20+ First Dates That Might Make Us Swear Off Romance For Good

"I met up with an OkCupid guy at a local BBQ place. During dinner, he ate ribs while chewing with his mouth open, wiped the BBQ sauce from his hands onto his white tank and pants, tried to feed me by hand, and only talked about the gym and his mother, who he FACETIMED ON OUR DATE to introduce me." — candacea4271c944b / BuzzFeed

"When I was studying abroad, my roommates set me up on a date. He decided to go to the cinema, and when I met him he kept touching his neck and looking at his watch. I thought, 'God, he must be bored already.' He kept doing this the whole way through the film, so when we came out of the film I just straight out asked him what the deal was with the watch checking…

He told me he'd been checking his pulse to see how aroused I was making him to see if he was attracted to me. OH! BUT WAIT— he then handed me a note with a list of reasons why he liked me, including 'You make my heart beat on average of 130bpm when I'm around you." — Jeanna D. / Men's Health

"The girl kept farting the entire time we were playing mini-golf. Not stinky ones — more vocal. I didn't think of it at first, but I noticed she was using the putter as a cane and tapping it hard on the ground when she farted. Weird way to cover it up. The taps were like half a second, and the farts were like three seconds. The date ended after the game." — yankstraveler / BuzzFeed

"I was on a first date with a guy who worked at my bank. We were both musicians and went to a fun dive. It was a good time. Then, abruptly, he said, 'Let's go grab some fresh air.' We stood outside the bar, and a car with a couple girls in it slowly drove right by us. He did this big, over-exaggerated wave. I asked if he knew them, and he said, 'Yeah, it's my ex and her friend. I told her to come by so she'd see me with you.' Seriously?"—litflonkerton / BuzzFeed

"We were at a Japanese restaurant for our first date. She asked me my star sign, and I replied that I'm a Scorpio. She leaned over the table and slapped me clean and hard across the face. Naturally, I was shocked and confused. I mouthed 'What...?' and she firmly said, 'I NEVER date Scorpios.' I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, she had gone and paid for everything." — TheBlackRoomba / BuzzFeed

"I drove us for the date. I started to parallel park (I'd been working and parking in San Francisco for years by then), and he said, 'I'll park this for you. Women don't do well at parallel parking.' At dinner, he was dismissive only to female wait staff. I ran into these two hilariously drunk surfer dudes on my way from the bathroom, and they told me my date was a jerk. We laughed about it, and I went back to my table.

When leaving, the drunk dudes were also outside. I said bye to them, and my date... had the nerve to bark, 'She's with me!' I told him to wait while I got in the car and unlocked the doors, except I didn't. I drove off and left him standing there. The two drunk dudes whooped and yelled, 'Go, lady, go!' Such an awesome finish to a terribly embarrassing date." — lechitahamandcheese / BuzzFeed

"Date was dinner and a movie with a girl. We got the movie time wrong so went to dinner first. After ordering she starts looking at her phone a lot and has this weird look on her face. I ask what's wrong, [and] she says her cat has gone missing. She goes outside to make a phone call and comes back five minutes later saying we have to go.

I get our food boxed and pay the bill. I drive her back to her dorm and she runs inside with no goodbye. I shrug it off and go eat my boxed cold dinner. Later that night, I check Facebook and see her on a date with another guy. I send her a message asking how her cat is." — ilivlife / Ranker

"I fell down the stairs as I was greeting him. Then as I went to give him a kiss on the cheek, I missed and awkwardly kissed him on the lips. At the restaurant, the tables were close to each other, so while we were being seated, I knocked over a plate on the table beside us. Guess I wasn't too much of a mess because 15 years later, we're happily married with three amazing and clumsy daughters!" — rhondav4a92ddb4c / BuzzFeed

"I invited a girl I'd just met to go to the summer movies HBO used to show for free in Bryant Park in NYC. We met early and ate some fast food while the park filled up and it got dark enough for the movie to start. Just as it was about to, she said she had to go to the bathroom and never came back.

I sat through Stalag 17, getting more and more annoyed at being stood up, piling insults on this girl in my head. After the movie, I checked my messages, and she'd left a couple, saying that she couldn't find our blanket again, and then one saying she was going home.

Five years later (FIVE YEARS), it occurred to me that, rather than sitting on my [butt] fuming, it might have been gentlemanly for me to go and look for her..." — Grindlebone / Reddit

"I have quite fine hair and naturally fine eyebrows. In a way, it's a bit of a gift as I never need to pluck them or have them groomed. They just are how they are. I'd never been particularly conscious about them until I went on a date with one particular guy.

The very first words that came out of his mouth when he saw me were 'Did you pluck your eyebrows like that just for me?'

I don't know if he was trying out a negging technique or genuinely thought that was an okay first thing to say to someone, but it killed the mood pretty instantly for me.

