There’s a fine line between making someone feel appreciated and making them feel downright uncomfortable. Here, spooked women share their worst “he seemed normal on the first date” stories.
1. Total rollercoaster.
Guy took me out for drinks, seemed great, then asked me to move in two weeks later. Then asked me for money for his phone bill. Then bought me an iPad. And then I realized he was a drug dealer.
Ridiculous_Diagnosis
2. Nuh-uh.
He seemed like a normal guy, pretty average, pleasant enough. Good conversationalist. We both had an interest in distilling and we swung by his place after dinner to check out his set up. It wasn’t one of those “please come up and see my etchings…” sort of things either, it really was just going in to see his set up.
As we walked through his trailer to get to the workshop where he made his spirits, I glanced at the pictures on the wall. Every one of them was historical photos of Nazis with himself photoshopped into them. The one I clearly remember was himself pointing out some sort of design element on a model tank or something to Hitler.
Kookaburra1701
3. How NOT to do role play.
Not my story but happened to a friend’s sister. Friend and I were in college, sister was mid-20’s & getting serious with a new guy. He seemed fantastic & she was starting to think he was the one, after a few months.
Things started getting serious & he told her there was something important he needed to share. She’s thinking he wants to move in or pop the question & getting pretty excited.
Goes over to his place on the big night, barely able to contain her excitement at which point he shows her his secret room. It was really a walk-in closet but he had it set up with a huge replica of smurf village & liked to play there in his free time. Like ALL of his free time, more than hanging out with friends or anything. Acting out story lines with his smurfs & pretending he was one too. It was a big part of his life & he hoped she was as into it as he was.
She was not.
Horsecalledwar
4. No, no, and no.
We met at a party. He was very funny and good looking. First date was amazing. We went to dinner, saw a live band, and went star gazing. Next date he becomes extremely pushy about sex and starts to go downhill from there. He tells me he can’t wait to get me pregnant. Didn’t last much longer than that. Turns out he was starting to use meth too.
Insert-innuendo-here
5. Not even close to funny.
I went on a date with someone from OkCupid and it seemed pretty normal. Then I went on a second date and I was joking about how he could be some creepy dude from the internet who parked us out in the middle of an empty parking lot late at night to kill me. At that moment, he pulled a knife out of his pocket.
I was kind of freaked out for a moment and then he started laughing and saying that he was kidding and that he always carried a knife on him.
Not funny.
Happydancingpanda
6. Can you not.
Dude carved my name into his forearm with razor blades. Even misspelled the name. This was in 7th grade.
Indikins
7. Go to your room! And no, I will not be joining.
Guy begged and whined for sex. I told him he sounded like a 5-year-old and I was going home. We were in our 30s.
To the guy’s credit I saw him out at an event and was just going to act like I didn’t see him. No skin off my back, he didn’t offend or hurt me, or even scare me, it was just weird. But he came up to me and apologized for his behavior.
Even started off with something like, “Hey, I’m not going to bother you or anything, I just want to apologize”, followed by a legitimate apology (what he did was messed up and why).
And then he left me alone. Kudos for owning up to it and apologizing when he could have just ignored me as it was a big event and it would have been easy to avoid each other. And it was unlikely we’d see each other again.
Deviantelf
8. All the red flags.
A guy took me to an amusement park where he ended up flirting with 13-year-olds.
Lilboarderchick1
9. You want to put a what in where?
I was first introduced to him as my parents’ friends’ son.
We hung out a couple of times, seems normal. He asked me out and I said yes.
First date was ok…he seemed normal. Really quiet, shy and awkward, but it was adorable. Second date, he comes off as pretty intense. We kissed at the end of the night, and he told me he wanted to put a baby in me. His exact words were, “I want to put a baby in here and rubs my stomach.
OH HELL NO.
I was pretty creeped out by now, so I was trying to figure out how to dump him gently. I was still 16 so I was still nervous about dumping people…plus, he was the only person I knew in the US since I just moved. All my friends were still overseas, so I emailed them for help (continued).
The next day, I was walking in between classes when I ran into him. My college is in LA. He lives in Irvine, and that’s about 1-2h drive away. I never told him my class schedule. Apparently from stalking my Facebook wall, snippets of conversation I had with him, and checking the university’s list of classes, he figured out what classes I was taking and where they were located.
He proudly told me this as if it’s the most romantic thing ever.
I told him I’m not skipping Calc II for him since that class is damn hard, but he wouldn’t leave until we hung out. He asked if he could borrow my laptop to finish some homework, so I dumped him in my dorm room.
He actually read through my emails (I forgot to log out) and found the email I wrote to my friends, where I told them how creepy he was.
