Dating -- Things people have done to make you feel small

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In this thread, the lovely SusanStoHelit asks for advice on dating geeks, nerds, mooks, and other social undesirables. I think this is fantastic. It gives those us without a hope, well, a hope at someday dating an attractive young lady (or young man, as the case and gender preferences may be.)

But she asks this question:

In a word, yes. And I’m going to take a SWAG here and guess that I’m not the only one.

So, here’s your chance to tell your story of romantic abuse to the world, or at least the intellectually superior and supernormally attractive part of it that reads the Straight Dope Message Boards. Don’t make it a rant–you should try to put it behind you, old chap–but feel free to tell it with the kind of forlorn sadness that wins Booker prizes and gets featured on Oprah!

Me? I’m still working up the courage to tell a story. Maybe later. After a couple of Black & Tans and three fingers of Black Bush.

Stranger

2

When I was young and sensitive, I twice had the experience of being asked out on dates that turned out to be shams in which the guys who asked me were responding to dares from their fraternity brothers. There was no intent to actually take me to the dance or to the concert that was promised. The whole point was for the guy to prove that he was brave enough to pretend to woo a nerdy, awkward young woman. Then the guy and all his cool friends would get together and laugh about it.

On one of these occasions, I had been asked to a school dance. I bought a new dress, and had satin pumps dyed to match the dress. I sat in the waiting room of my dorm for three hours waiting for my date to pick me up. Finally another girl from the dorm took pity on me and let me know me that her fraternity boyfriend had told her about the “joke.”

Many years later, I saw a movie called “Dogfight” that brought back some memories.

3

No story here. I just wanted to say that I don’t know what a “Black Bush” is, but three fingers of it sounds vaguely obscene.

Carry on!

4

I can already tell I’m going to regret asking about this thread. I’ll have to go read some other stuff on this board to restore my faith in humanity again.

5

From my Historiae Calamitatum, the Annals of Romantic Misfortune, comes this delightful memory from high school.

I never exactly saw myself as the kind of person a woman would be attracted to. For the most part, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wasn’t painfully shy; instead I was brooding, unfriendly, and usually quite mean. I always assumed that anyone who showed the slightest bit of interest in me was just putting me on.

I was on the debate team. Though I was pretty accomplished, debate did not exactly improve my personality. Nevertheless I met this girl from upstate. She was remarkably attractive in a blonde, very vaguely ditzy and extremely voluptuous sort of way. She wasn’t stupid, but she rather lacked the intellectually violent instincts that make people good debaters. Whenever I made it to the elimination rounds, she would always watch. She would watch me play chess with my friends, and would always come to watch when we managed to get pickup frisbee games started. She followed me around like a puppy dog. Of course, I returned her affection with teasing, as is my custom still, and she returned my contempt with flattery.

Our schools were only an hour or two apart, so we often ended up at the same tournaments. This went on for months. She started to solicit my advice on all sorts of things, ranging from schoolwork to family and finally, of course, to romance. She told me she had a terrible crush on this guy with green eyes, brown hair, and who was always mean to her. She asked me what she should do about it.

You’d never guess what color my eyes are.

To make a long story short, I evaded her question, and a few days later, decided to make a stab at it. She had been trying to find out whether I had returned her feelings for at least a month or two, and being me, I told her numerous times to bugger off, for I was above such things like romance. I was the Nietzschean Lonely Man, happy on my pinnacle.

When the money talks, the bullshit walks. I wrote her a letter a few days later. We corresponded fairly frequently by letter, for reasons that I have forgotten. I told her that despite everything, I really did like her and wanted to let her deeper into my life than my usual arm’s length.

I got her reply a few days later. It was very chatty, and in no way addressed anything I had written. Instead, she had included a picture of her meathead boyfriend who was…

wait for it…

…about to be released from prison. She just couldn’t wait to spend as much time with him as she could.

Boyfriend? Prison?

Right.

We didn’t hang out much at tournaments after that.

Soon after, I did feel sorry for her. She had a very troubled life, and I seemed to be a comfort to her. I was just sad to see it end so strangely and, well, unpleasantly.

I’m better now. :slight_smile:

6

Black Bush is a triple distilled single malt/single grain blended Irish whisky. My new pleasure, though Jameson is still quite acceptible.

It may sound obscene, but it’s actually pretty benign…unless you overindulge. Then, I’ve heard it’s a real Dirty Mother, but in my opinion anyone who orders mixed brandy drinks deserves their fate.