Perplexed, I responded, 'Erm, no, I just have really fine hair?'

'Oh, phew,' he replied. 'I thought you'd made them really small just for our date — because they won't grow back, you know.'

I stayed for a drink, during which he turned the conversation back to my eyebrows not once, not twice, but five times. At which point I just got up and left. And spent the rest of the evening looking in the mirror wondering what the hell was wrong with my eyebrows." — Sam / Refinery29

"I was a bit tipsy after drinking wine, and we went back to my place and started making out. When I pulled back, his face was covered in blood, so I panicked and said, 'You're bleeding!' Horrified, he pointed at my face, and I realized I was having a heavy nosebleed. I cleaned up in the bathroom and somehow thought it would be logical to shove tampons up my nose to stem the nosebleed. So I went back downstairs with two tampons in my nose — and yes, the mood was very much killed." — emmar4368873d2 / BuzzFeed

"He took me to a Mexican restaurant which I was hyped about — it was notorious for its good food and even better cocktails. We were getting on fine, and then when the waiter came he ordered nachos… with no guacamole, no salsa, and no sour cream. Quite literally just the chips with melted cheese on top. Oh, and a vodka lemonade to wash it down." — Chloe W. / Men's Health

"He seemed perfectly nice. I wasn't madly attracted to him, but he seemed like such a gentleman. We left the bar we'd met in to walk to another one, and on the way, there was a huge pile of leaves next to the path. OUT OF NOWHERE, he pushed me into them and then FELL ON TOP OF ME to fake roll around in them like he was copying some cheesy rom-com. I was like 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! GET ME UP!' because I was legit lying on the floor in the cold in a pile of potentially poop-filled leaves." – Rosie F. / Men's Health

"I went on a date with a girl that was either incredibly shy, incredibly boring, or both.

Basically, whenever I asked her a question and tried to spark some conversation, she would just answer the question and stop. Just not even an attempt to carry the conversation.

'So, what part of town are you from?'

'The north side.'

'How long you been there?'

'Two years.'

'What made you move there?'

'Work.'

'Oh. Uhhh, what do you do?'

'I work in HR.'

'Cool. Cool. Uhhh... so, what do you do for fun?'

'Hang out with friends and stuff.'

'Awesome. Sounds incredible.'" — Grindelflaps / Reddit

"We met at a restaurant for dinner and ordered a couple drinks and entrees. He ordered pasta. He began eating his noodles with his hands — like pulling the spaghetti noodles up over his face and dropping them into his mouth. I was so shocked. I said nothing, averted my eyes, asked for my dinner to be packed up, paid for my portion of the bill, and made an excuse to get the hell out of there." — Aquafish14 / BuzzFeed

"Got a call from a friend of a friend who I thought I'd met once before asking if I wanted to go out tomorrow (Saturday) night. Sure. I went out to her place about 40 mins away. I realized upon arrival that I didn't actually know her name. We had dinner, talked, made out a bit, talked about going out again, made out some more, called it a night at around 1:00 a.m. I tried several ways to get her to reveal her name, to no avail. I dropped her off at her place, drove home, went to bed.

I realized the following morning that she had never spoken my name either — not on the phone or in person. I further realized that I didn't have her phone number and called the mutual friend to ask for her number. Mutual friend had no idea who I was talking about. I gave him the address of the girl. He said he didn't know anyone from that town and the address wasn't familiar.

Never heard from her again." — bubonis / Ranker

"He showed up an hour late to take me out for supper (taking me out for a nice supper was his idea since I was a poor broke student and he wanted to treat me). Then he said he wasn't hungry, so would it be cool if he just took me through a drive-thru? Then he made me buy my own single meal. Then HE ATE ALL MY FRENCH FRIES." — ghostinyourpants / Reddit

"I went on a first date with a guy, let’s call him Chris, a few years ago.

He seemed okay at first, and we were in the middle of a conversation about TV shows. He'd never seen Game of Thrones and I started trying to explain some of the plot to him. Obviously, there's a lot of nudity in it and some fairly explicit scenes.

Reader, he laughed every time I said the word 'sex'. Like a small child.

'Hehehe, you said the word 'sex'!' he said and proceeded to lapse into giggles.

Safe to say, there was no second date. — Nicole / Refinery 29

"We were waiting for a table at the restaurant. It was a nice summer evening, so we stood outside and had an enjoyable conversation while waiting by the front door with a few other people. The hostess opened the door and told us that our table was ready. He lifted his leg up and farted so loud that other people stopped their conversations just to look at us. With a big smile on his face, he said, 'I sure didn't want that going off inside!' I just turned and walked away." — DutchBarnes / BuzzFeed

"I was talking to a guy who was a math professor, and he invited me on a date to an outdoor play where he was playing an 'important role.' I showed up to see it was a church picnic and he was playing the devil. He introduced me to his family, and all they talked about was Weird Al music. They didn't listen to anything BUT Weird Al.

