Weekend Open Thread: Your Deal-Breaker Moments
Today’s open thread question is inspired by a comment from last weekend’s open thread. As we were all recalling our moments when we knew we found “the one” (or, one of the ones), someone asked about those moments when you become aware that he or she definitely isn’t the one. I bet we all have more than one of those moments, huh? So, please, share your stories of when you realized the person you were dating was not going to be the person you stayed with much longer. And, if you don’t feel like discussing that, tell us what you’re up to on this lovely May Day weekend.
When I had to explain to him how to make a smiley face on the computer. ::sigh:: it’s too bad. He was so pretty too.
This wasn’t a particularly great relationship to start, but anyway… I had come from out of town to visit him (we were long distance for the summer), and on the second night of my visit he went to a strip club instead of spending time with me. I didn’t find this out until a few weeks later, but I kicked him to the curb after that.
When I realized I could only tolerate having sex with him by fantasizing about my favorite musician, a friend of my bf’s, or my high school crush. Wow, over! I can’t believe it took so long for it to sink in.
I definitely do this as well at the end of a relationship….I know I need to get out when having sex just starts to feel wrong. And yet, it always just takes so long to accept “this is it”.
When he dumped me after his mom won the lottery.
(oh, and he was a flight attendant- not to rag on male flight attendants, but that was all he wanted to do with his life and it is NOT an acceptable job for a grown-ass man.)
Why not? If that’s what somebody loves doing, they should do it! Plus, I’ve always thought WestJet would be SO much fun to work for… their flight attendants are always hilarious. I don’t know what the pay is like, but I know you get crazy travel discounts!
So I just did some research and flight attendants make like minimum wage to start. That is SOOOOO crappy!!! But I also read that with seniority a flight attendant could end up making like $75K a year. That’s pretty good, that’s WAY more than my mother makes as veteran nurse of 34 years. I say, if you love your job and you are happy, do it!
i have a friend who just got hired by emirates and makes about 90k/year. also, she oves her life, travels for free and gets like 8 weeks off a year.
she gets discounted flights for herself and family… i mean, i think it’s a fine life. especially at her age (25).
this was definitely a dearwendy letter from months ago, i remember it! lol
Yo do get crazy travel discounts! The pay is okay, and you get great vacation time but all in all it’s a lot of traveling and a lot of time away from home.
And I guess I should clarify, it’s not so much the being a dude + being a flight attendant combo, it was more that he just wasn’t very ambitious, I guess.
Wait, wasn’t that a DearWendy letter? 😉
Speaking as someone whose father said I didn’t have any ambition, I say to that, “I have plenty of ambition, it’s just not the same as yours.”
Yes it was AnitaBath! I wonder if she just “outed” herself? Or is everyone else’s bf winning the lottery?
considering you sound like nothing but a gold digger, he dodged a bullet. a flight attendant is a perfectly acceptable job for anyone, regardless of gender.
1) dated this gorgeous guy who treated me really well, but once we were out at a bar with friends and I said “do you like my new earrings” and he said “yes do you like me?”. And he was serious. At the time I told him of course, because I had been his gf for the past month. But it was such a bizarre moment we didn’t last much longer.
2) finished my fourth date with a (I thought) really nice guy. We played tennis on our date. I told him that I was gonna take a shower and he asked if he could come with me. In the shower! On our FOURTH time meeting. I didnt see him after that.
3) liked a guy and had seen him a few times. Ran into him outside a bar and he was High as a kite on cocaine. Donezo.
Other dealbreakers: drug addicts, anyone who has slept with a prostitute, anyone with money management problems
Why so many purple thumbs? Those seemed like pretty normal dealbreakers to me.
Yes, a guy asks you if you like him. A guy who might be a little tipsy. A guy who treats you well and is gorgeous. The horror!
Not quite sure why you’re getting thumbs down, seems like it’s pretty realistic to not want to date a guy high on cocaine…
Maybe for #1? It read to me like he tried to make a really bad joke/attempt at conversation. It’s pretty awkward, though, but it seems kind of minor to me.
I blue-thumbed, though. Actually, could be all the drug addicts, johns and bankrupt people reading DW though.
haha. totally lol
#1 and #2 are cute and fun–positives, not dealbreakers.
#3, I get your point.
Just to update! #1 the guy had other issues as well, so that was kinda the final straw. and #2, the guy was very very forceful about wanting to take a shower with me. I should’ve explained that first. It verged on a dangerous sexual assault situation. This was also the same guy who told me that he got a boner looking at my shoulders and that he had to wear 2 pairs of tighty whities to hide it in public on our dates!!!! so there were so many dealbreakers with that creeper.
Yayayay fun open thread!
girly men
Arnold, is that you?
Once I dated a guy who got us lost in the woods all night (he was in his early 20s, I in my late teens) and when he realized we were going to have to spend the night out there, he started crying and I had to be the strong one. Maybe it’s old fashioned of me, but I want a man who will take care of me, not one I have to take care of. 😐
I’m not what you would call high-maintenance, but I’m not really a tomboy either, so it’s not that hard to be more manly than I am. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
(The second lesson that I learned: do not expect your companions to know where they are going, even if they are/claim to be familiar with the area.)
I dated a guy for about a week… he was going WAY too fast. I’d known him for all of three days when he sent me a text saying he was holding onto his pillow as he lay in bed, pretending it was me. Next morning, around 9am I woke up to a string of text messages saying “What!? You don’t text me to say good morning? I don’t even get a hello?? Aren’t I important to you?? I thought you were supposed to be my girlfriend!”
Seriously creeped me out… I ended things ASAP!
whoah, this is way creepy!
Super creepy! And rude!
I once had a guy tell me he wanted to “talk about our relationship” after meeting him twice. I was a little tipsy at the time and very surprised so I said no thank you and literally ran away.
The image of you running away after he said he wanted to talk literally made me laugh out loud! 😀
I had a guy talk about his marriage goals on the third date. Not like “I want to marry you”, but more like “I hope to be married within a year”. When I looked a little shocked, he said to me (and I’m quoting, I will never forget those words) “Don’t you think you’re getting a little old?” I was 22. No, I did not, in fact, think I was getting old. That was the last date. We wanted different things, and he thought I was old.
Yikes! I wonder how well that went over with other women.
Don’t worry. Somewhere there is a codependent girl who was ecstatic to find a man ready to tie the knot before she got old and her vagina stopped working (use it or lose it, you know!). She melded their faces together using a computer program after their second date, to see what their kids would look like, and never looked back.
Lucky him.
This made me laugh so hard!
OMG, SpaceySteph! VOTE FOR COMMENT OF THE WEEK!
I’m wondering if he was from the south haha.
Nope. From the north. Northern Canada, actually. Where the attitudes seems somewhat similar to what I know of the south (which isn’t a whole lot, so please don’t flame me if I’m wrong).
He certainly wasn’t the only person who thought if you reached the ripe old age of 23 without getting married, you should probably buy yourself a half dozen cats, call yourself a spinster, and possibly admit you were a lesbian all along. He meant well, and he was nice enough, but I wanted a phd, a career, and out of Sticksville. And to not be called old.
This is actually a bit of a problem in many parts of the South. I am 23 and headed to medical school; I have a longterm boyfriend (2 years) but I do not want a ring or wedding right now. Almost every friend I have is married or engaged, and the men are honestly WAY more desperate than the women. I get several reactions from people when they find out my boyfriend and I aren’t racing for the alter. 1) You know your looks and uterus aren’t going to last forever (my dad seems to be in this camp…) 2) Your boyfriend must not love you since he hasn’t proposed yet 3) You must be a secretly lesbian femme nazi for not wanting marriage [which, in these woods, is viewed unfavorably, shall we say]
Yeah, I’ve lived in the south for the past 2 years, and it’s sure different. I love it here, but lots of my friends who are from here have this intense pressure on themselves to get married and have kids (I’m only 20) and meanwhile, I’m just dating around, with a few relationships, and some of my friends think I’m crazy to no have this desire to settle down before I graduate or when I graduate.
I moved to the south in my late 20’s, about the time my peers in California were just thinking of settling down and getting married. It seemed like most of the guys I met here were already divorced with 1 or 2 kids. They tend to get married quickly after high school here and I was just wanting to start dating seriously. I felt like my timing was bad.
