My worst date ever lasted 45 minutes. It was obvious within the first 10 that we weren’t compatible, and the guy just wouldn’t stop complaining about his job and had a weird vibe overall. At first I thought about being polite and powering through the next few hours, but after catching him watching the game on the bar’s TV multiple times, I ended up cutting it short and getting out of these as soon as possible. Sometimes it’s just not worth it.

“Powering through the next few hours” — whoa, @quark, your dates are super long! Ha. I think of first dates from online more as a sanity/super basic compatibility check. I rarely do anything more than drinks for the first date, so the bad dates usually last about an hour. I’ve had a few that have gone really well and turned into marathon dates. Haha. Saturday’s lasted maybe an hour and a half. Unless something about the guy is super “off” — which luckily hasn’t happened to me — I figure I can make it through a drink and some small talk. Maybe a year or so ago I went out on a blind date that fell super flat and I was horrified when he ordered a second drink.

I haven’t dealt with any outwardly bad dates. But am dealing with a guy who won’t leave me alone! We talked for a couple weeks and he never seemed to want or be able to commit to a date/first meet. So I finally called him out after he veered around my suggestion of him coming into town (40 min outside the city) for a comedy show after he said he had a free night. He finally said going out of town wasn’t a good idea for him because he had long hours during the tax season and at the end of the work day didn’t want to venture far from home. So I explained how I needed to know these details to help organize a time that worked for us. At that point I was tired of waiting to set a date up, and he had grated me a bit based on our initial conversations. So I wasn’t interested anymore anyways. Told him that and assumed it would end there. Nope. For about a week after he messaged me a couple times through whatsapp and finally I told him ‘sorry it didn’t workmout between us, but I don’t think it is a good idea to continue talking.’ So he saw my message but didn’t respond to it. That was last week. Then this morning he texts me a joke meme! So I had to tell him again to leave me alone and respect my decision to stop talking! This is ridiculous. He hasn’t responded yet to that. Not sure if he will. But how disrespectful to totally ignore my request to stop talking. I was thinking last night I need to get rid of his number and was going to today, then got this text.

@Cleopatrat_30 People are busy, so I know it can be hard to schedule a time/place to meet, but I’m like you and will walk away without meeting if it gets to the point where coordinating is more effort than it’s worth. If he reaches out again, I’d block him. FWIW, if he reaches out again despite telling him several times that you are no longer interested, you can pretty safely file him away under “bullets dodged.”

You guys…. I’m leaving for my 6-day-long date in the UK in 48 hours !!!!!

I’m SO excited 🙂 But also a bit nervous too.