This:
combined with this:
Is actually a pretty big red flag in and of itself. The fact that she’s so offended at his questions, yet won’t actually stand by what she said, is something I wouldn’t want to deal with.
She’s either a sociopath who will eventually graduate to killing husbands or she’s too stupid to live.
Either way, I’d run and I’d run far.
[Navin R. Johnson]
She hates hams!
[/Navin R. Johnson]
Would you want to date someone you couldn’t trust to watch your hamster?
Well, now that he asked her point blank she says she is “incapable” of hurting a hamster. And she’s turning the tables on him with anger and outrage at him believing she’d do it. I haven’t seen the actual conversations with her, though he has copied some lines from it into IM. She did change her story from, “I was 21 when I did this, haha,” to “I can’t remember if I really did it or if it’s just a story I tell to shock people,” to “I’m incapable of doing something like that and you’re a big meanie for believing that of me.” (I’m paraphrasing, not quoting directly).
And of course my friend now feels quite conflicted and confused. I guess he really liked her before this and invested a bunch of time conversing with her.
What do you guys think if she was just telling him a shocking/fun but fictional story? Or do you think she’d backpedaling in reaction to his horrified response?
Definite backpedaling. She sees the writing on the wall (he’s freaked and the end is nigh), so she’s going to take him down before he can break it off with her.
Time is cheap, and there are too many fish in the sea to waste time on this one. Either way, she’s not worth any more of his.
Another vote with the beat feet crowd.
Her response is pretty much the definition of the best defense being a good offense. I once confronted a gf about cheating (she was) and her response was to immediately be outraged and offended that I would even suspect her.
Run.
I don’t know how much time I could spend with someone who uses phrases like
“I can’t remember if I really did it or if it’s just a story I tell to shock people,”.
It’s an excuse to hide something they did plain and simple and a cop-out answer.
She knows damn well if she did it or not.
“Did you cheat on me with my best friend Bob while I was out of town?”
“I can’t really remember if I did or not.”
Honestly your friend seems like the one with a problem to me. She made a joke and - granted, it wasn’t really funny - he latched on to it and now he’s projecting anger and outrage onto her IM conversations? She could be sitting at the keyboard giggling for all he knows.
I have absolutely no problem with meeting people online but I don’t get the long keyboard courtships at all. Make the connection online and take the relationship to meatspace as soon as possible. Misunderstandings like this are way too easy when your “girlfriend” is just text on a screen.
Yeah, that sounds like back pedaling to me, too. The hell? How can you not know if you did something or not.
This is all written communication, isn’t it?
I can see where she was making a joke and it was misunderstood. (as a possibility)
Let’s say that she never did it, and she’s just telling a story.
Would you hang out with someone who told stories like that?
Of course she could be giggling, but she said she was angry at him for believing it of her, and if he didn’t trust her, then he was right, they shouldn’t talk anymore. That does sound like anger and outrage to me. So maybe it was just a joke, though at first it really wasn’t clear, and then when she was asked, she said she couldn’t remember if it really happened or not. 
I totally agree. When I was doing the online dating thing, I usually met the person right away, and didn’t even consider people who weren’t local. However, I think in this case, the woman is several hours drive away, so it would have to be planned for in advance. It’s a day trip at least.
Still a whack-a-loon. Life’s too short to date those kinds of crazies.
And this is the reason I no longer date.
There are plenty of pleasant, personable, funny people who are also complete and utter sociopaths. Even if the story is not true, this still leaves the conclusion that the woman in question:[list=a][li]thinks that it is a funny and appropriate anecdote and doesn’t understand why anyone would take offense, []is “testing” the o.p.'s friend to see what kind of reaction she’ll get by throwing this out, or []has an inability to distinguish between things she’s done, things she hasn’t done yet but intends to do, things that she thinks about during late-night bouts of insomnia but would never actually do, and the more general and larger category of things that are entirely appropriate to talk about and/or discuss with new acquaintances.[/list][/li]
Her subsequent unapologetic and ultimately accusatory response, regardless of the veracity of the initial story, indicates enough about her personality–that she’s either severely dissociated or into manufactured drama–that I’d either run away or throw the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, regardless of how warm and fuzzy she otherwise appears. Single up all lines and sail to another port of call; this harbor is just too stormy.
Stranger
I found out, after giving my zebra finches (that I’d had since I was young, and loved) to my boyfriend’s family when I couldn’t kept them at my house anymore, that his sister (in high school or maybe even college at the time) had decided to vacuum the cage one day with the hose, with the birds still inside, for shits and giggles. Predictably, she accidentally (supposedly) vacuumed up one of them and killed it. I found this out months after the fact, and it was told me in a cheeky, anecdotal sort of “like when I killed one of the finches! oops, we weren’t gonna tell you, ha ha” kind of way. The family tittered about it. That was years ago, and in my heart I still haven’t forgiven her.
She’s a good person in other respects, and comes from the sort of background where when your pet dies they tell you, it’s not like it was your baby (I know because that’s just what her mom told me when my rattie died a month ago). It’s just not an issue for some people, especially with the “lower” pets, and common from families that have suffered hardships throughout their histories. These people are everywhere; they probably include a lot of Dopers. I can coexist peacefully with these people, but I’d never date one if I could help it (my boyfriend doesn’t share their views, thankfully).
Well…that certainly sweetens the deal.