This a million times. I’m 24, my boyfriend is 25, and he’s in Pharmacy School. We’ve been together since I was 19, and for some reason since we aren’t hitched it means he doesn’t really love me, and I don’t really love him because we don’t have a child. I’m the last of my friends to not have a ring, and they give me advice on how to keep a man…even though we’ve been together 2x as long as they have.
So. Annoying.
When I realized he was an alcoholic and he thought he had no problem at all.
I broke off the engagement, but it really took me months to say to myself that he’s an alcoholic.
Good for you to have the strength to walk away and realize what is a deal breaker for you. It must have been tough to break off an engagement
Yes, it was difficult to throw away a 3 1/2 year relationship, but I know I can’t be with an alcoholic who refuses to get help. On the plus side, many months after I left him, he did get help and he’s now sober.
I was casually texting dude to see if anything could come from it. Within a week he textedasking to come over for sex. Trying to be nice and give him more than just a No I said “i cant I am getting sick” he said “thats ok I can just hit it doggystyle”.
That is totally outlandish. Wow.
Yep he had a hard time with girls who dont act like groupies
1. At a high school dance, I tell my date that I’m going to the restroom. I come out, and he had left my group of friends, and was waiting for me right outside the bathroom door.
2. I had a boyfriend who’s family was racist, but he didn’t really show it, until he drank a lot with me and my friends. I dumped his ass after that.
3. I had a boyfriend who would follow me everywhere like a lost dog. He was so lonely one day that he decided to go from church to church to see if he could find me one Sunday after drinking a lot the night before. (He never found me, but the story was enough to creep me out.)
All the same guy:
1) Asked me why on earth I wanted to be a communication major. “Isn’t that, like, the easiest major ever?”
2) I get the communication thing a lot so I let it slide until I mentioned Isaac Asimov and he didn’t know who that was. DUNZO.
I’m a nerdy snob, what can I say.
I’m a nerdy snob, what can I say.
Who the hell is Isaac Asimov?
I appreciate your absolutely non-confrontational way of phrasing that.
He’s a science fiction writer, he wrote “I, Robot”. I need a nerdy guy and any nerd worth his salt knows who Isaac Asimov is!
Ha ha…I don’t know who that is either, but hey, if he was insulting your major to begin with, why not..
First Guy: When he refused to NOT talk in a fake British accent whenever he spoke to anyone but me. He convinced everyone it was real, and lied about his whole past to hide the fact that he was just a common person, albeit an intensely intelligent and talented one, from the boonies of Tennessee. Also, he would go dumpster diving for fun and would occasionally bring me “gifts”… without washing them first or even trying to pretend they weren’t from the dumpster… and get super mad if I didn’t fawn over him out of appreciation.
Second Guy: He went to get his GED high as a freaking kite, and called me a selfish bitch when I wouldn’t let him use my apartment as a “kick-back” place for him and all his buddies to play video games and smoke weed in all day. Also called me a selfish bitch whenever I told him I didn’t want to do the 45-minute drive to his house after getting off a full day’s work in order to sleep on his parent’s couch, and then have to drive that extra 45 minutes again first thing in the morning to get back to work. Also, he would get high and cook a bunch of really weird shit in my kitchen and then leave the mess for me to discover after work.
Third Guy: My doctor told me to gain 10 pounds because I was underweight, so I started working on it (I have a problem with keeping on weight), and my boyfriend actually complained to me that my thighs were “getting too jiggly” and then went on to suggest that I should “tighten them up” by biking 5 miles before I worked the late shift as a receptionist at a hotel to bring him a home-cooked lunch. I did that for a little while, but got sick of his lack of gratitude, so I stopped doing it, and he bitched and moaned about not having a lunch to eat… when he worked in a restaurant. Also, he kept trying to make me have anal sex with him. I genuinely tried to make it work, but it was just NOT FOR ME, but he refused to accept that, nagged me and said I didn’t love him and that I was just pretending that it hurt.
Fourth Guy: Another pothead who was really good at mind games. He pretended to have a part-time job, plans to go to college, and that he could support himself. I moved in with him and once I had all my stuff there and was going to school full-time, he revealed that he was actually incredibly broke and was on food stamps. I loved him, so I started paying all the rent and buying groceries. Then, he stopped working – blaming it on his manager not giving him hours. He never cleaned the house and would scream “STOP NAGGING ME” when I would come home from work/school to find the place an utter mess. The kitchen become seriously the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. He told me he had bipolar disorder and smoked weed every day to keep himself from blowing up, but with no job he couldn’t afford it, so I started buying his weed for him – a pound and a half a month. I got super mad when I found out that he was actually re-selling it and pocketing the cash, and also letting all his friends come over while I was at work/school and smoke a lot of it and eat all the food in the fridge. He let one of them move in to the spare bedroom, and didn’t require him to pay rent or contribute to the food bill. He promised it was a temporary solution… for only a month or two until his friend got on his feet… but it turned into month after month after month of excuses. It made me incredibly mad that I was essentially supporting a bunch of freeloaders while getting nothing in return. So I moved out and went back to live in my grandparent’s house, and the only phone calls I got from my boyfriend were ones where he complained that I was a heartless bitch for leaving him with no way to pay rent or “buy medicine”. I told him to man up and take care of himself… so he broke up with me (lol!).
I’ve always had a high tolerance for BS because my mother was a bipolar, abusive freak and I can handle a lot of “crazy”. All of my boyfriends have had incredibly redeeming qualities – guy #1 was a GENIUS when it came to all things electronic, guy #2 was an astoundingly talented saxophone player and had a very high IQ, guy #3 was insanely gorgeous, intensely charismatic, and had a thirst for adventure that took me along for many experiences that I will remember and cherish forever, and guy #4 was a very talented painter with loads of charisma and would befriend anyone and everyone – he was always purely, divinely accepting and loving of everyone and everything around him (except when his bipolar disorder kicked in).
Today is my one-year anniversary with a guy who doesn’t do/have ANY deal breakers, and I am very happy to finally be in such a loving and stable relationship with such a wonderful guy 🙂
Guy #3 sounds like such an asshole!
My vote for asshole goes to #4.
Why did I get thumbs down?
Jealousy because you have trouble keeping on weight?
It can be just as difficult a problem as not being able to keep weight off, there’s just the stigma that “Oh, well, at least you’re skinny, so stfu! Your problems are not legitimate”. But there’s a lot of health problems that come with being chronically underweight, and I’ve had to go to many doctors to try and deal with the problem with limited success. I hope that that’s not why people are thumbing me down though, because thats just plain hypocritical 🙁
Off topic but is that a hedgehog in your picture? SO CUTE
Of course that’s it. It couldn’t possibly because she’s a giant pushover.
Being in bad relationships sucks, but at some point you have to look at what you yourself are bringing to the table and why you’re letting yourself get into these ridiculous situations. Breaking up with the guy over the jiggly thigh comment and suggestions for toning up? Fine. Actually doing the shit he suggested for awhile before getting fed up? Sad. One or two bad guys? Okay, that happens. Months and months with 4 different bad guys? You’re making some bad decisions.
Maybe they’re thumbing down the terrible men you’ve dated? I’m glad you’ve now found a loving and stable guy without any deal breakers!
I think everyone was on board until you tried to justify why you dated these guys in the first place. Everyone’s got a crappy ex in their history, but when you try to justify to other people, it just comes across that either you’re still trying to hold onto them or you don’t realize that the common denominator between them all is you.
I actually really like that she “justified” it (and I don’t think it was justifying, but rather explaining what she saw in them). So many times we hear the horror stories and we’re all wondering, “WTF!? WHY WERE YOU WITH THIS GUY!?” It humanizes them to be reminded that people aren’t all bad. Sure, she should have ran ran ran way sooner, but I think it’s more relateable.
I gave my own horror story down below. The guy was a possessive, controlling douche. Reading her stories reminded me of the reasons I stayed with him. More than anything it makes me determined to always take a step back in relationships and wonder how other people would view the situation. It’s much easier to ignore the bad and only focus on the good when you’re in a relationship, and sometimes it takes looking at it with the objectivity of an outsider to see how screwed up it is.
Thank you, AnitaBath – That’s exactly what I *was* trying to do. Hardly anyone is *all* bad, but I had some pretty awful things to say about those guys, so I wanted to counter with some of their virtues to show that they were real people, with wonderful merits to counter their awful faults (which is why I put up with so much bullcrap for so long with each of them – I saw their good sides and highly valued them).
Congrats on being on in a stable relationship!
When he posted a picture of himself lit from behind and said “look, can you see my halo?
