Not surprisingly, both of them found their career prospects considerably impaired.
On our second date – and really, there shouldn’t have BEEN a second date – he asked me, “Would it be too early to say I love you?” (Hell, yes.) A couple of weeks later, and just before I lost my virginity to him, he proposed marriage. I summoned what common sense I had left and said no. He browbeat me, laid on a heavy guilt trip (“Everybody I’ve ever known has let me down, and I need to know you won’t let me down”), and then, when I still wouldn’t give in, said “It’s all right, I was just testing you to see what you’d say” :eek:
This manipulative train wreck of a relationship went on for another two months, without a single redeeming feature except that I learned what a $200-a-bottle wine tastes like. (Good, but not that good.)
I think this was actually a second date, but still…
I was at a movie with the first guy I dated after high school when he leaned over and whispered to me, “How does [a date about 5 years in the future] sound to you?” I was startled and asked, “For what?”
He said, “For our wedding.”
It’s a sign of how very low my self-esteem was at the time that not only did I not scream and run, but I dated him for six months before he broke up with me.
I don’t think it was the first time we went out, but it was very early on. A woman who sucked up a year and half or so of my life, in relating some (in retrospect, ghastly) detail of her earlier transition from Love of Her Life #1 to Love of Her Life #2 (I was #3) commented, “I never break up with guys; I just make life so unbearable that they have to break up with me.” I, being in the throes of new lust, love, whatever, didn’t pay it much mind at the time (Hey! I was winning then.).
Well in reverse, I have a story that I’m going to tell just so I can perform some self-flagellating.
I just broke up with my girlfriend of a more than a year, and I’m sitting here thinking, “Why didn’t I just admit to myself early on that I don’t think she’s very hot, instead of avoiding the issue until I had to decide whether or not to get married?” I’ve been a real ass. PURE and SIMPLE.
I asked a Russian girl out once, she said ‘nine’ So I waited around at nine & she didn’t show. Turns out that ‘no’ in Russian sounds like ‘nine’ to us. Well, it could happen.
Uh, handy, I know that accents don’t exactly make an impression on you but if you tell this story again make her a German girl. “Nein” is German for “no”… in Russian it sounds like “Nyet.”
Not a first-date story, but a before-the-first-date story:
When I was in 9th grade, this guy asked for my phone number. I said okay, but got distracted while I was getting the pen and paper. We were in the cafeteria, at a table with other people. Someone asked me something, and I got to talking. Then all of a sudden I hear this really nasty voice saying, “So what about your phone number? Don’t’cha wanna give it to me or something?”
Oh my gosh, I thought. I hurt his feelings. How inconsiderate of me. “Oh, sorry, here it is.” After a month of hell, I berated myself for not getting out of it right then.
Well, I DID notice this on the first date, but I was too polite to say much about it…
A few weeks ago, I went out with a guy. I thought he was nice enough, he was smart…
Well, he starts asking me questions as if he’s going through a checklist…some of them were rather…stupid questions. “Have you ever had problems with depression? Do you take antidepressants? Have you slept with another woman? Do you drink? Do you do hard drugs?” I answered him honestly…he was even intrigued by the fact that I’m bisexual, but then told me since I’m a virgin, I’m not any kind of sexual…I’m just an open-minded girl.
Okay, whatever, I think I know what I prefer, but have it your way. I didn’t leave; I should have left.
He then asks me, “How do you feel about felonies?” I said, wide eyed, “Um…like what?”
He said, “Well, once I was drunk on spring break in Florida and I was naked and got arrested for indecent exposure.”
I said, “Well, everyone makes mistakes, right?”
He cut me off. “Then there was that grand theft charge–”
I nearly choked. “WHAT?!”
“Grand theft,” he said. “I lifted several thousand dollars’ worth of equipment off my old high school when I was 18. I don’t feel bad about it–they had it coming.”
“O-okay,” I managed to stammer. I was polite until he took me home. Then I hightailed it into the dorm room.
He called two days later: “I guess you’re not interested anymore, are you?” ::rolleyes::