Then his sister went on a loud tangent about why I went to a private school since, unbeknownst to me, he had told them everything about me and every conversation we'd ever had. I faked an emergency to get out of there. He wanted to take me to the state fair with his whole family for a second date." — Zatanna78 / BuzzFeed

"We met on a dating app and went to dinner at the lamest restaurant ever. It was like a nursing home! He told me about every health condition he had, along with gross details. As he was eating soup, strings of cheese kept getting stuck in his beard. He never wiped his mouth once and then burped really loud. I excused myself after he asked me to taste his soup. No thanks." — mramirez7425 / BuzzFeed

"I had a casual first date with a guy at my apartment. We watched a movie that he had seen before and drank a bottle of wine and chatted. Toward the end of the movie, there's a little blood, and the guy walked into my kitchen, pretended to get a glass of water, and dropped to the ground and started seizing. It was terrifying.

I ran over and kept saying his name, and after a few seconds I was about to call 911, when he woke up, realized what happened, and just said 'Damn it...' Apparently, the sight of blood really gets to him, and this was not the first time this had happened. — marshmallowz7824 / Reddit

"A cute-ish guy approached me at a foreign film screening at my university in Arizona and asked me out in French, which was the language of the film. I spoke college-level French, so I accepted the offer of a date. I mean, he was kind of cute. When he picked me up that Friday night, he greeted me with 'Guten tag!' Okay, cute, a reference to the foreign film screening, right? Nope.

From that moment on, he spoke nothing but clumsy German all night long. He took me to Blockbuster (I'm old), and we rented a German film. He spoke German to the cashier. He spoke German through dinner. He spoke German while watching the film. He tried to get to first base in German. And yes, this whole time I was telling him repeatedly that I don't speak German, I can't understand him, etc. He just responded in German.

But the weirdest moment was when his roommate came home as I was awkwardly leaving (my date was trying to convince me to stay, in German) and my date interrupted our 'conversation' to say in a perfectly normal Arizona accent, 'Hey man, what's up?' And then turned back to me and continued to speak German. Oooooookaaaay." — brokebackhill / Reddit

"First one is pretty simple. We were going to watch a play together at her high school [and] she brought another guy with her. He bought a ticket at the door and had his hand on her lap the whole time. I was gonna talk to her about it, but she sent me home first. I guess that doesn't really count as a date, at least not for me.

The second worst first date was from Plenty of Fish. We met at a Tim Horton's, chatted a while, it was really cool. She brought me back to her place, and it really stunk. Girls usually apologize in advance because they have a messy place. At worst it's just clothes on the ground, but this was actually awful.

She asked me to pick a movie to watch together and pointed at her DVDs above the kitchen cabinets. I have no idea why she stored them there. She's shorter than I am, and I had to step on the counter to reach. I don't remember what we watched, because she was on POF on her phone messaging someone(s) the whole time." — Ulcerlisk / Reddit

"I've posted about this before. I met somebody through POF and went out with her for coffee. Once we sat down, the first thing she asked me was how much money I made. I didn't discuss figures, but I said that I was doing alright.

She then regaled me with stories about her overdue bills and how she just didn't pay them because she didn't have the money, and how her last credit card only had a $5,000 limit, and how quickly that gets used up. She just didn't seem to have a grasp on how money, interest, and credit ratings work. And by her own admission, she had debts of tens of thousands of dollars.

She made it quite clear that she wanted somebody who would take care of her financially, and if things worked out, co-signing on a credit card for her might be in the future.

The whole date felt like a sales pitch and made me feel like a wallet on legs. I declined going back to her place afterwards.

And that was the last date I had before the one where I met the woman who became my wife." — cyrus_hunter / Reddit

"I went on a lovely first date with someone I met online. Had a great time. After we finished dinner, she discovers 15 missed calls from her family. Apparently, her mom did a Google search on me. Surprise! She found out that we were actually cousins. #worstfirstdate" — Daniel Etheridge / Twitter

"He kept talking about his friend Drew. "Drew doesn't like bananas" at the farmer's market. "Drew needs a beer" at The Barn... then it hit me. His name is Andrew. OMG, he's talking about himself. I paid for my two $1 beers and left. Second to last gym date." — KPMomma / Twitter

"Was hitting it off with this smoking hot French-speaking girl (the type they employ in nightclubs to dance in the cage or on the luminescent block), when out of the blue we stumbled into a friend of mine. The dude became somewhat a third wheel but actually managed to completely steal the girl away and started kissing in front of me after roughly 45 minutes.