That sounds funny to me!
When I was fifteen and he was eighteen, and he’d make me pay for our dates. But he’d make me hand him my money to pay for our movie tickets, because he didn’t want to look like a loser making his jail bait girlfriend pay.
Oh god, so much wrong with that relationship….
You were 15 though, I sure as heck don’t hold it against you 😛 Guys know they can only get away with that kind of douchebaggery with someone who doesn’t know yet just how douchey that is!
I was talking with my coworkers about how crazy that is that he would make you do that. One of them brought up the point that in some cultures that its what is expected (mostly african cultures) that the man is supposed to look like the provider of the family and it is an insult for the women to pay, so that if she does pay for a date then she must give him the money/credit card before, so that it looks like he is the one to pay.
But they also agree that it is rediculous for this to happen EVERY time. Once in a while it is fine for the woman to pay if she give the man the money first, but never should it be expected for the woman to ALWAYS pay and have to give the money first.
Anyway it doesnt sound like a cultural thing here, but more of just the fact that he was scum.
Man, people are purple-thumbs happy today.
Yeah, he was a full-blooded American, he had no excuse. Another time we went to the movies, I payed for everything (but gave him the money for the tickets of course). We went with my little sister who was 12, and when we got to the concession stand I asked everyone what candy they wanted. He didn’t say anything but my sister wanted sour skittles. He spent the rest of the movie FUMING because, “[I] should have known sour skittles make [his] mouth hurt!”
They probably purple thumbed it because they might not agree with the fact that it is accepted in other cultures to do that still. However I found it very enlightening information and thought I should share. I think its kinda weird, but I can see some of the reasoning behind it culturally.
@Kristina – my boyfriend sometimes acts like that too because I feel like they want to be seen as being the provider, the better half etc, taking care of us “poor little ladies” and its just something that is depicted time and time again in the past, but now the social “norm” is shifting and its more likely for women to be the stronger part of the household etc.
With one of my ex boyfriends, after we had been dating for several months, he told me he wanted to pay the entire cost of a meal whenever we went out because it made him feel good knowing that others would see him doing that. I thought it was a little weird. And the agreement was that he would pay for meals when we went out, and I would pay for alcohol, gas, and other things when we went out. And it definitely wasn’t a cultural thing for him to want to do that, but I’m sure it is for other people.
THIS! When I was 17, my 28 year-old boyfriend did the exact same thing to me. I even paid his phone bill every month and everything! I paid for both of our dinners on MY birthday!
Maybe that was why I eventually ended it after over a year. Or maybe because he hit me and broke my arm. Or maybe because he was trying to sleep with my best friend from high school. Or maybe because he demanded that I never cut my hair, never wear pants, and keep my ladyparts completely bald. Or maybe because he made me give him a BJ in the back of his car (which he lived in) at least once a day. Maybe it was all those things!
I learned a lot of lessons from my first love. 😛 I have a list of dealbreakers in my head now. I think I matured 20 years after that one-year relationship from hell! And I didn’t even TELL you what he did after I broke up with him…
When he wouldnt take a no for an answer after I refused to have sex with him because I was really ill. Apparently throwing up wasnt a turn off.
When I realized his jokes were sexist.
When he avoided my texts.
When he told me his mood is ruined for entire weekends if his sports team loses.
When his saliva got all over my face the first time we kissed.
When he kept trying to take me out on a date…and I had mono and was deathly sick in bed.
One guy I dated briefly, who seemed to be a kind of nerdy and soft-spoken type, shocked me by being an absolutely horrible kisser. He was 30 years old, and somehow thought that it was normal to SUCK ON MY LIPS AND TONGUE AS IF HE WAS TRYING TO GIVE ME A FULL FACIAL HICKEY. Like, he sucked so hard on my tongue that I would have to fight to keep it from going down his throat. And I would look in the mirror hours later, and my lips would be all black and blue and bruised! I wish I were making this up. And his personality seemed so humble, it was so bizarre and confusing I didn’t know how to handle it. But I was just out of a very serious relationship and he said all the right things, so I stuck around. God I was a moron. After only a couple weeks he sort of just pulled away out of nowhere, and I was so sad. That was my first real lesson that it takes time to really know someone. He was seriously emotionally stunted and psycho, and his kisses should have sent me racing out the door!
Hahahaha! Oh my god, he mouth assaulted you!
My current boyfriend used to do that! It’s so gross! He used to try to put his mouth completely over mine and suck on my lips when we started kissing. I would pull away mad. It’s like he was trying to drown me. Luckily he had better tricks up his sleeve and stopped doing that.
when i found out he had a son…but didn’t pay child support…even though he could spend hundreds of dollars buying drugs
When he wished me a, “Happy Walentim’s Day.” In his defense, English wasn’t his first language but he wasn’t a good guy for many reasons…
Ah yes, my story is called “Radish.”
We went to visit my parents. My mom does the crossword puzzle in the newspaper every day so the paper was open on the table to the page with all the games on it. He sat down to do the jumble… couldn’t get any of them. At one point I leaned over, saw the mix of letters and immediately realized it was “RADISH.” My sister came over and did the same. Then my mom. 10 minutes later hes still looking at this same jumble. Finally he got fed up and asked us to tell him. We did. His response? “No, it only has one D.” The three of us girls had quite a laugh at his expense which, in retrospect, was not very nice.
I don’t need a genius, but this was a little much. At this moment I realized that if I married this man, our children would have half of his moron DNA. Unfortunately after this I was still so in love with him that I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter. I think something flipped in his head too, maybe he realized he didn’t want to be dumber than his girlfriend, because that was one of the reasons cited when he dumped me a few months later.
I wonder if this will make me sound like an intelligence snob… but I just… I mean 2 Ds in radish. Really? And he was a chemistry major who had already failed general chemistry twice. Not like organic chemistry. Or the horrible Pchecm. Regular, for business majors and chem majors alike General Chemistry. There’s a difference between “not a brain surgeon” and “total idiot.”
I don’t know. I think a Chemistry major failing general chemistry twice would definitely rule someone out (I’m a biochemistry freak–love love love it), but I am not terribly concerned with spelling. I’ve known some brilliant scientists who couldn’t spell worth a darn because of dyslexia, or just poor verbal skills. And even good writers occasionally remember the spelling of a word incorrectly. So, no, misspelling “radish” would not end it for me. But the poor academic performance probably would.
I think the fact that he failed gen chem twice is a bigger strike than a misspelling. From personal experience, it’s not that hard to do poorly but it’s really hard to fail.
Probably should have been a bigger strike. But sometimes the thing that finally makes you realize all the other things are problems is something really random. Like misspelling radish.
I agree with you on that. 🙂
Here’s my story: We were eating at a fast food place. He pays for his food at the counter and then asks for a cup for water. Then he walks over to the soda fountain and fills it with soda! And I point out that he didn’t pay for it, and lied about getting water. His defense was that they made a ton of profit off of soda and there’s no way they would realize that he took any. How hard is it to man up and pay the $1? I knew I had to break up with him then but it was a few weeks later before we actually did.
Oooh! I used to hate it when people would do that when I worked fast food! The soda made a loud click too, while the water was much softer and didn’t make any noise, so it was always so obvious when they did it too.
Ha, 2 thumbs down Mara! Looks like there are some DW readers who steal soda…
I have a really hard time with algebra and had to take Algebra II twice and Algebra II THREE TIMES before I passed them (and I passed them with an A and a B, respectively). I am graduating college May 19th Summa Cum Laude and a member in good standing of the international honors society.
So you’ll forgive me if it makes me a bit prickly that you think people who have to redo classes are dumb. Not everybody can rock at everyTHING and life is not always black and white. Things happen. I think my tenacity and determination will serve me a lot better in life than algebra ever will.
Well presumably you’re not a math major, so it doesn’t matter how good you are at math. I was an engineering major and saw a lot of kids flunk English, history and didn’t care- that’s not your strong subject, you just have to squeak by and move on. On the other hand, people in my major who failed fluid mechanics multiple times, I would have thought less of them if they didn’t take the hint and find a major they could succeed at.
True enough: I’m a psychology major with a minor in writing, so math was never really presumed to be my strong point to begin with. But, though it took me several tries, I eventually got it and am pretty comfortable with it now. Maybe that fella would have eventually gotten over whatever was tripping him up, understood it, and moved on to the next step. I’m just pointing out that dedication and determination might be equally valid, if not MORE valid, character traits to have in a guy than chemistry skills. I mean, what if things get rough in the relationship? It would be nice to have a fella with a history of working things out on your side instead of someone who is used to everything working out on the first try. This is assuming he IS tenacious, though, and didn’t quit on his classes.