It does soften the edge of a hard, rainy, lonely evening, though it’s no substitude for a genuine Irish girl :frowning:

Stranger

7

Getting shot down with “no you don’t, not really” after psyching myself up to, and eventually uttering the Three Little Words is about the biggest kick in the nuts I ever got in my very limited experience of dating (and actually being HOH, in this case). Down to earth with a very hard bump.

I’d have cut my arms off for that girl if she’d asked me (well, one of them - how do you hold the knife for the second one?). The relationship lasted about 18 hours (her choice) after that little dialogue. Of course I look back on it differently now.

8

On my BIRTHDAY she wouldn’t go to dinner with me. She said she had to work on her stupid portfolio. When I brought her a piece of cake while she was working, she told me the portfolio wasn’t even due the next day, it was just a little review. I spent the rest of the night working on my drawing and sulking over that.

But a year of whining about that incident made my friends take pity on me and make my birthday this year much better.

9

That leaves me close to wordless. I don’t understand the type of personality that can do that.

10

This comes more under the category of questions better left unasked, but one of my exboyfriends only asked me out because I was the only girl whose name he knew. Another once mentioned how he was more attracted to this other girl (younger, prettier) in our social group, but he thought he had a better chance of scoring with me. Unlike pinkfreud’s tormenters, at least I can console myself with the idea they weren’t being hurtful on purpose, just tactless.

11

Nice, nice…be nice.

Stranger

12

I had a guy, after 2 weeks of studying together, taking long walks, and never asking me out, tell me he was engaged to a woman twice his age back in Japan.

I never learned if he was telling the truth or not. But it stung.

And while I’m here, I’ll confess my failing, too. At…17, I hurt a very nice guy. He had been exceedingly kind and sweet to me. There was no chance, he was much older and I didn’t have enough freedom away from my parents to spend any time with him, but he would have been worth it, I think. Anyway I was good friends with him until I fell in with this girl. She made fun of him, and…I went along with her.

I can still see the hurt look on his face. I’ll never do it again. Dave of Poughkeepsie with the farm and the beat-up car, if you ever read this, I’m sorry. I was too naive to know better.

13

I’m confused. I meant I don’t understand the guys that asked her out.

14

Oh, TMY… I know what you meant, and you know what you meant, but you totally could have phrased that much, much better.

15

I think ther’s something wrong with your link; all I got was a picture of a mermaid; obviously not real.

16

OK, can I ask someone to explain this to me in small words (with diagrams), please? I have no idea what I said that was wrong.

17

Yeah, wake me up when it starts to make sense; it whooshed right by me too.

18

I don’t see what was wrong with what you said either, This Year’s Model. You obviously meant you didn’t understand how those guys could be so cruel as to ask someone else out and then stand them up as a joke. I don’t see how it could be interpreted any other way.

19

When I was in grade school I would go the dances and no guys ever asked me to dance. And no, it wasn’t because they were too shy too either. :frowning:

The other ‘outcast’ of the school locked herself in a stall and cried but I just shrugged and watched X-files on the tv in the next room. It hurt, but I was used to rejection at that point.

20

When I was a Catholic schoolgirl, two girls I knew both had a crush on the same guy, so whenever we were together, he was the topic of conversation fairly often, and then one day one of them mentioned to me that they thought he had a crush on geeky old me.

I should have known better, but I believed her because, hey, maybe he really was able to appreciate that being different from everybody else in school didn’t necessarily mean I had some social disease, in a very John Hughes sort of way. As happens when you find out someone likes you, I developed a crush on this guy. I found tomes of meaning in every look he gave me, every word we exchanged.

When I finally asked him out, he said, “You might as well join a nunnery now, because no man in his right mind is ever going to want you.”

So, that hurt. Okay, a lot. But the story isn’t over. Apparently, the girls who originally liked him had thought it would be funny to manipulate me into noticing him. As was explained to me later, they never imagined I’d actually try and date someone so obviously out of my league. And the guy’s best friend, upon hearing about my social gaffe, started mockingly asking me out and swearing his undying devotion loudly at every opportunity. He asked me to every school event, proposed in the lunchroom, and challenged the original guy to a duel, while most of the class roared and I tried to sink through the floor.

Shortly afterwards, the school list came out – I’d been voted biggest geek in my class. Pinkfreud, I feel your pain.