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58 Cringe-Worthy And Scary First Date Stories That Prove Some People Should Just Stay Single Forever
You might need to smooch a lot of frogs before you find the love of your life. Dating is the usual process many of us go through to find "the one," but it's not smooth sailing for everyone. Having a successful first date can be particularly hard. 62% of Americans go on between one and 15 first dates in their lives, and only 11% have never been on a date ever.
Love at first sight doesn't work for everyone, so, there's a first date etiquette that people expect. That might include a neutral, public environment, some talk about each other's backgrounds and lives, and at least a little bit of chemistry. However, first dates go bad more often than not, at least based on the stories that people shared when someone online asked: "What was your 'I need to leave right now' moment on a first date?"
From people who wouldn't take "no" for an answer and lied about having children to those who spent the entire date talking about exes and asking to be entertained, let's hope these folks change before terrorizing others during first dates.
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#1
He wouldn't take no for an answer during a movie theater date. Just hands everywhere. I excused myself to go to the bathroom and walked straight out the front door.
iuyts:
This happened to me too. I'm sorry.
The next day, he had the audacity to text me to say that he felt guilty for how we'd "fooled around" and I kid you not suggested that I "wear something different" next time.
I was sixteen or so, he was a friend of a friend.
I was like there's not going to be a next time. And then I told a bunch of people at his church.
RELATED:
#2
I arrived at his business to go for coffee down the street. The place was packed full of things, à la hoarder style and he invited me to the basement to hang out. Against my better judgment, I didn’t run but just said let’s go and grab that coffee.
Went to the coffee shop. As soon as I sat down, he said “You would look really good in a dog collar.”
I’m out.
KnowledgeSeveral9502:
Now you know what would have happened in that basement. Glad you lived to see 2026.
#3
We were talking and then he put his hand around my neck, and gave a slight squeeze. I instinctively reached my hand out to his neck, and squeezed harder. What’s funny was he had the audacity to get freaked out.
We were also out in public, broad daylight when he did this.
#4
It was an amazing date until he mentioned I never put my drink down, or let him refill it.
Jay Scales 41 minutes ago
He would never even have noticed those things unless he had intentions...
#5
Met a guy for coffee on a Saturday morning. At the time one of the 50 shades movies came out, he was saying that all girls were obsessed with it. Later, I was telling him that I was taking MMA classes and hoped that if it came down to it I’d be able to defend myself. He said, “Well I’ll beat you up for free anytime.” Kinda laughed it off, okay, bad joke right?
Well he kept bringing it up, and then says VERBATIM (as we’re walking downtown with our coffees): “One day you’ll just be walking down the street, I’ll grab you by your ponytail, next thing you know you’ll end up in the hospital getting facial reconstruction surgery…then you’ll fall in love with me because no one else will want you.”
Made my excuses and left a few minutes later. He kept msging me after that asking if I was playing hard to get. 😅.
Jay Scales 39 minutes ago
It's frightening what is going on in the heads of apparently normal people...
#6
Well, I should have left when he text 15 min into the date to say he would be an hour late, but I had already ordered a slice of pizza and didn’t have much else to do, so I waited.
When he finally did show up, he came to my table and said “we have to leave right now, I’m double parked.”
I didn’t want to get in a car with a complete stranger, let alone someone who can’t even say hi. I said “I want to have a drink first and talk.”
He said, “what about that joint you said we’d smoke? Let’s do that in my car.”
He seemed really insistent on getting me in his car, so I said, “I have to pee and close out my tab, why don’t you find a better parking spot while I do that.”
He left to do that, and I found a different exit. Unmatched him on my walk home. .
#7
He was a pharmacist. Prior to the date, we discussed via text how I was allergic to both cats and NSAID medicine. Towards the end of our first date, he pulls out a sandwich bag with pills in it and says these would help with my allergies. I was like, oh, uh, thank you… and I went to put them into my purse, but he insisted I try the pills there and now to see if I had a reaction to them.
MingleLinx:
Reminds me when a guy said how he invited his date to come see his studio that was in the middle of the woods and didn’t realize why she said no until later
#8
He was bragging about having dated girls of all kinds of ethnicities, but never before someone of my ethnicity. It made me feel like he just wanted to add me to the list.
Nightmare_Gerbil:
Like women are Pokémon and he’s “gotta catch em all.” Bleah.
#9
I made a little joke while we were bantering, he raised his hand and said ‘do you want the front or back side?’
I grabbed my bag, stood up, said ‘see ya’ and walked away.
I had a relationship that started with a slap and ended with me in hospital with broken bones. It will never, ever get to the point of a slap again. Even in jest.