Just my thought on the matter, I guess. But I can understand if you really felt like he wasn’t on the same intellectual level as you and you weren’t comfortable with that.
I was an RA so I knew a lot about the resources on campus. I told him about tutoring services, a board where you could organize study groups, etc. He went maybe once or twice each time but always gave up. I would have loved to see him try.
I hope he did pass. He was young and there was still time to get his act together. I was a couple years older and looking for someone who was driven, focused, trying to succeed. I think it was the radish thing that just finally broke through the fog and said “this is not the guy for you,” not that it in itself was a terrible travesty.
The “moron DNA” part DOES make you sound like a snob. Intelligence comes in MANY forms, and evidently literary or scientific intelligence were not this guy’s strong suits, but I’m sure he has something he’s very good at. He just wasn’t right for *your* type of intellectual standards.
Seriously. I’m a terrible speller and I’m not sure I wouldn’t have spelled radish with 2 Ds. The double letter situations are the hardest for me to remember. I went to a competitive university on a full academic scholarship and graduated Magna Cum Laude with multiple other honors. I am not a moron and I bet her ex isn’t either, I just need spell-check. Sheesh.
I tried to post this earlier but my internet cut out so hopefully it won’t end up going through twice. Anyway…
Yes you do sound like an “intelligence snob”. I am about 1 year away from earning a Ph.D. in a science field and I will admit that sometimes I fail at spelling very simple words. Does that mean I’m not as smart as people who can spell them? Absolutely not. As for failing general chemisty twice, maybe it just wasn’t the right field for him. Instead of looking down your nose at him maybe you should have been supportive of him and tried to help him find out where his talents and passions would fit better. I would break up with someone too if they laughed at me and thought they were better than me. I think he’s the one who dodged the bullet on this one.
I have an even better one, but in the interest of truthfulness, its not mine, its a good friend of mine’s. I can, however, confirm that it is 100% true. He was dating a girl for about 4 years, they were going on a trip to the beach and the air conditioning in their car stopped working. So he tells her “Its so hot out I’m turning this car around and driving straight to Alaska.” So she says, “You can’t drive to Alaska!” He asks why not, and she proceeds to tell him that Alaska is an island. Near Hawaii. You know, like when you see a map of the US and Alaska and Hawaii are off to the side in a little box…
Yeah. She was NOT a keeper. She also didn’t get the Simpsons and just laughed when everyone else laughed.
There’s also a difference between “total idiot” and “mistakenly spells a word wrong”.
Not only do you sound like an intelligence snob, but you seem very stuck on the idea that only people who represent one type (your type) of intelligence are actually intelligent.
My husband is better than I am in some areas and I’m better than he is in others. He’s the smartest man I’ve ever been with, but he can’t do a lot of things as well as I can. I floundered a bit in some basic math classes in my undergrad. Now in my master’s I am excelling in advanced math and science courses, even o-chem and the horrible “pchecm” (Haha, you misspelled it! If you didn’t get that by the quotes. You know). Bad grades /=/ stupid. Motivation means a lot. Perhaps his girlfriend not ridiculing him would’ve helped.
When his roommate had to call me at 5AM to take him to the emergency room for intense stomach pain… he’d knocked on my then-boyfriend’s door to ask him to drive him, but the then-boyfriend told him to try to wait a couple of hours because he didn’t want to get up yet.
I was in high school and my boyfriend and I were watching “The Crow”. We get to the scene where they quote part of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and I say, “Ooo, The Raven!”. He turns to me obliviously dead serious and says, “No, PinkPanther, this is the crow!” Not such a big deal in and of itself, but we were on totally different pages intellectually and our conversations seriously lacked as a result…I broke up with him not long after.
When he told me hunting was more important than me…
When he stole money from me…
When he chose to spend the entire summer with his parents instead of moving in with me and starting our lives together like we had planned. He was 32 years-old.
Oh man, where do I start?
When we had been together for 4 months and I found out that a month into our relationship he and my best friend lost their virginity together on the floor of a movie theater.
When he asked if we were “official” 8 hours after meeting one another.
When I was working 2 jobs and driving a half-hour both ways every day to stay at his place (my place was 5 mins from both jobs and equidistant to his job from his place but he refused to stay over) and he continually accused me of having a relationship on the side.
When I found out that his “ex” had spent a week staying in his room while visiting when I was on a family vacation. Guess their break up wasn’t finalized yet?
When I realized that all we did was fight because every day I found out something else he lied about “because he’s an actor and that’s what actors do.”
When I told him I loved him and was really falling for him and his response was, “oh.”
How gross – movie theater floors are very nasty.
Agreed— I think I would be more upset that he did it on the floor of the movie theatre than with my best friend.
At the time (I was about to turn 14), I couldn’t decide which part I should be more upset about- the nasty movie theater floor (SO GROSS!), the fact that he cheated on me, or the fact that my best friend was that much of an insecure backstabbing bitch. I actually stayed with him for another month after finding out and then publicly dumped him in front of all of our mutual friends at a dance because he was being jealous and possessive. I went years before fully forgiving the best friend but she’s since apologized (and gone through a lot of therapy).
Once I was on a third or fourth date with this INCREDIBLY HOT guy, I was like, I can’t believe I get to sleep with this super hot guy! But while this date went on, I realized I didn’t care about anything he said and ended up just looking at him and not listening to any of the boring things he said. The fact that we couldn’t keep a decent conversation was a complete dealbreaker.
I still slept with him though, just HAD to see him naked. He later dumped me over chat and then I found out I had taken his virginity. Weird.
I feel bad for him… I think everyone deserves to have their “first” be someone who genuinely cares about them. Actually, I think everyone deserves to always have someone who legitimately cares about them if they’re being sexually intimate.
I think if you want your first time to be special, its up to you to bring it up in conversation. When I was a virgin (actually even now that I’m not I still made my bf and I wait a couple months), I always told the guy I was and that I wanted to wait until I was in a committed relationship and it might be several months.
Anyways I can’t fault marin for wanting casual sex and finding someone to have it with. If he wanted to wait until he was in love and loved he should have said so.
Thanks! It wasn’t like I pressured him into sex or anything, I had no idea he was a virgin (we were both 20 at the time I think) and it was pretty clear that we were just having casual sex. The virginity thing was really a surprise to me (I wasn’t super experienced so I did’t have much to compare with). A (male) friend of his told me after we stopped seeing each other, in a party we were all at. He was just a few feet away and I felt super embarrassed at first and then I was like, well, you may have dumped me but you’ll remember me forever!
I agree with you generally, but I think that onus falls upon *you* to make sure your first time is special. He willingly did it with her, after only a few dates, and what sounds like not very good conversation. It doesn’t sound (from this limited information) like he was expecting or arranging for some magical first time experience.
oops SpaceySteph already brought this up… carry on!
Yeah, it sounds so much like he himself cared.
If I had gone out with a super hot boring guy, I probably would have slept with him too. Just to see. Its not your fault he didn’t tell you he was a virgin and its certainly not your fault that HE dumped YOU.
I was in high school; to be more specific, I had just turned 17 and he was 18. This boy and I had been going out for 5 weeks, but had been friends for most of the school year before. I hadn’t really gauged his crazy, I suppose, but during the 5th week of our short relationship, he took me out to the football field and told me he was in love with me and he saw us having a future together.
My jaw hit the ground, and my heart sank.
I broke up with him a week later.
However, we did have a “future together.” The kind where he stalked me for 10 years, infrequently called everyone he knew trying to get my number, sent me emails when I was studying overseas and he was going through a mental breakdown, stopped in at my work (college job in grocery store, most recent job in retail), found me on facebook (where I friended him and put him on the most restricted setting possible), and repeatedly trying to introduce his subsequent lady-friends to me.
He finally leaves me alone now. Gavin de Becker’s “The Gift of Fear” is right; disengaging is sometimes the best and only solution.
That’s very scary! I’m glad things are okay for you now.
I was with a group of friends and their other friends in a club and ending up spending most of the time with this Tunisian guy. I was about to go on a trip where my phone wouldn’t work so he wanted my email address. I didn’t even know his name or care if I saw him again but I gave it to him. The next day I got an e-mail with subject line “life is beatiful & love creats the imposible.”:
“Hello Darling ,
I hope you are doing will .
