Reddit user u/Fun_Willingness5995 posed the question, "What was a time in which a date was going well, but the other person ruined it?" The thread quickly filled with hundreds of first date horror stories that earnestly made me ask, "How do people like this exist?" Yeah, it's that bad. Here are some of the wildest anecdotes:
1. "I was out with a guy having a lovely time, and he made a comment about a copper bangle bracelet I was wearing. I told him that it was really special to me because I got it during my semester abroad in South Africa from a local. It was a solid copper band, but in the middle, there was copper wire woven around. He asked to take a closer look, so I took it off and handed it to him. He then snapped it in half, thinking the copper wire was a spring. I was visibly upset, and he said it was a 'sign' that I needed to move on from my trip and stop living in the past. I never spoke to him again."
2. "It was a first date in a little restaurant. She was a bit late and had two shopping bags, even though we were going to a film after dinner, but OK. It was a Saturday afternoon, so she could've had to do some shopping. The meal was nice, the conversation was interesting, and she looked cute. Then, the police arrived and arrested her because she had shoplifted, and security cameras caught her."
3. "The date started normal and fine. I was visiting town and wanted to have some fun, and I found him on Tinder. He was taking me to a bunch of different bars in the area that he liked. Then, randomly, halfway through, while walking to another bar, he did a 180 and started berating me and getting snarky, saying, 'You women hate short guys like us.' What???? He was short, yes, but I hadn’t said anything?? I didn’t draw any attention to something that didn’t seem to matter. And, I was ON the date! I chose to go out with him! We were having fun! It’s not like he’d tried anything and I turned him down. To this day, I'm baffled as to what made him snap."
"Was he expecting me to randomly throw myself at him at some point? Was I supposed to try to cut the date short and insist on sleeping with him right then and there, or what? I just stood there while he gave me, the woman who gave him a chance, crap for stuff other women apparently made him feel. Then, I tearfully said, 'I thought we were having fun, but thanks for making me feel like sh*t,' and I literally ran away, leaving him standing in the street. Then, I blocked him like the madman he was. I felt bad for him, but not enough to accept abuse when I did nothing to deserve it. Ask me why I only dated tall, confident men after that."
4. "He laughed at my joke and banged his knee against the table, which caused him to let out a fart. The diners at the neighboring table heard it and recoiled, so he started to speak louder like he was trying to cover up the stench. It was the equivalent of smelling something strange and taking your AirPods out."
5. "We had dinner, and all was going well. We were wandering down the dark sidewalk, engaged in conversation, when she walked straight into a signpost that neither of us noticed. I let out one nervous laugh before I could stop it, and she accused me of engineering the event for my own amusement."
6. "Our first date was amazing. I still reminisce about how incredible that night was and how incredible I thought my life was about to become. But, the afternoon before what was supposed to be our second date, I got a voicemail that said, 'I know you went out with my fiancée last night. I'm not mad at you. I'm sure you didn't know I existed, but I do, and I'd appreciate it if you stopped seeing her.'"
7. "He seemed like a cool guy, then he showed me his poo blog."
8. "Dinner. Movie. Went back to her place, and there it was. I only have two words: pet gator. Nope. I'm out."
9. "Not me, but a friend of mine. This was when we were around 22 or 23. She had a first date with a guy, and they were meeting at a restaurant for dinner. She got there and saw not only him, but two other people at their table. Turns out, he invited his parents to their date! So she, of course, excused herself to go to the bathroom and then just bounced. Talk about awkward. I have never laughed as hard as I did when she recounted her evening."
10. "The first 80% of the date was a nice, yet awkward, cute first date. Then, at the end, she pulled out her phone and started fighting with people on Twitter and narrating all of it. It was a long drive back."
11. "I asked out an exchange student my first week of college. She was gorgeous (way out of my league), and my jaw dropped when she accepted. Two days later, I picked her up at her dorm in my fairly new Mustang. She seemed quiet, and I thought it was just shyness. We were on the highway doing 55 when she suddenly rolled down the window and VOMITED ALL OVER THE OUTSIDE OF THE CAR. Like...a lot. I think she ate a gallon of vegetable soup before the date or something. I took her back to her dorm, and she ran out of the car, leaving me to clean things up. I took the car to a car wash, and it actually faded the paint. This was before cellphones, so I tried finding her to talk to her after that, but I never saw her again. That was back in 1990, and to this day, I have no idea what happened."