I came back to the room, he promptly threatened suicide. I was stuck with him for 3 more months before I finally couldnt care anymore and dumped him.
eraser_dust
10. How important are we talking, exactly?
This one is pretty mild but I didn’t actually make it through the first date. We were at a coffee shop attached to a bookstore and everything started out pretty well. He was a little quiet, shy or nervous I assumed, but I coaxed some conversation out of him. After drinks, we started wandering around the bookstore, discussing our various interests.
He asks me if I like Lord of the Rings. It’s the first non-prompted question he’d asked. I say, “Oh yeah, like it. My favorite movie is the first one. The other two got a bit repetitive with the battles.”
He’s silent for a moment. “Lord of the Rings are my favorite movies ever. And the books as well.”
“I read the books too,” I reply conversationally. “They weren’t bad but not my favorites.”
He’s silent again. “Lord of the Rings is very important to me.”
I’m a little confused now. “I like them, they’re just not my all time favorite thing, you know?”
Another long pause. His stare is oddly intense (continued).
“Lord of the Rings is very important to me, and it’s very important to me that you like it too.”
“Well, you know,” I say slowly, a bit cautious, “we don’t have to have exactly matching interests to be compatible. And I do like Lord of the Rings, I’m just not super passionate about it.”
That strangely cutting stare intensifies. “… It’s REALLY important to me that you like Lord of the Rings.”
At this point I simply shrugged and resumed browsing, but let me tell you, I wrapped that date up fast and lost his number immediately. Luckily, my lack of intense passion for LotR was enough of a turnoff that he didn’t try for a second date.
I don’t know exactly what kind of bullet I dodged there but I definitely dodged something.
In_the_aether
11. I would’ve power-walked my way out of there.
Our date was basically a 2-hour power walk around our town. I like walking as much as the next guy, but this guy insisted we keep walking the entire date because he thought sitting was a waste of time.
Over the course of 1.5 hours, I learned that he hated noise, despite choosing to move to a noisy area, fat people (and would divorce his future wife if she ever started ‘freeloading’ or got fat), how he’s so smart, how people owe him because he was so nice to them, his car, how crappy and boring everything else was, how much he hated almost all music, how he thought everything was dirty and disgusting… (continued).
Part way through the date I started laughing every time he said he hated something, which made him mad, which made me laugh more, which made him more mad…
Finally he started taking digs at me, despite having already made it clear that he thought everything I was doing was dumb and that my arms were “kind of hairy for a girl.” That’s when I tried to nope out.
His car was parked near my house, so we walked there together, and that’s when he invited me to sit down. Apparently he wanted to wait the 30-some minutes until the meter ran out and didn’t want to be by himself.
Best date ever.
Whatthefac
12. Hmm, not the best conversation hook of all time.
I once went on a date with a guy who I’d known from high school. He was a jerk at the time but hey, people change, thought I’d give him a chance.
He spent the whole time telling me all about the takedown techniques he learned in his failed attempt to become an RCMP officer. I’m sorry, but telling a girl how you could “literally kill her in 5 seconds” isn’t great first date conversation.
Spandxlightning
13. We have a stage ten clinger on our hands.
Went on a couple dates with a guy that seemed pretty nice. Very good looking guy who approached me so I decided to see how it would go. He tried being a gentleman, you know, holding the door and putting on my coat – not too hung up on that sort of thing, just relax and be yourself.
Anyway, After the third date he was trying to really rush into the physical and I was in no hurry. I had to pretty much tell him to back it up. I didn’t know enough about him to really trust the guy like that yet. After that date he started constantly texting me at all hours, and would get irritated if I didn’t message back. If I didn’t write back he’d be demanding where I was and what I was doing. I was pissed off.
He did this in the early morning when I had to go to work and it was the last straw. I was very straight and curt. I told him he needed to back off and chill out and his response was, “I think I’m in love with you.”
I was flabbergasted. I texted back, “I have no idea how you can think that, because you have barely gotten to know me, and I hardly know you.”
He wrote back that it was an accidental butt text. That’s . . . some pretty elaborate and skillful butt texting.
The barrage of texts continued at all hours with increasing creepy desperation. WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING. I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE ONE AND YOU CAN’T EVEN TEXT OR CALL THAT IS MESSED UP. I demanded he delete my number and stop contacting me because he was scaring me (continued).
He called me roughly five times and texted another night at 3 am. I had to be up for 6 for work. I just lost it. I told him his behavior was disturbing and that I truly thought he needed help, but I really didn’t know him enough to be at the receiving end of this. He apologized profusely and said he had accidentally called my phone. I didn’t hear from him for about a month and a half when suddenly he started writing me on Facebook, commenting on all my pics. I blocked him and reported him. He started sending me emails that I 100% ignored.