#10
Told me a "funny story" about a couple leaving his restaurant job, drunk, getting into a car with a child in the backseat. Laughed when he said they probably crashed on the way home. I asked if he had any empathy and he said "I don't know the meaning of that word!" as though he was proud of himself. I walked out.
#11
At first he seemed to be a nice guy, maybe a bit uptight (he loved stressing how well-read he was). We were taking a walk through the city and he was panicking about the pigeons. He was literally running away. Later we went to a restaurant, and he had to sit facing the room in case something bad happened. He asked me to eat faster, otherwise he would get food envy (in German we say "Futterneid"), and then he spent the rest of the date talking about his "crazy" ex, whom he still works with and still gets sentimental about every time he sees her.
#12
He told me he doesn't have kids and doesn't want kids when we matched online. In the middle of the date, he told me he has five kids. 🤦🏻♀️.
Geth:
I think the bigger lie is about not having kids. People can change their mind later--it's normal. But lying about how many kids you currently have is just outright dishonesty.
#13
When they started talking about their ex for like 90 percent of the date and it wasn’t even in a reflective way, more like I was supposed to help them process it.
I just sat there thinking yeah, I’m done here.
#14
He seemed nice on text but when he picked me up he just had a very weird vibe going on, wouldn’t speak and basically just said yes or no. We got food and ate in his car then the first real thing he said was “back to mine?” With a creepy grin. I said no and got out and walked home as fast as I could.
#15
He asked if I liked history because I studied political sciences and sociology. I said yes. He then asked what I think about the WW2 era in that regard and I said that from the viewpoint of my two fields, it's very interesting to analyze.
He then proceeded to boast about his knowledge of all WW2 tanks for like 1.5 hours. He refused to change topic, switched back to tanks and (I think) firearms everytime.
The moment I wanted to leave was when he proudly proclaimed that he knew the tactical mistakes Germans made and that he could have won the war.
Jesus christ.
#16
He seemed nice and funny and smart. We went to a comedy show, and held the door open for me. I walked through and he slapped my behind so hard, I stumbled. Like it legitimately hurt.
He starts laughing and I just walked right back out of the doors. Shortest date I ever went on.
#17
I told me ‘I guess you are white enough’ when I told him where I was from. I am, by every single metric, 100% white.
He also:
- ordered for me (a salad because ‘women should watch what they eat’)
- ordered the most expensive bottle of wine in the restaurant and then put his hand over my glass after I’d had one glass because he was ‘sure I’d had enough’.
-asked me if I was vaccinated because he didn’t want his kids to ‘get autism’
I had to have a waiter help me leave through a back door and then block him.
#19
I (M) said to her (F) when she arrived at the bar “can I get you a drink?” She replied “erm… no, it’s 2018, I’m perfectly capable of getting my own drink thank you”. Ok… was just being polite but whatever. Then when we sat down she said “ok… you have precisely 5 minutes to entertain me and we’ll see where we go from there. GO!” I just left.
#20
He wouldnt stfu about himself and how amazing he was.
Another one was the guy I met onlne who immediately behaved like I was his girlfriend on the first date.
He even told his family I was the one.
No buddy I am not.
#21
I mentioned my childhood pet and he went "oh yes I love cats! My roommate has a cat named Miso, but he's not nearly as cute as Kennie."
I never told him it was a cat. I also never told him his name was Kennie. He had stalked my old social media accounts from over ten years back to find all my information. I got tf out of there and blocked him on everything.
EDIT: to everyone saying that it's normal to check socials, yeah it is. I checked his too, to scope him out before the date. The weird/creepy part is that
1. my previous account only had my first name. I didn't even post my face. I have 2 posts of kennie and they're from like 2012.
2. you can really only find that account through scrolling through my follower list on ig and finding it through my handful of friends who still follow that old account, because the username doesn't really connect back to my current accounts in any way.
like yeah checking out someone's socials is pretty normal but digging so so deep into my life is so scary...
#22
This was when I was in my early 20s. I just got out of a long term relationship, so online dating was new to me. The guy picked me up at my place, and due to where we were, there weren't too many places to go, and we couldn't agree on where to go. I suggested a bar nearby, he suggest going back to his place 45 minutes away. His excuse was because he needed to check in on his dog. I told him I wasn't comfortable going back to his place on a first date. Then he told me to get out of his car. We were in the middle of nowhere at this point, and it was dark, so I refused. I demanded to be driven back to my place since we weren't going to go on a date anymore and I wasn't going back to his place. Thankfully he did take me home and I got out, he left. He then text me that he thought I would be more fun.
#23
5 mins in "My dog bites people, and you need to be okay with that or we have no future together."
Excused myself, paid for my glass of wine, and walked out.
#24
He told me that he was defrauding every bank in the country and would soon be "richer than Bill Gates".