12. "I wish this was made up. I had an amazing date and went back to his place. The dude had a car bed...and a small, heart-shaped bed 'for the ladies.'"
13. "He made a weird, sexual joke when we were buying food/snacks. He said something like, ‘I’ll give you a snack later,’ and started laughing to himself quite loudly. Other people heard the whole thing, too. It made me super uncomfortable because I’m not into stuff like that, and I lost all interest in him."
14. "She got jealous because I was nice to the waitress."
15. "I met this guy off of a site. He was nice, but a little awkward, and he couldn't help but show me his Twitch stream gameplays for 25 minutes straight and kept looking at me to see my reaction. It might've been okay as a conversation starter because I love gaming, but there's only so much of watching someone else's stream with no funny commentary or context one can handle before mentally checking out."
16. "We met on a dating app in college during the last week before winter break. We realized we lived close to each other back home, so we met in a nearby downtown area to get coffee. After the coffee, we decided to take a walk around the city. Being winter, it was a snowy day with ice on the ground. At some point during our walk, I made a joke, and she playfully pushed my arm. Unfortunately, I happened to be standing on a sheet of black ice at the time. I slipped and tore both my ACL and MCL and ended up spending the next six months on crutches. It wasn’t really her fault, of course, but that definitely ruined the date."
17. "I went on a date last night, and it was going really well until dessert when he said, 'God, I can’t wait to put kids in you.' We hadn’t even talked about kids at that point."
18. "This blonde, white dude built like Abraham Lincoln took me salsa dancing because he had just taken a lesson. I was having a lot of fun at first because I just went with the flow, but he quickly began insisting on teaching me to salsa dance, which I did not sign up for. Mind you, this was a Saturday night at a salsa club, not a class, and he had only ever taken one lesson (which I would now argue he didn’t actually take). I don’t know how long I was on that dance floor, but I became painfully aware of time as each song wound down and I tried to take a seat, only for him to '5, 6, 7, 8' me back in. It was a combination of him manhandling me into the correct positioning, screaming instructions with his hot breath into my ear over the music, and pirouetting in circles around me, while trying to sexy-smolder at me."
19. "I was on a date with a newly divorced woman. We were having a nice dinner and getting to know each other before it turned awkward. She didn't tell me she had kids until we were eating dinner, and she began moving things way too fast. She started talking about me meeting her kids right away, moving in together, etc. This was on our first date, and I didn't want to be anybody's step-parent, much less get a U-Haul so quickly. We finished our dinner and parted ways amicably after a heart-to-heart, and there were no hard feelings. She simply got carried away with the excitement of being single and going out with new people. She agreed that she needed to let the ink dry on her divorce a little longer and take her time before introducing new people to her children. We fell out of contact soon after."
20. "I took a girl to our city's zoo. During the winter, they have Christmas lights everywhere, a light show, and even a ferris wheel. It's a really cute winter date idea. Well, we were on the ferris wheel looking down on all the cute lights and holding hands. I asked her if she was having a good time. She looked at me nervously and said, 'I’ve been talking to someone else. I told him about our date, and he decided to beat you to it.' It was an awkward wait for the ride to be over."
21. "We were on a date and having a good time (at least I thought so) until one of her friends showed up and invited her to a band playing across the street. She said that sounded awesome, and left. No apology, invitation, reschedule, or anything. I get it if you weren't enjoying the date, but some common courtesy would've been nice."
22. "I'll start off by saying that I was on a date with a guy who was very handsome, smart, funny, and respectful. Our coffee date was going well. We were laughing and everything...until his ex showed up. He saw her and started getting paranoid. He kept saying, 'We gotta get out of here. We gotta get out of here,' and was just freaking out. Of course, we left, but I never went out with him again."
23. "As soon as he found out I was Latina (apparently, I didn't look nor sound like whatever Latino stereotype he had in his head), he said, 'Latina!? CALIENTE!!!' and quickly started making sexual remarks and talking about how he loves Latinas 'because they're so hot, spicy, sexual.' Nope'd the heck out of there immediately."
24. "He started telling me about how it's normal for men to sleep with other women when they're not sexually satisfied in a relationship without it being considered cheating. Yes, he did say it doesn't work the same way for unsatisfied women."
25. “'Dinosaurs never existed. Fossils are the devil's way of testing our faith.' Check, please."
26. And: "He showed up remarkably, extravagantly, supernaturally high."
Oh...my...WORD. Have you ever been on a date with someone who totally ruined the vibe? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.