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?" BuzzFeed Community users also shared their two cents and disastrous dating stories, and oooooof. Here are some of the wildest anecdotes:
1. "I had a date that ended in a fight because the server was a friend of mine from high school I hadn't seen in a while. It was just complete happenstance she was our server, and of course I made polite conversation and tipped her well. And, to be clear, she didn't hang out by the table and disrupt the date. She came by about what an attentive server should. My date BLEW UP when we got to the car. Most dates I've had have been lovely, even when they didn't work out, but that one was not so much."
2. "We went for a walk on the beach and were having a great time until he suddenly looked down and said, 'WOW! You have ugly feet!' I told him not to bother taking me home; I’d walk on my ugly feet. He called days later and tried to get another date."
3. "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."
4. "Dinner. Movie. Went back to her place, and there it was. I only have two words: pet gator. Nope. I'm out."
5. "He seemed like a cool guy, then he showed me his poo blog."
6. "We were friends for months and ended up going on a date when we both ended up single at the same time. He picked me up and we saw a movie. When the movie started, I felt super nauseous and left. I didn’t even make it to the bathroom, and I vomited in a trash can. I thought it would pass, but when I felt the sickness coming again, I went to leave the movie theatre and fainted. Next thing I remember, I was on an ambulance gurney begging my date not to leave me alone and asking him to please call my dad to have him meet us at the hospital. No second date."
7. "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."
8. "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."
9. "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."
10. "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."
11. "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.'"
12. "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."
13. "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."
14. "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."
15. "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."
16. "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.'"
17. "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."
18. "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."
19. "He said I made one of his dreams come true by going on a date with him because he always wanted to date an Asian. 1.) I’m not Asian. 2.) More importantly, ew, don’t fetishize people. While on the same date, he told me he was an alcoholic and he planned to leave and get drunk. There was no second date, but he did call and ask if it was because of the alcohol thing."
20. "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."
21. "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."
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. "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."
24. "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."
25. "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."
26. “'Dinosaurs never existed. Fossils are the devil's way of testing our faith.' Check, please."
27. "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."
28. "A guy told me all about his large family beach vacation every August. Then, he winked and told me if I played my cards right, I could be there too. First and last date (in March), followed by light stalking."
29. "I met a man on a dating site. On our first telephone conversation, he asked me if I was spontaneous, and I said that I could be, so he asked me to meet him at the movies that night. I agreed. When I got there, I saw him first and he was as handsome as his pictures. He saw me, walked over, and told me how much he liked my breasts. I know I should have turned around and left right then, but for some reason, I didn't. We went on to watch one of the most violent movies I've ever seen, his choice, that he talked all through. He told me that he was in the Afghanistan war and had 17 kills (ex-marine, now a sheriff's deputy). The next day, he called to tell me how big his penis was. Blocked."
"Two weeks later, I went out with someone else from the same site. We were having drinks and appetizers when he asked if he could kiss me. I was enjoying myself, so I thought why not! Well, it felt like he was trying to suck my soul out of my body from my mouth. He then suggested that I should sit on his face. No thanks. BLOCKED."
30. "I had a crush on a guy I worked with, and we agreed to go to a movie together. I showed up to the movie, and he brought his brother with him! But, that wasn’t the worst part. I noticed he seemed distant most of the night (he didn’t even sit next to me at the movie), and then he said he thought his brother and I would make a good match! The whole thing was a set-up. I had never even met his brother until then."
31. "He showed up remarkably, extravagantly, supernaturally high."
32. "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."
33. "I can't remember what led to this, but the guy I was on a coffee date with made a joke about aliens anal-probing my new kitten. It made me so uncomfortable, I texted a friend to call me pretending their was an emergency so I could leave. I later thought that maybe I was overreacting, so I was willing to give the guy another chance. Just before our second date, he texted me saying, 'I can't wait to taste your kitten.' Obviously, the second date never happened."
34. "She wouldn’t stop talking about her ex. Her ex had the same name as me, which she told me several times over the course of the date. Eventually, she said, 'We’ll have to call you something else. I’ll give you a nickname!' I said, 'No...? It’s my name.' She didn’t understand why I was bothered."
35. "I decided I wanted to see Oculus with a guy I met on a dating app. At that time, I was deep in an anxiety disorder and didn't watch scary movies, but the premise of Oculus intrigued me and I love Katee Sackhoff. So, we met up at the theater, watched the movie, and I immediately had a panic attack upon leaving the theater because the movie messed me up so badly. I was so embarrassed that even though he was really sweet, fun, and had pretty blue eyes, I ended up bowing out of any other dates."
36. And: "It was my first date after a 4-year relationship. Things were going OK, but he wouldn't talk much. He'd just kind of stare at me with this weird look in his eye and slight smirk. I kept talking to fill in space. About halfway through, I realized that it wasn't going to work out, so I just sipped my hot coffee and made as much small talk as I could keep up until the coffee was cool enough to chug (and I could get the hell out). So, I took my last sips and started getting up, saying, 'Oh crap, I completely forgot I have to get up early tomorrow!' He followed me to my car, opened my door for me, then grabbed me by the waist and hugged me super hard and said he wasn't going to let go until I agreed to a second date. I was terrified, and I'm all 'fight' when it comes to 'fight or flight', I hit my knee into his inner thigh hard enough to get him to let me go. Blocked, deleted, removed, ICK."
Aggghhh. I thought dating was supposed to be fun?! This sounds like a straight-up nightmare, OMG. Do you have any disastrous first-date stories?
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.