It was so nice to meet u in Beijing even it was a few our before u go back i know how am lucky . and am sure i will meet u again …
Don’t be away , stay close , keep in touch because when
I know you still care about me
Will keep the sun shining .in my life .
Miss you .
If you need any Thing just let me now …am Yours truly.
Really You know its strange world …life is great when friends care about each other
We Will keep the sun shining OK ???
Miss you .. hug .. Manny kisses”
Definitely never, ever got in touch again.
Since this is an open thread, I was hoping you all could give me some book recommendations. I just spent the past couple months reading through all Dan Brown’s books and totally love them (I know, I know, they’re fluffy, they’re not great literature, etc etc). Any of you know any books that are similar to Dan Brown’s style that I could get into?
I love Dan Brown’s books!! I think another great author that you would like would be Michael Crichton or maybe Pandemic by David Kalla. I love Michael Crichton’s books, especially Timeline!
I adore Michael Crichton! His books are fun but intelligent!
I dont recall reading a Dan Brown’s book, but currently I’m on a Dean Koontz kick myself, though sometimes I find his writing (while very engaging) very out there and unreal so its a little harder for most people to like reading a lot of his books in a row. Currently my favorites of his are the “Odd Thomas” mini series type (you dont really have to read them in order but there’s three books with the same character in them – it just helps to read them in order to know exactly what happened when he has a “flashback” of sorts).
I bet you’d like Devil in the White City. Check it out.
Thanks for the suggestion. Who’s the author?
the author of Devil in the White city is Erik Larson, I am reading his book on the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, though Devil was the book actually recommended to me.
I would recomend the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson! Mistery, suspense and crazy characters!
If you’re looking for something more stimulating but still in that same adventurey style, The Eight is really good–set in Revolutionary France and 1970s Algeria.
Who’s the author?
Catherine Neville
I think someone else already mentioned it, but the Millennium Trilogy is awesome! I ended up reading the three books in about 3 days because I couldn’t put the books down 😀
I would also recommend any book written by Ken Follet (especially Pillars of the Earth and World Without End )
Finally, I also like: Belva Plain, Rosamunde Pilcher and Danielle Steel :p
Nora Roberts writing as JD Robb. Any of them – IF (capital IF) you like a little sci-fi, mystery and hot steamy sex all rolled into one. Easiset to read in order – but not totally necessary. These are my “guilty pleasure” books. You might also like Tami Hoag. I’m always a sucker for a good mystery.
Oh, I really like Tami Hoag!
On the first date, asking to look at my phone. DEAL BREAKER!
Do you have a really cool phone? 🙂 Or did he want to go through your texts and pictures and so forth? (CREEPY!)
I couldn’t pin down what was wrong with my last boyfriend for a long time. I felt like the girl from a few days ago who feels like she needs a sound reason to dump her boyfriend. He didn’t make me happy, but I was so unhappy already it was hard to tell which part was due to a bad relationship and which were my own demons. I was under-employed at a job I hated and had spent the last nine months busting my ass getting a teaching certification and applying for every teaching job I could find that I was qualified for. His roommate was one of two theatre teachers at a high school, and the other had been suspended pending investigation very suddenly. They had put off hiring anyone else until the other guy’s fate was decided, and I was waiting till the decision was made to throw my hat in the ring for the position – I have an MFA in theatre, but the guy they’d suspended was a good friend and I didn’t want to be inappropriate. One night over dinner at a restaurant, my now-ex cheerfully announced that he thought his roommate had found a replacement for the friend who had been suspended. It had never occurred to my then-boyfriend that I – his girlfriend, the one who had cried to him over near-miss interview processes and raged over my frustration that I was being denied teaching experience solely because I didn’t have teaching experience – might want to be considered for the job.
I got so upset I told him to give me the car keys and pay the bill (I’ve NEVER stormed out of a restaurant – it takes so much for me to even get angry on my own behalf). He did, and he met me at the car…without a CLUE as to why I was upset. No idea whatsoever. It took forever – I was so upset I couldn’t speak for fear of screaming at him – for him to connect the dots as to why I was angry over the teaching job it hadn’t even occurred to him to let me know was open, nevermind suggesting my name to his roommate on his own.
That night it hit me like a ton of bricks that I didn’t matter to him. He had no idea who I was as a person and what I wanted, and he didn’t care – I was only someone to be considered as it applied to him. And that was how our whole relationship worked: my needs were only to be satisfied if they coincided with his. Otherwise, it didn’t even cross his mind that I could think or feel. I was like an accessory. It was an awful conclusion to come to, but I’m ashamed to say I didn’t leave him then. I wasn’t even the one who did the leaving. But the last month of the relationship was laced with tension because I was so angry with him for completely dismissing me. Everything became fodder for that grudge afterward. I didn’t make it pleasant for him at all – I should have ended it in that restaurant and saved us both another month of anger and misery.
1. When he didnt know my last name (we had the SAME last name)
2. When he got angry at me for a service project that ran late and then complained about how much time I was spending away from him (I RUSHED all the time to spend time with him, after classes, before work, after work, etc and hardly saw any of my friends) – he was verbally abusive and very controlling/manipulative as well so even though it took me a while to smell the daisys once I did i was out of there.
3. Disrespecting my parents or their parents. (this is just a general deal breaker) I feel like you can really judge a person on how they will treat you by the way they treat their parents – specifically their mother. And if anyone says anything negative about my mom then they get the axe.
4. Lying about how naked pictures of girls got on his phone – that his brother who was 8 played with occasionally. It wasnt so much that he had naked girl pictures, but that his brother could have seen them and then he lied about how they were there one of his friends “sent them to him as a joke” then “must have saved them to his picture files later when he wasnt looking”.. oh yea ok.. then why didnt they get deleted when you took or saved a different picture? It didn’t help that their physical features where NOTHING like my physical features and he had intimacy issues anyway.
5. Calling my best friend a bitch to my face. If you dont like her then fine, say you dont like hanging out because of personal reasons, but to call her a bitch after hanging up MY CELL PHONE in the middle of me having a conversation with her, is not cool.
Ummm, did we date the same guy???
Wow, I might have to go read that thread about when people knew he was the one, cause the amount of crap you ladies have put up with from these dropkicks is astounding! My ex got flipping crazy when I went overseas to stay with a guy friend which would have been understandable but that I organised and paid for the flights before I ever met him and had no choice but to go. He then brought up the matter periodically for the next four months, forcing me to end the friendship with my overseas friend. He also used the relationship to get a posting to the army base here so he wouldn’t be sent up north then broke up with me a few weeks later. That was a stinking relationship, but I’m glad I know what not to put up with now.
When he invited me to dinner at his house for the first time, there were many boxes in the hallway. I asked if he had just moved in and he said “No my girlfriend & I just broke up but she hasn’t finished moving out yet “
Wow. Just… there are no words.
When he told me he was interested in pursuing someone else. This in itself was actually okay, because I understood being attracted to someone else and we’d only been together for a couple months.
No, it was when I said “I understand but you have to choose between me and her” and he strung me along, indecisive, for three weeks before I dumped him.
There was this one guy a few years ago that I was kind of interested in dating. We talked a lot online because we weren’t in the same city (he used to be my coworker’s best friend) and he was a pretty cool guy! However, I did have a few reservations because he was a lot older (I was 18/19 at the time, and he was 27) and way more experienced than me, a virgin who had only been kisses twice, plus he kept telling me how awesome I was all the time, which got really annoying. But I kept talking to him, trying to get a feel for how things might work out.
The deal breaker came when I posted a status of a Helen Keller quote on facebook and he commented on it saying, “Why are you listening to Helen Keller when you could listen to me, I have all FIVE of my senses.”
I’m deaf.
I commented back saying that, which he knew after all these months of talking, and he backpedaled saying, “I know, but you’re so much cuter and smarter! She’s nobody!” or something along those lines.
He was a very sarcastic person, and I knew that he was just trying to be funny, but something about it just made me think, “No….no.” Helen Keller is one of my heroes just because she was able to be famous even though she was deaf and blind, and for him to insult her felt kinda like he was insulting ME. So I decided that was it, and didn’t really talk to him after that.
Just before we were supposed to leave for a family wedding (my family, where everyone was waiting to meet my boyfriend for the first time), he picked an illogical fight with me about nothing whatsoever (I’d just started grad school in a new state, and he waited till I came back from class to accuse me of possibly, in the future, accidentally falling in love with someone else and not telling him about it *first.* Huh?! Try to parse that for a moment).
