The first date was going well. It could have involved more kissing. Then it got weird. But the red flags were ignored and 12 months later that date finally ended.
It was a great date. A drive in a classic car, a wonderful dinner, drinks, kissing, a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and then an apparently unforgivable faux pas.
I usually don't go out with a guy I meet online before I see what he looks like. I usually ask to do camera to camera, but this time, I looked like a mess, so I exchanged numbers with one guy and we talked for 10 minutes through the phone. He seemed nice, so we arranged to meet the next day for coffee. We decided to meet in Jabal Amman in front of this nice, old café.
My type, blue-collar younger guys, was not paying any dividends. So, while at Starbucks I decided to go against my better instincts and chat with a more uptown kind of guy. He joked that he was in the witness protection program. Though I wasn't sure it was right for me, we set up a date. But that was before Google informed me that he might have been joking about witness protection...
On a whim a few years ago, my friend Dave and I posted a YouTube video in which we invited women to double date us. In the months to follow, we would embark on over 200 double dates together, many of which would provide us with horror stories for our live comedy show. However, none were a bigger disappointment than one I experienced on my own.
When I first started online dating after my divorce at age 39, I was terrified. Not because I hadn't been on a date in almost two decades. Not because I hadn't so much as brushed up against a man in over a year, let alone been intimate with one. And not because I was worried about inadvertently hooking up with a serial killer. What I was terrified of was that people I knew would see my online profile and think I was a desperate loser.
First dates are a little dicey. Doubly so when it's a blind date. Make it a double date on top of it and you're talking about four times the dicey-ness. And, as far as dicey goes, it goes off the charts when it turns out that you know your friend's date. Know him very well.
I've been on a few dates with guys who work in "finance" — as in, they can't explain to me in 10 words or less what it is exactly that they do with all those numbers and dollar signs all day long. I'm always initially attracted to them because of the way they can rock a suit, a la Barney Stinson, and how they exude so much confidence and purpose in what they do. But as soon as that tie is loosened and that second Jack-and-Coke is dry, their horns come out.
It was a classic set-up, my friend's boyfriend's friend needed a date. The two guys showed up and were already a little boozy. My friend and her boyfriend sneaked off and I was left with a drunk fella. And then his vomiting. I decided not to move to the second phase of the date and somehow I was the bad guy...
Sometimes the seemingly perfect guy is up to no good. It starts with house parties, long phone calls and fancy dinners, but then it ends with a stolen iPod. No one said dating in Amman, Jordan was easy.
A first-time user of PlentyOfFish.com has a rough start of it. After drinking many, many beers, a first date becomes weirdly jealous, starts crying and refuses to leave her house. First dates and online dating rarely go this wrong.