#25
Went to a local townie bar and ended up talking to this girl I’d never seen before. She was cute, we had a surprisingly good conversation going, and by the end of the night she invited me to an afterhours spot. We get there, and at one point she casually takes out her hearing aids, removes the batteries, and tells me she hadn’t actually been able to hear anything all night including me. Apparently she was just nodding and smiling the whole time. Honestly, that part was actually kind of funny.
A couple days later she invited me to her apartment, but with one strange condition: I had to keep my eyes closed while she walked me from the front door to the bedroom. Against my better judgment, I went along with it. We hung out in what seemed like a totally normal bedroom, and when I left, she covered my eyes again so I couldn’t see anything between the bedroom and the front door.
A few days after that, she asked if I could help clean her apartment because the building was getting sprayed for bugs and everything had to be cleared out ASAP. That’s when the mystery got solved. She was a full-on hoarder. By the time I got there, most of the giant stacks of whatever she’d been hoarding were gone, but the apartment was still filthy.
I showed up with cleaning supplies and opened a pack of paper towels. She immediately goes, ‘Oh no.’ Apparently she was passionately against paper towels, environmental reasons or something equally intense, I forget. So I asked what she normally used instead. She says, completely seriously, ‘Regular towels.’ Then admits she didn’t actually own any towels.
That was the moment instincts finally kicked in. I told her I was going out to get more supplies… and I never returned.”.
#26
We had met at a restaurant for a lunch date. We’d been sat down for roughly five minutes, ordered drinks but not food when a family walked in including a man wearing a Kippah. She immediately said something so startlingly anti-Semitic that I’m not going to put it into text before looking to me and expecting my endorsement.
I put sufficient money down to cover the drink I’d just ordered and left. Genuinely came out of clear blue sky and (mercifully) I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since.
#27
When she started going on about how I should join this weird spiritual group led by a guy who may or may not have been a real doctor. Something about healing physical injuries through the power of friendship or whatever (I zoned out halfway through her pitch). I realized pretty quickly it wasn’t a date. It was a recruiting dinner. She even tried to get me to buy an online course about opening my mind for like $200 or something. My girlfriend now and I have a good laugh about it and joke that I’m unknowingly in a cult.
#28
He told me he cut his time short to see his kid in order to make time to see me for our date.
#30
In the first five minutes of the date, he told me that “music is evil”.
#31
A guy told me he is “so desensitized from violence” that he could “watch a body go through a wood chipper and not feel anything”. While trying to figure out a way to leave else, he also told me that a motorcyclist had been driving during bad conditions, lost control and hit a van and the guy was deceased in the road and blocking his way home so instead of waiting for emergency response to get there, he drove over the body. And no, if this was true, he did not actually check if the guy was alive or not.
He also spoiled the Red Wedding.
My sister was at my house watching my kids and I drove around town on the phone with her for like 45 minutes after before I went home just to make sure he didn’t follow me. He had been trying to plan our second date while we were eating and I was just like “ok maybe” knowing he was never going to see me again. He was suggesting a movie with spiked drinks at my house. Absolutely no way. lol
#32
About an hour in, she said “I don’t get the guys that think $30,000 is enough for an engagement ring. This was the late 90s.
I noped right out of there. I still know her, and she married one of my friends. She got the ring.
#34
To add some levity to this thread, we met for a drink downtown in Philly. He told me he was a railroad fan and that he knew a lot about the railroad history of the city and surrounding area. Hey, that's cool, I like trains and history too. And then he spent 45 minutes talking at me about about lines and routes, various rail companies and their specific histories, different kinds of engines, and so on. I don't mind geeking out, and I'm always down to learn about something someone else is passionate about, but I barely even found a space to chime in. I tried a few times to redirect the conversation, but he kept going.
Once he ran out of steam, he suggested dinner at a place near where I had parked. When we were by my car, I thanked him politely for the conversation but told him I wasn't feeling it and said goodbye.
#35
We met up for Ice Cream, & when she got out of her car, I didn't even recognize her. Actually, I almost ignored her waving me down, until I noticed the dreamcatcher tattoo from her profile pics. I don't have an issue w/ silly filters in one or two photos, but when EVERY photo is filtered & changes what you look like, I'm passing.
#37
He had the worse breath I had smelled in a long time, and he wanted to sit close to each other. So I faked an emergency and bailed. I felt bad until I could breath fresh air again.
#39
2nd date technically, the first one was pleasant enough, but more of a meet up than a date. It became slowly apparent he was super right wing and whenever we disagreed about a topic, he would say, "sorry, I have a PhD in this" (political science) one of the examples was Donald Trump winning by electoral college and not popular vote. I said that was his own strategy and he openly admits it. He then said "you can't argue that, I'm concerned you're just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks!" Then he said "he would have campaigned differently if he was going for popular vote" so I said ...."yes? That's what I said? He said the same thing himself on an interview but I appreciate your concern" and he said "No he didn't!" just arguing to argue.