He just started shouting at me. Then, he started throwing his things into his suitcase and threatening to go home, leaving me to attend the wedding by myself. At the moment this was unfolding, my mom was waiting down the street to drive us to Maine. The incomprehensibility of his accusations and the sudden threat of humiliation in front of my family was so acute that I was weeping and trying to physically hold him back from walking out on me.
Eventually he calmed down and we went to the wedding. He met my family and was utterly charming. I was miserable, but hope that no one noticed.
When he was going to catch the bus to go home, I told him that he’d finally and severely broken my trust in him (I’d warned him due to previous threats of walking out on me) by picking a fight and threatening to abandon me before an important family event. We broke up a week later, but he refused to acknowledge it, and continued calling me and accusing me of “not working as hard on this relationship” as he was.
What relationship, I ask you?
There had been plenty of warning signs before, and I should have broken up with him earlier. But his willingness to abandon me and my family, and his use of humiliation as a weapon made it very clear what a future with him would have been like.
I almost wish I’d let him walk out before the wedding. But I wasn’t thinking clearly and I also didn’t want my relative’s celebration to be overshadowed by his/my drama.
This was part of a pattern of him picking terrible fights that reduced me to tears before any event that was of high importance to me (grad school interviews, for instance). Before that, however, he’d been a bit more subtle about it…
People like that are subtly but extremely toxic in the long run! I’m sorry you couldn’t bring yourself to get rid of him sooner – I know how hard it is to do that when you can’t pinpoint the problem or think that the problem might not be as serious as it is – but I am *so* glad you’re out of this relationship! He would have really done a horrible number on your self esteem, memories, and happiness over time.
Did we date the same guy? LOL! I dated a guy who also picked illogical terrible fights with me on important days (major holidays, the SATs, etc.). It ruined nearly every holiday for over a year.
We also broke up after he yelled at me for staring out the car window and commenting on what I saw instead of looking at him and trying to have a “meaningful” conversation. We were just driving home from dinner for God’s sake!
Ugh, the threatening to walk out, I’ve had that it’s awful. I’m glad you’re in a happy relationship now.
What was really ironic was that he threatened to leave me so often, that he didn’t believe me when I told him the relationship was over. Serves him right.
When he invited me to a party at his house, and made me walk home alone through a sketchy neighborhood instead of staying over because he wanted to “spend time with his bros”.
I had a similar experience! One of my ex’s (the one who didn’t know my last name) was robbed in a parking lot outside of one of his friends house late at night, and when I would visit at said house, I made sure to walk like I owned the place, and no one ever bothered me, but he wouldn’t ever walk me to my car after he got jumped and preferred to stay in and hang out with the guys than try to even kind of be nice and walk me in an already known dangerous area.
My boyfriend lives in a decent neighborhood, he still always watches til I get in the car and start it to make sure I get off ok. Also if we are walking close to a street he will walk on the outside to protect me from getting hit. Sweet things like that. That’s terrible to make you walk through sketchy areas alone at night, shows no concern for you. Next!
This thread is depressing.
OTOH I’ve never had anything that dramatic happen so at this very moment I don’t feel too bad about my relationships.
The nature of these sensational stories also makes things seem worse than perhaps our lives have been overall, too. My story above is one of the horror stories, but in my life I’ve had only two relationships: one bad relationship and one wonderful, peaceful, and harmonious relationship. The bad one lasted one year, and was only really bad for five months. The good one is at four years and going strong. So, despite the depressing nature of my story, I’d consider my overall dating life highly successful and trauma-light. 🙂 I hope many others on this board are in the same situation.
I find these stories pretty funny, actually… As well as interesting to see what people dump other people for. (I have never had a relationship)
And I think reading stories like this is really valuable. It helps us (and right now I’m thinking mainly of women, but of course, it would apply to men too) develop healthy boundaries and form an understanding of the dynamics of relationships outside our own small (often homogeneous) circles. I think it helps us be better equipt to deal healthily with similar problems in the future.
One of the first things my mom encouraged me to read regularly in the paper was Ann Landers. I remember being six or seven and laying on the kitchen floor reading columns and asking questions about the interpersonal problems I found within. I think it helped me immensely.
I had been dating this guy for a few months and the first time he invited me to stay the night at his house, I woke up in the morning and he’d cooked a nice breakfast – but he was wearing a nasty white t-shirt that was super thin and old and was adorned with giant yellow pit stains. That spoke way louder for me than his ability to make a good breaksfast. Deal breaker.
You broke up with a guy because he had a gross shirt? Hope you’re dating women now.
Though I’d not call it a deal breaker, I’ve always been mystified by my husband’s determination to keep old stained undershirts until they fall apart. He’s immaculate in his day to day dress, often being the only person around in a collared shirt and tie, or both and a jacket. But he won’t be convinced to toss the undershirts or to replace and convert the old ones into rags…
Perhaps guys aren’t pressured to think of their underclothes as if they might be judged by them if they got taken to the hospital!
Indeed, I can understand why this may not seem like a dealbreaker to some, and for me pehaps it was more like the straw that broke the camels back as there were lots of other things that were swaying me away from keeping this guy. But there were a few factors that took it over the edge.
1. This spoke highly about hygiene and I’m likely to not be long-term attracted to someone with bad hygiene. I have no sense of smell (won’t get into it) and he once said to me, “I’m so afraid that you will one day regain your smell and I’ll be there and you’ll be so grossed out by my stench that you’ll be gone”.
2. I forgot to mention he ate a bit of his breakfast that morning with his hands. LIke, not scoop some rice on to your fork with a finger, but full out put the untensils down and just got on in there with both hands.
3. The pit shirt just shocked me in if this what he was wearing in the early stages of trying to impress me, what would be in store 10 years down the road? I didn’t want to find out.
Your number 2 made me laugh- I eat pancakes with my hands sometimes. I rip them apart and eat them. If I want syrup, I dip them in some- I don’t pour the syrup all over them and then rip them apart. But I tend to do that with any bread-like food. Nothing runny/soupy/sticky/etc.
I have awesome eating quirks.
Wow everyone I see you all guys have your deal breakers, luckily you guys left before it got serious.
I am 22 now and I feel like a freaking idiot. I was in a relationship with this asshole for 2 1/2 yrs. I met him at school and for some reason he got me hooked. I did not act desperate or anything but we were friends for 3 months and did not want a relationship but acted like we were. He told me not to see anyone and would kiss me and hold my hand. He had a serious relationship before and his ex would always call. Sadly, I knew at the end why and I felt sorry for her.
This asswhipe disrespected her when he told me at one point he spat at her and left her downtown due to the argument. I blew that off because I thought pple make mistakes and they can change. WRONG. He chased after me and cried for me when I ignored him within the first year because of how he would talk to me. It was more like I can go to the gym but you cant or dress nice for me but don’t look nice anywhere else. Yeah, shit like that.
Then one day he decided I guess after a fight to switch the tables and blame me. Out of nowhere I made HIM this way. The dealbreaker was he did the same shit to be, not listen to me, only accept his culture and not mine, wanted me to be perfect and chase after him regardless if y fault or not. I gave up and two weeks later I went to the club and HE was there but did not approach me and saw me dance with a guy. He stalked me at my house(live an hour apart) and wanted to see me and talk. I talked to him and he blamed me for going to the club when he went out and that I should have called him. He made me feel like crap and he basically abused me emotionally. I tried to explain to him why I gave up and he acted like he wanted me and tried to be all touchy( really touchy). I asked what he wanted and he just wanted to be friends. That asshole just wanted to tag me along while he can have his single life. He is a certified ASSHOLE and will never know what he lost. Ladies once an asswhipe always an asswhipe. DO NOT be brainwashed by them!!!
Don’t feel dumb–this is all a learning curve. I’ll be the next guy won’t be able to get away with this stuff!
Back when I was 18 and a freshman in college, I met a guy at school who seemed great. We dated on and off for about 10 months. During that time, he would never call me his girlfriend and had a bunch of other girls he talked to regularly who he swore were “just friends.” Any time I wanted to see him, I had to drive an hour out to his town and meet him in a random parking lot where we would make out for a little while. He refused to come to the town where I lived or meet any of my friends or family. If any of his friends called him during that time, he wouldn’t even mention that he was with me. Want to know why? His family and all of his friends’ families were rich and I come from a poor family so he was embarrassed to be with a poor person.