The people I worked with started noticing a guy had started sitting outside of the workplace and when I finally saw the guy out on the bench a knot of fear was in my guts. It was him looking for me. He started texting as soon as he saw that I’d seen him and I told him I was done. I told him he was stalking and that if I saw or heard from him one more time, I was going to go to the police.
I didn’t hear from him again for almost half a year and by that time I had just started dating this really nice guy who was a drummer. I went downtown to see one of his shows and we were both standing outside having a smoke. Out of the alley, out of NOWHERE, comes YOU KNOW WHO. He puts his arm around me, looks the new guy I’m dating up and down and says: Well, who is this? You never told me about him. I just stormed back into the pub horrified and new guy came in and asked me about the guy, who never followed us.
That was the last I saw of him, but I still get creeped out walking anywhere alone sometimes.
Get this . . . about two years later I was living in an all girls house and one of my new roommates who had just moved to my city had started seeing a guy . . . she showed me a pic and I nearly lost my mind. IT WAS HIM. And lo and behold, he started doing the SAME thing to her.
Speedy_Cheese
14. But seriously…nah.
First date, he tried to feel me up and go for it.
I was like, “Nah”.
He was like, “But I think I love you”
Nope nope nope.
[deleted]
15. Good thing she checked!
I went out on a date with someone I met off PoF. He was cute, seemed fairly normal. We met for coffee, went back to my place, yada yada yada – it was a good time.
About a week later, a friend of mine in another state posted about how she found a high school classmate of hers on her state’s sex offender registry. I decided to see if anyone I knew was on it (or if there were any living near me) so I did a search of my state’s registry.
Well. Three guesses who I found on it. He has a common name, but I knew it was him because the picture on the registry was the same one he used on Plenty of Fish!
There was no second date.
Sisterhavana
16. A little too soon.
Context: my dad is a police officer and I had a very sheltered, possibly a little goody two-shoes of a childhood in a little town full of elderly folks and young families.
Met him at a party, and we hit it off because we’re from the same little town. First date went really well. Wonderful dinner and a movie thing. I was really excited to have found someone after a rather long spell of singleness, so I agreed to a second date with no hesitation.
After date two (sushi and drinks) I get in his car for him to take me home and he tells me he lives with his grandmother because his mom has a serious heroin problem and will disappear for weeks at a time getting high and selling herself for money to feed her addiction.
I thought that was already a pretty big bombshell for a second date, but he proceeded to tell me both his brothers were pretty deep into one of the Chicago gangs and had been arrested relating to crimes up to and INCLUDING murder several times.
I sat there for a beat, shocked, and he informed me that he’d told his brothers all about his new girlfriend and they wanted to meet me that weekend. I told him I wasn’t comfortable with that and he started screaming at me about being a judgmental jerk and I promptly fled and blocked him on every platform I could think.
Telepathic_cat
17. It’s never okay without consent.
My freshman year of college, I agreed to go to a frat formal with this guy I knew from my dorm. We hung out with the same group of people, he was a pretty quiet guy and he seemed normal so I didn’t think anything of it. We went, had a decent time, came back to the dorm.
I went back to his room with him, not with the intent to have sex, but because he was a friend and I was friends with his roommates. I fell asleep at some point and I woke up with him on top of me with his tongue in my mouth, trying to move his hand under my dress. I told him to stop, and to his credit he did.
We never discussed it, and we spent the rest of college ignoring each other’s existence.
MotherEagle
18. Yikes.
I met my fiancee on Tinder, which inspired my best friend Aleisha to give Tinder a go. She started chatting with this guy who seemed nice and normal – worked in finance, had his own house and car etc – so she agreed to meet up for a dinner date.
As always, she told me if she texted me asking for help, I’d call her up and act like one of my family member’s died and she had to leave right then and there.
So she turns up to this nice restaurant, all dressed up, and he’s nicely dressed but veeeery different-looking than his picture. His photos had to have been at least two or three years old.
He orders the two of them a bottle of wine, and they order dinner. He finishes his glass of wine before the obligatory bread sticks even come out, then pours himself another glass of wine and tries to play a drinking game with her, ‘never have I ever’ style, in the middle of the restaurant with just the two of them (continued).
19. *Pulls out the easel*
Started talking about marriage and what he expected out of a good wife. I knew him for two weeks tops.
It wasn’t even like a passionate “I need to have you” kind of thing. He was just methodically and surgically trying to wife me.
[deleted]
20. Just talking to the digital abyss…
Went out on a date with a guy I met at a Starbucks…seemed nice. After the first date he would send morning texts everyday along with a morning selfie of him blowing a kiss….
The selfies didn’t stop there. Not just mornings, but multiple times a day, everyday. I didn’t block him because it just seemed so ridiculous it became a funny joke with my close friends. What selfies did he send you today? Then it started getting out of hand. Texts pouring in asking why I never texted back.