The people at the next table kept looking over at us because he was raising his voice and it was a crowded space where we were basically elbow to elbow with them. Then he said "We're in a place in society where people hate experts"
I started laughing and said, "Oh, is that the problem? I think we're done here" threw a $20 on the table so he wouldn't stiff the waitress, and left.
#40
Was on a date with a girl I met via a dating app. We had been texting for a bit and finally decided to meet up.
We were eating and it wasn't going as well as I had hoped.
At a certain point she told me about visiting a tattoo shop that week so I responded asking what she had gotten.
She replied with: 'A tattoo ... duh' like I was being the one being slow.
I was done after that.
#41
Trauma dumped on me so hard I couldn't finish my first drink after getting there. Like, whole life story of terrible stuff in 3 mins.
Thats the only time Ive literally snuck out on a date.
#42
Scheduled a pretty laid back date at a place we both liked the food at or so I thought after TELLING ME “I love their food” only to sit down, chat, then go “by the way I’m vegan and don’t eat any of this” I asked what the deal was and she said it was a test.
Got up, left, went to the hockey game with the boys.
#43
I was on a lunch date with a guy who I went to college with, and over the course of a single meal, he invited me to go away with him on a two-week vacation, told me he was part of a vampire coven, and wanted me to become a vampire and live with him forever.
#45
In college, I went on a blind date set up for me by my new sorority sisters. At the dinner, the guy told me the sorority sisters told him I was a virgin, and that’s why he agreed to the date.
#46
When my date used a stiff, green, restaurant linen napkin to blow his nose, hard, right at the table. I said, "THAT is disgusting" then got up and walked away. And the guy was a doctor. Seriously uncouth. 🤢.
#47
She spoke on how she wanted a man who makes an insane amount of money and kept talking about how she wants him to pay for everything while she also wants to make money and only spend it on herself. She asked what I wanted and shot down everything I said I wanted to do in life. We were both students.
#48
Girl brought a notebook to our first date. Not a planner, an actual ruled notebook. Every time I said something she'd write in it. I finally asked and she said she likes to keep notes on people so she can "reference things later." She flipped back a few pages to show me and I could see other guys' names with bullet points under them. I was just the next entry. Finished my drink and left.
#49
We went to an italian place. she started screaming at our waiter because her salad had croutons and she has a 'severe gluten allergy.' the crazy part? she was literally holding a piece of garlic bread from the free bread basket while yelling at him. i just put a $50 on the table for the poor guy and walked out.
#51
The moment I saw her she was twice as big. still hung out and was kind to her, but a catfish is a catfish. and lying is the first thing that'll tell me you aren't trustworthy.
#52
She was a racist corrections officer. Drove a big lifted truck and had a bunch of other hardline conservative opinions. She also ate all the nachos before the meal came. So I snook out the bathroom and left. Once a year I get a Facebook memory of my experience that day. Always makes me laugh.
#53
Her "friend" showed up to dinner at a restaurant, The same dinner I was there to meet her only sibling and mom.
Later on I found out it was an ex-boyfriend, he was trying to fight me.
I genuinely regret not walking away from this woman sooner.
#54
In the first few minutes he told me if I lost 20 pounds I could be a model. Offered to train me. Nope. Next best was the guy who yelled at me for eating a messy sandwich with a knife and fork, "Ew. Eat that sandwich like a normal person." I'm sure it was a test to see if he could control me. I left. I wasn't about to be someone's doormat. I have way too many of these stories. Dating is hard.
#55
She invited me to her house. I've known her for weeks (we worked together but she was fired) and while it was a date, it was only semi-romantic because I was looking at getting to know her a bit better.
Her mom kept addressing me as her future husband. Her dad didn't say much, he was overweight and stuck on his couch with stains on his clothes. I remember the house smelling like ketchup that's been left out too long.
She was also *really* touchy feely on me, to the point of discomfort.
They served me food but I thanked them and told them I felt sick and ran.
#57
She started making racist Asian, stereotype jokes that I thought were supposed to be tongue-in-cheek absurd on purpose. However; the more she talked, the more it became apparent she was serious. I remember finishing that date and immediately blocking her.
I found it rather odd because my freaking Tinder profile stated I was half-Japanese, half-white American.
College was weird.
#58
He kept bringing up how many other matches he got on a dating app that was specifically for people really passionate about music; it almost felt like he was subtely telling me that if things didn't work out between us that he'd be fine because he was sooo popular on this other app.
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