All of these things were dealbreakers, so the deal was broken and I swore off men forever…which lasted about a month until I met my current boyfriend, who is the exact opposite. We have been together for almost 8 years now.
We were in a LDR and his best friend told me (on Valentine’s Day) that he kissed another girl. I asked him about it the next time he called and he finally admitted it. But the calls and emails didn’t stop. I finally got a restraining order after he called my work number and jacked off, complete with sound effects, on my voice mail.
OH my god EW!!! No wonder you got a restraining order, what a bag full of crazy!!!!
Here are all of mine:
1. When I caught him making out with my roomate.
2. Next dude, when he confessed he was gay. (This, btw, made me feel better; the other “aha” moments made me feel bad.)
3. When I realized I had more fun drinking alone.
4. When I realized I preferred babysitting.
5. When he dumped me. (Recently, btw, I tend not to realize that “he is not the one” until this happens. I’m losing my game.)
I had been dating a guy for a few weeks. For some odd reason the old Jeep he said that ran like a champ never left his driveway because I was the one doing all the driving. He asked me to take him to the store to buy budweiser right before he walks in the store he goes “So?” I say, “So what?” he then says “Aren’t you going to give me any money?”
Yeah okay I did buy him the damn beer but after that night I never talked to his ads again.
*ass. Stupid iPhone.
Boyfriend #1: When I realized that we never did anything beyond sitting on his couch watching anime. No dates or anything, just AH! My Goddess! every night we hung out. So I broke up with him ’cause I really don’t do casual dating.
Girlfriend #1: Had to break up with her when I realized that she was doing hard drugs. I’m fine with weed, do whatever you want, but I’m not okay with stuff like meth (a HUGE problem in my area). Especially after I found out she was pregnant.
Boyfriend #2: My first really serious boyfriend, “Dude”. I honestly loved this guy, and had been crushing on him for years.We had that lots of teasing “Oh I totally hate him, he’s a jerk,” thing going on for a couple years before we started dating.It was great for the first 6 months, but he kept mentioning things like how he doesn’t believe relationships ever last past high school, and refused to have sex with me because he “didn’t want to hurt me.” There was another guy I also liked who I knew liked me back, and since things didn’t seem like they’d be long-term with the guy I was dating, I broke up with him. I was going to wait a few weeks until I started going out with new guy, partly so I could have some time to be sad about how things didn’t work out with “Dude” and partly to make sure I still liked new guy even when I wasn’t in an unhappy relationship. Well, Dude asked me to take him back, and I said no, because I didn’t think things would work out between us and there was someone else I liked so it wouldn’t be fair to Dude. Aaaaand that’s when he sent me a 40 page long email of nothing but the word WHORE in bold, italicized and underlined bright red font. That turned my “No, I wish we would could but I don’t think it’ll work out,” to “die in a fire, you asshole”.
The positive side is that I’ve been dating New Guy for3 years solid now and have never been happier.
Age 20: When he went to jail. AGAIN. Poor decision-making moments happen… That’s what probation is for. What’s that?? You can’t behave like a normal law-abiding citizen for a year, follow some very simple guidelines, and pay a few fines? Wait a sec… You’re the victim!? What about the people who’s cars you broke into, stealing and pawning their possessions? THEY seem like the real victims in this situation, but maybe that’s just me… Okay, it’s just me. Have fun in jail!! Hope you meet some awesome future pen pals!! And stop contacting me. We have nothing to talk about.
He doesn’t live in Cleveland, does he? I really want my car radio back. 😉
I dated a guy who had a football scholarship at the college we went to…until he stole a bunch of media equipment from a coupleof the campus coffeehouses during a massive blackout. Classes had been canceled because there were no lights so I called to see if he wanted to meet me in front of the coffee shop by my dorm. His phone was off, and the coffee shop was closed, but as it turned out he was there after all.
We weren’t that serious, so there wasn’t a moment I even thought he might be the one – it was just a funny story I get to tell now.
I was on a date with someone I had been friends, and we both were mutually interested. He knew I have many medical problems, but when it actually came up between us. And I described something in more detail. He said he could “learn” to deal with it. With this expression that just killed anything we could have had.
Also other things, but that was a big one.
Yes! I’m deaf, but wear a cochlear implant, so I can hear really well. If a guy said something like he could “learn to deal with it,” I would probably put the brakes on that relationship. It’s not like I need special care or anything, just sometimes people have to repeat themselves with me.
As a matter of fact, my best friend who is also deaf with a cochlear implant, is/was dating this guy and she told him she wanted to take it slow and he said that was fine because he had never dated a girl who was deaf before and wanted to see how that went before becoming more serious. This really kind of shocked her and made her second-guess him, and I would have done the same as well.
Wow. Some people are so damn weird about – for lack of a better term, forgive me if it sounds condescending – people with special needs. I was really lucky in college to become friends with a girl who had severe cerebral palsy who totally called me out for walking on eggshells around her. The assumption I think a lot of people make – and also the jackasses you and your friend were making – is that to date you would be to constantly have to care for you. My friend J finally pointed out to me that she had been living on her own for six years and wasn’t going to die if I didn’t open a door for her, but she wouldn’t assume I thought she was helpless if I offered to do so, so I should stop having a stroke everytime we got close to something that would be an obstacle.
I hope you or your friend don’t encounter that sort of jackassery often, but maybe if it comes up and you really don’t care if you see the guy again you should say you’ve never dated a guy with such a fat ass/big nose/gross teeth and want to see how it goes before you get more serious. Bah! Stupid people.
Yeah, well people just have assumptions about people with handicaps. In my case, people always ask me where I’m from because my accent makes me sound like I’m from another country, especially at my job. It’s annoying because people will act like I’m dumb when I’m not at all. I think a lot of people don’t generally meet someone like me, someone who functions so well in normal society. A lot of deaf people will go to special schools for the deaf and use sign language and not use hearing aids, and I never did any of those things. So people assume that I know sign language because I’m deaf which is always kind of amusing when they start signing things to me and I have no idea what they are saying.
My current boyfriend is pretty understanding about it, although I did kind of have to train him a little bit. Now it’s just something that we can laugh about, like when he says something and I didn’t understand so I say, “Wolfman?” when he said something totally different. Then he forgets what he originally said! Haha!
Haha! My friend J was sometimes difficult to understand and always difficult to hear because she didn’t have a whole lot of control over her diaphragm, and as a result some of the overbearing theatre kids and professors would run over her when she talked sometimes. No one ever meant it to be mean, it’s just they’re a very loud and opinionated bunch. She devised this absolutely brilliant crowd control method. She had a copy of the pop-up Kama Sutra (both hilarious and informative if you ever find a copy), and she started bringing it to class in her backpack. Anytime we got too loud, she’d yank out the book, flip to a page and start playing with the figures. Surefire way to grab attention, it made everyone laugh, and we learned really quickly that was her very polite way of saying “Shut up and let me talk, assholes!”
There were many dealbreakers with my ex, and I stayed in the relationship for far too long. However, the one that finally made me walk out the door was when he was yelling at me and making threatening gestures, which frightened me, and I grabbed a pair of scissors and held them out in front of me to protect myself. His response (and the final dealbreaker) was when he sarcastically said that I should’ve grabbed the box cutters, because they made a better weapon.
When I went on one date with him & he then felt the need everyday after that to text me 24/7, call me begging to hang out, & then get upset when I said I had plans…Leech much?!?!
I dated a guy who was an all-around bad man, but I didn’t know that when I started dating him. We were always on/off but I was so entrapped by him and wanting someone to love me that I stayed. Everyone told me to leave him, but when I did he wold get very apologetic and swore he changed. He never wanted to leave the house and constantly told me I was too fat/ too thin/ not pretty enough/ too young/ too needy/ Not around enough… I was never ok. He also told me I wasn’t his girlfriend, then that I was when we broke up, then that he needed space… probably every red flag in the book. Very manipulative. The deal breaker came when he said he couldn’t hang out with me about a month after his friend violently raped me at a party because he was angry that I was dating his friend (he was also a previous ex, I didn’t know they were that good of friends.) He told me he couldn’t hang out but instead of talking to me texted me for 2 days about how the drugs were changing him and I was a whore who was sleeping around behind his back. Meanwhile, his friend was threatening to kill me if I told anyone. I didn’t know he was doing drugs because when we first started dating almost 2 years earlier he had quit and been sober for over 6 months. After we broke up he tried to get in contact with me again and again but I would never talk to him. I met my boyfriend now who is the complete opposite and would never hurt me or allow anyone else to. But it took a long time for me to get over what this friend did and the lack of support he gave me. It felt like all the people I trusted turned against me in one night, so I left everyone from that friend group and focused on all the positive people in my life. My life has changed for the better in so many ways. It is very tough to share this story, but I do so hoping that it could help someone else or let girls know what red flags can come to.