Poor guy always having conversations with himself, I had to block him.
7thhh
21. I’m sorry, what?
We had a first date that went okaaay except he went on and on about pre-nuptial agreements. Like he reintroduced the subject about four times. We both had similar houses and lifestyles.
Anyway, gave him the benefit of the doubt and agreed to go out with him again. About an hour before he was due to pick me up I had a phone call from him. He explained he wouldn’t be able to make it as he had been arrested and was in police custody.
My response was, “What on earth for?” I’m not sure what I was expecting. Some minor misdemeanour or a traffic violation.
His response:”For kidnapping Jimmy Godden”. Jimmy Godden was a local baddie responsible for buying up and burning down local amusement parks (the life blood of the seaside town I live in). He practically single handedly destroyed our town.
I don’t know what happened to him after that, I never took his phone calls. I just can’t catch a break with guys.
[deleted]
22. From zero to one hundred.
I had a blind date at a bar. I arrived first, grabbed a beer and waited. He showed up (he wasn’t late), grabbed a beer and we started talking. Things were great for the first 90 minutes or so.
At about the time he’s decided he wants to see me again, he asks, “So, do you know any Black people?”
I respond with, “Yes, some of my friends are Black.”
He starts yelling about no racial mixing, white supremacy, and how whites are superior.
Twin_sis
23. What in the Sam Hill?
Right after he picked me up, he ran into Walgreens really quick and asked to put his bag in my purse. Naturally I assumed he bought candy since we were going to the movies. Nope, right after the opening previews started, he pulled out a brand new hairbrush, rips the packaging off, does the fake yawn to put his arm around me while holding the brush and starts brushing my hair.
I didn’t move because I was shocked that it was happening and didn’t know what the heck to do. He then leans his head on my shoulder while still brushing my hair and starts smelling my hair. That was the last time I did not drive and meet on first dates. If you’re into something weird like that, don’t be a jerk and pull that crap on a first date at the movies without talking to them about it.
McHammerFace
24. It’s like a switch went off.
I joined OkCupid right around the time it started and talked to a seemingly nice guy on there for a little over a week before exchanging phone numbers. He had a good job, was attractive and funny, and just seemed like a cool guy all around.
The first time we went out, we met at an art museum for a few hours and had great conversation. I left feeling good about it and we both agreed we should see each other again soon.
Apparently his definition of “soon” was literally the next day. I had classes all the next day and didn’t really get a chance to look at my phone, but when I did, I had 5 missed calls and at least 20 texts from this dude. The latter texts included a string of explicit insults. I was just like, whaaaaat just happened!?
ComeOnOverValerie
25. Our “relationship”, right…
So I knew this kid vaguely from high school, friend of a friend kinda deal. We ended up reconnecting on Tinder and hanging out. We had a relatively normal first date, kinda cute actually he set up an art project for us to do since he knew I was into art. But it just didn’t click. I didn’t get that feeling when you know something will work with someone, and I was working two jobs and didn’t really have the time to go on a lot of dates.
So the he kept texting me trying to set up dates and I didn’t have time, so I respectfully declined and told him I wasn’t ready for the level of commitment he seemed to be seeking.
He sent me an essay via text on how our relationship had cured him of his depression and suicidal tendencies. And how he needed this to continue and thought I was going to be the one. And how all his life mottos aligned through our relationship. It made me feel horrible as I didn’t want to crush anyone’s dreams but I told him I knew I needed to work on some things and it seemed like he did too. I hope he’s in a better place mentally now and found someone that can do all that for him.
HermJ
26. My creepy senses are tingling.
We get back to my apartment (he drove). We’re sitting in the parking lot and he asks me to grab his phone out of the glove department. I open it up and there’s a gun and two knives. I begin getting out of the car and he gets out as well. I assumed he was walking me to my door but then he follows me inside and sits down on the couch. He asks me to sit next to him and begins twirling my hair and singing a lullaby.
I told him that I had some plans later and thanked him for the date to which he responds,”Perfect, I’d love to go to the get together with you.” I then panic and tell my mom to call me and ask me to come over.
She calls, and I tell him I have to go. He says he’ll drive. I let him know that it’s a family emergency and that I should go alone. He seems rather pissed about this, but says okay. We both go outside and I drive away.
My roommate texts me and asks what’s going on because he’s sitting in the parking lot outside on the hood of his car. I wait at my parents house for an hour and he’s STILL sitting in our parking lot, but in his car now. I end up spending the night at my parents house, and he SLEPT IN HIS CAR WAITING FOR ME.
I came home the next morning and he is awake and sitting on the hood of his car again, and asks me if I’m ready to get breakfast together.
Chillhoneybunny28