Here's the bad part: dude didn't speak a word of French, and they needed/requested me to tag along to translate for each other... Needless to say, it didn't take long for me to find a way out and spend the rest of my summer angry, humiliated, and depressed. Never saw or talked to either of them since. All I know, it lasted less than a week." — MoosetheStampede / Reddit

"Went on a date with a guy I'd met through a mutual friend. Things seemed pretty normal until we were sitting and waiting for the movie to start. He got his phone out and started showing me pictures of two of his ex-girlfriends. Both women were completely naked.

I always appreciate when people throw those red flags big and proud from the start. Saves me a lot of time." — Molly-Millions / Reddit

"For our first date, I went over to his place to watch a movie. As we were making out, he reached over and gave me a wedgie not once but THREE TIMES. I left before the movie was over.

On a different first date, this guy and I were at a restaurant, and the conversation was going well until he said, 'Yeah, I don't really believe in happiness. It just seems fake to me.'" — megresell / BuzzFeed

"We were walking down the street, chatting happily after a nice meal, when she walked into a signpost. Neither of us was looking where we were going, it was just a crazy accident, but I let out one inappropriate laugh before I could stop myself, so she accused me of steering her into the post for my own amusement. Things did not recover after that." — FrightenedOfSpoons / Reddit

"I met up with a girl I'd met on OkCupid. We had planned to go to this little coffee shop. I get there about 15 minutes early and find that the place is closed inexplicably. I then return to my car to find out I had locked my keys AND phone in my car.

So I had no choice but to just sit and wait for her to show up so I could explain to her that the place is closed AND ask her to help me get my keys out of my car." — ChoppyChug / Reddit

"He invited me and a friend to play dodgeball with a group of folks I've never met. We were having an okay time. He was paying more attention to his friends, but that was fine because I had my friend to keep me occupied. We were hanging out in the parking lot before the first game was about to start when, out of nowhere, he grabbed a ball and threw it at my crotch as hard as he could. [He] screamed, 'Wham, bam, right in the clam!' I immediately turned to my friend and asked her if she was ready to leave. I said goodbye to him and his friends. I got home to a bunch of texts about how 'immature' I was behaving." — Monpetitvulcan616 / BuzzFeed

"Not that much drama, but on a first date, a girl continued to refuse to tell me her name. Like, it started like a game (I had to guess it in our exchanges, in messages on a dating site), and when I couldn't, she just started to elude the question each time I asked. On the actual date, I asked again, and she said it was not important. I thought she was really having second thoughts about me and all, but she asked for a second date later on. I didn't want to." — frenchlitgeek / Reddit

"We went to a sushi restaurant. We were seated and looking at the menu when his friend FaceTimed him. This guy actually answered at the table and proceeded to pan the camera around the restaurant (and at me) to show his friend that he was on a date. He then talked to him for a few minutes about something unimportant before asking what I was going to order." — emmataubenfeld / BuzzFeed

"We decided to meet for the first time at a local bar. When I arrived, I realized it was a sports bar, and he promptly informed me that he'd chosen the bar so he could watch the NFL playoffs. After a while, I discretely messaged my mom, 'He picked a sports bar so he could keep watching the game. Yikes.' Except I accidentally sent it to him instead. And he opened the text immediately." — trinyakmurray / BuzzFeed

"While trying to squeeze a lemon into my water, I somehow managed to spray it right into his eyes. When he pointed out that it had squirted him in the eye, I panicked, causing me to squeeze the lemon harder. It popped out of my hand and hit him in the face." — thelategreatnobody / BuzzFeed

"Driving back home after dinner, I started to sweat and feel rather ill. Soon, I was begging him to pull over, and then I leaned out the truck door and puked for several minutes. I sat silently the rest of the way, thinking my chance with this guy was blown. When we arrived at my house, he said, 'I'm going to have to use your toilet.' After he shut the bathroom door, I could hear him from two rooms away destroying the toilet with explosive diarrhea. After he finished, he immediately left. This was ten years ago, and we're married now. We still laugh about this story often." — m4cc009024 / BuzzFeed

"Good date. Having fun. Good conversation. Enjoying the nice spring weather on the porch of a Mexican restaurant. We have just asked for the check and then a woman shows up and threw her keys at his face. He pretended it didn't happen. It comes out (pretty quickly) that this was his girlfriend. They get into a right proper fight in the parking lot and the cops show up.

I can't leave because my card is inside with the server and it's taking 1000 years." — mophilda / Reddit

"Went out to eat at a nice restaurant. We started talking about dogs. I showed her a picture of my dog, and she made fun of him because he's ugly. He's definitely not the prettiest. But he can't help it. He had a rough life and wasn't treated nicely before I got him. It was really annoying, and she just made fun of my dog constantly, but what made me angry is when she made the comment, 'I'm sorry but that's a dog that I couldn't willingly take care of. He should have been put down for being that ugly.' We got into an argument, and then it was a really quiet and awkward wait on the side of the interstate waiting for a tow truck to pick us up because my car broke down." — JokelessEra / Reddit