In my last year of college I started dating a 31-year-old man (9 years my senior!) I thought this would be a great spring fling before I graduated…he was sexy, he had a cute foreign accent, and he seemed to have his shit together.
Since we were only casually dating, I ignored any red flags UNTIL about two months in. He sent me a cute message early in the week announcing that he had planned a romantic surprise date for the following Friday. Exciting, right? I love surprises! Maybe a fancy dinner, salsa dancing, a long walk on the beach? Possibilities were endless.
On that Friday afternoon he texted to see if I could pick up some food/wine and bring some blankets for our romantic date. This did not bother me, though it seemed to remove some of the surprise. When I arrived at his house, he asked if I could drive because he was too tired. This only slightly bothered me, as the element of surprise was now fading even faster.
So I drove us through over an hour of L.A. Friday rush hour traffic to the surprise date, trying not to show my growing annoyance. The real kicker was when we reached our location! This date he planned was an outdoor play in the park…to which entry was completely FREE.
On our one Grand Surprise Romantic Date, I paid for everything and did over 2 hours of driving. Still pissed off about that one.
Was the play good at least?
Yes, the play was lovely. And my taste in food and wine was impeccable 😉
It’s extremely sad to me how many women don’t seem to know how they deserve to be treated by men, just as a fellow human beings, until after a great guy comes along and helps them put previous poor treatment into perspective. I know it’s a learning curve, but I don’t think it should have to be this hard.
Ladies, tell your daughters these stories. If not the gory details, then at least convey the sentiments. No matter how fat/thin/tall/smart/whatever you are, every human being deserves to be treated with a baseline of respect. Even if the guy is not a right match for you, there is absolutely no excuse for cruel, manipulative behavior. There are so many worse things than just being on your own for a while. No one deserves to be emotionally, physically, or in any other way abused.
Having a good father figure also helps a lot …
I’d been out with this guy a few times and wasn’t sure if I liked him or not. The deal breaker that convinced me that I didn’t like him was one night we went to get a movie at Blockbuster and stopped a convenience store to get some snacks. He got in line without me, paid for his stuff, then came back to where I was in line and told me he’d be waiting in the car. I didn’t really care that he didn’t pay for my stuff, but you can’t even wait in line with me?! There were only like 2 people in front of me!!
When did I realize he wasn’t the one:
When we were having relationship problems and we took off from each other. When a week later we talked to check in: I had been on one date, and he had already had sex with another girl. Apparently, he met this girl on a chat room and drove 4 hours to have sex with her and then left right after.
This was after having problems for 2 years. I guess this was the exact moment that I knew he wasn’t the one. Hindsight is 20/20 and there were other moments I should have considered like when he told me he wanted to see other women, when he had that emotional affair, when he got crazy jealous over my best guy friend, when he didn’t like for me to go out/travel with my friends although begged me to go to Miami on spring break with his buds. I let him go because I wanted him to start doing the same, but we broke up a few months later, so I guess its a moot point. I’ve already been to South America and I’m going to Vegas in the fall. BOO-YA!
When he… hacked into my work and personal email & when he had to know where I was at all times. Yeah… I got out after that.
When, after 3 1/2 years together, he told me he wanted to go and look at rings and I felt sick and panicky instead of all those normal emotions one should feel.
I have a similar story! My ex proposed to me on April Fools day as a joke (yeah, what a winner). We had been together almost two years and lived together, all that junk. Anyway, for the second I thought he was serious I was more horrified than I’d ever been in my life. My heart sank, I felt absolutely ill. And I had a sick-to-my-stomach hangover for a week after just thinking about it!
Yeah, we didn’t last long after that.
When my grandmother died and all he could say was, “I don’t know what to tell you, no one close to me has ever died.” Then proceeded to not call me back again and avoided me until after the funeral.
BF#1: After six years together, I realized he would NEVER make anything of himself. I was 24 and had just completed my M.A. and he’s ten years older than I am and has never even finished his A.A. or kept a job or was fiscally responsible or stopped talking about how great high school was.
BF#2: When I realized I was the doppelganger for his first girl friend who left him. I’ve never met a woman who looked so much like me. Spooky.
BF#3: I was angry enough about him repeating the nasty things his friends said about me. Then I found out that he was the one instigating the Bash Pinky Festivities. This twit will pop back up on the radar befuddled as to why I refuse to interact with him.
BF#4: Never knew when I was joking.
BF#5: Nothing. I married that one.
Hmm…. Lets see.
1. When she stood me up on multiple occasions with out calling me. Granted there was usually a good reason behind it. How hard is it to call someone and let them know you can’t make, or to respond when they text to see if you are ok. The first couple of times I almost started calling hospitals. Later though, I didn’t even bother. How twisted is that?
2. When she went back to her ex without ever letting me know it was over. Seriously, not even a text message!?
Boy am I glad I didn’t end up with her. She was hotter than the sun, but she had zero respect for anyone but herself. In a twisted way I was happy when I found out the ex she went back to stole the ADD medication she was dependent on, and then had to go for a month without it. It was a narcotic and they wouldn’t fill another prescription until the other was up. Then she took him back and soon after he broke up with her.
When he refused to help carry in the groceries from the car.
When I had a 104 fever for a week and a half straight and he never once made me something to eat or brought me something to drink even though I was too weak to stand up (attempts brought on blacking out spells). I almost dehydrated to death before my parents drove down from Canada to take care of me. Why didn’t I move out there and then! Why!
Wait… he LIVED with you and he didn’t bring you anything to eat or drink???? That’s awful.
My most recent ex probably had some of the worst blow ups I’ve ever experienced. On the outside, he seems like a pretty stable guy (he’s a scientist like me, has money saved for grad school, thinks through life decisions, etc.) but when it comes to jealously he turns into a complete lunatic.
He would regularly blow up on me for being flirty- this included laughing at guys too much (who were my friends/coworkers), being nice to the mechanic that fixed my car, or whatever got to him on Tuesday. And it was always my fault for laughing too much, wearing a shirt that implied I had cleavage (it was a tank top UNDER a button down plaid shirt-I wear a D, I can’t help it!), or for having too many male friends. He always had to prepare himself to meet any guy from my past and acted nuts over the slightest smile. He also constantly needed to know where I was going- if I ignored his texts, he would bombard me with phone calls until I answered. As a note: I’ve always kind of been a tomboy, I wear t-shirts & jeans to work most days (I work in a lab, it’s super casual), and I’m always the girl that gets put in the “just friends” category. He was really nice to me otherwise and took ridiculously good care of me, so I put up with all of this for a long time.
Then he blew up on me at 7:30 in the morning on the day I was throwing my friend’s bridal shower at my house. My friend had come in town the night before (from Georgia, I live in Virginia) and wanted to get a few beers before the wedding stuff got started. I had no idea that she had also invited out some other male friends of hers to come out, but I had met most of them here and there (but had never been interested in them) so it wasn’t a big deal. My boyfriend completely lost it when he found out I drank beer with some other guys without warning him first so he could “prepare himself” for whatever bad behavior I’d do. We had a terrible fight that night and I hung up the phone on him.
I answered the phone the next morning while I was getting my house ready for my friend’s 20+ relatives and friends. He started yelling at me, calling me a whore for being out with other men without him, etc. That was it. I was done with that control freak right then. It was completely inconsiderate (I was doing something for my friend’s wedding and did no have time to deal with him) and obnoxious. What an ass…
We had been dating 10 months and he was the first man I ever loved. He had started lying to me about his drug usage a month earlier and I had broken up him as a result. Reluctantly I agreed to take him back on the condition he only smoke pot and that he tell me the truth. I remember we were lying in his bed together and I looked at him crying about how much he loved, how he had almost lost me, telling me how sorry he was. He was just so pathetic, like a little boy, I remember asking myself so this is the man you’re going to marry? This is the guy that God has chosen for you? I could not believe it.
It took almost two more months but leaving him was one of the best things I have ever done.
When he got up at a party and danced. I knew it was over…