Sometimes, we can laugh off a bad date and move on—but some dates are SO cringe-worthy that you can't get away fast enough. Here, people share their tales of when they got hit with the “ick” and took a nosedive into “never again” land.
1. It Got Down To The Wire
I went out with a guy who would not stop asking me questions, but somehow I couldn’t get him to share anything about himself. Eventually, I said, “Hey, I appreciate that you want to get to know me, but I’d like to hear about you too. What do you like to do in your free time?” He paused for a moment, stared at me, and then started naming TV shows and asking if I’d seen them.
I hadn’t. Finally, he mentioned *The Wire*, which I’d seen a few episodes of, and since that was the only one I knew at all, I said, “Yeah, I love it!” Huge mistake. Apparently, that meant I was about to get a 20-minute speech explaining the entire show to me. I actually checked the clock when he started, and it really was 20 full minutes.
But here’s the best part: when he finally ran out of things to say, we sat there in silence for a second, and then he stood up, shook my hand, and left without saying another word.
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2. My Bags Were The Best Of Me
On the first date, he grabbed my face, brushed under my eyes, and said, “You need to take better care of yourself.” It took everything in me not to shove his hand away. Sir, I’m a divorced 37-year-old with kids, and these under-eye circles came straight from my grandmother—they’re basically a family trait. Also, please keep your hands off my face. We had just met, and this was not some dramatic romance movie.
3. In Constant Denial
Every single problem she had was always somebody else’s fault. Even when there was clear proof that it was her responsibility, she would argue endlessly that someone else was to blame. She got into a car accident and kept calling the insurance company again and again to insist it was the other driver’s fault. What she didn’t realize was that they checked the computer in her car, which recorded how fast she was going right before the crash.
That told them everything they needed to know, and she still kept denying it.
4. That Stank Was Rank
I once dated a guy whose car smelled so awful I had to fight not to get sick while leaning my head out the window. He couldn’t smell it at all. I thought I was going to pass out. Turns out he had left a double cheeseburger in the back of his car for more than two weeks in the summer heat. I still don’t know what was worse—the smell or the fact that it didn’t seem to bother him.
5. The Whining Was On The Wall
It wasn’t the only reason, but it was a big part of why I left the worst relationship I’ve ever been in. She was always complaining about and insulting the people closest to her—her parents, best friends, AA sponsor, and co-workers. Eventually, that anger started getting aimed at our mutual friends and then at my friends too. I could already see where things were headed.
It was only a matter of time before all of that bitterness turned toward me, and eventually, it did. She did not handle the breakup well. It was the most frightening relationship I’ve ever had.
6. The Tom Before The Storm
In college, I was dating a girl who lived in the same dorm as me, just on a different floor. She would constantly tell me about this guy on her floor, Tom, who was supposedly obsessed with her, and she’d even show me their text messages. She insisted she only talked to him because he was harmless and they were “just friends.” I never actually met him.
About a week later, one of her former friends pulled me aside and told me, very seriously, to never trust her.
She said the girl I was seeing was a well-known liar, that Tom wasn’t real, and that she had saved her own number in her phone under the name “Tom,” texted herself, and then deleted the outgoing messages. The reason her ex-friend knew was because she had seen it happen in a mirror reflection while they were in the same room.
I was friendly with the front desk staff, so I asked if they could check the list of people living on that floor. They did, and sure enough, there was no guy named Tom there. I ended that relationship immediately.
7. Even Steven
A girl I dated briefly picked up some hair products for me before coming over because the store was near her house. In return, I said I’d go grocery shopping and cook her a nice dinner. I thought that seemed fair. I was very wrong.
That night, I found her digging through my trash looking for the grocery receipt so she could make sure the $30 she spent on me matched what I had spent on making her dinner.
8. He Was Creepy, Kooky, And Altogether Spooky
I went on a date with a guy I had met at a party. He made me “prove” I liked The Lord of the Rings by quoting lines and asking me to identify who said them. Then he pulled out a notebook full of badly drawn anime characters and asked if he could draw me. I should have left then, but somehow it kept getting worse.
He was also much shorter than me and asked if that bothered me. I said no, and he replied, “Good, I like Amazonian goddesses.”
He kept trying to put his jewelry on me even after I told him not to. He asked what I wanted to order, then ignored my answer, ordered something else for me, and got annoyed when I didn’t finish it.
The final strange moment came when I said I wanted to leave. He got my knee-high boots, put them on my feet, zipped them up, and said, “You should always be treated like a goddess. My Morticia Addams.” All of that happened on one date.
9. Gone With The Wink Of An Eye
I went on a date with a girl who seemed completely normal at first. She was kind, interesting, and had clearly put thought and effort into the date. But halfway through, I realized what she’d been hiding the whole time.
She got a call through a Bluetooth headset I hadn’t even noticed under her hair. She had been wearing it for the entire date. I can’t fully explain why, but it immediately put me off. It was a coworker calling, and she started talking about some obviously stressful work issue.
The conversation got close to an argument, and every time the coworker said something irritating, she would roll her eyes and give me this half-wink. Eventually she said she had just witnessed a car crash and needed to go, which honestly impressed me a little because it was such a smooth excuse. But then she immediately called another coworker to complain about the first one. And she kept winking at me.
This was all happening on a Saturday morning. It was one of the strangest dates I’ve ever had.
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10. Breaking It Off Gently
In my early 20s, I went on a date with a guy who seemed nice enough. The evening went well, so after dinner we sat cuddling in the back seat of his car in a quiet rural area, listening to music. He gently played with my hand and fingers and gave me a little massage, which felt really relaxing. Then he got to my wrist, looked at it, turned it over a couple of times, and said something I’ll never forget: “It would be so easy for me to break this little thing right now.”
I tried to laugh it off with something like, “Wow, you’re so strong,” until he took me home. I didn’t want to escalate the situation, so I didn’t react much to what he said. I just steered the conversation elsewhere and made sure not to embarrass or upset him. I never saw him again. When he asked me out after that, I was always “busy,” and then I acted as dull as possible until he lost interest. Not long after, he started dating someone else.
11. Virgin Territory
When I was a senior in high school, the son of one of my mom’s work friends—who was my age—liked me. I wasn’t nearly as interested, but he seemed nice enough, so I agreed to one date. There was never a second one because he kept trying to figure out whether I was a virgin. That was uncomfortable enough, but his explanation made it so much worse: he said that if I wasn’t, then sleeping together on the first date wouldn’t be a big deal, and if I was, he’d “put in the effort.”
I didn’t answer either way because it was none of his business, and his logic was just plain pathetic. I never spoke to him again after I called a cab and went home.
12. Let Go Of Greg
I went on a first date with a woman I met through online dating, and at first it seemed completely normal. That turned out to be the quiet before things got strange.
We met for dinner, and my plan was that if we clicked, I’d suggest doing something else afterward—mini golf, a walk in the park, something like that. About halfway through dinner, we were having the usual first-date conversation and started talking a bit about work. I casually mentioned that one of my coworkers gets on my nerves.
I made it clear I wasn’t going on a rant—just saying something like, “I work with this guy Greg. He’s a good person, but our personalities really clash. I can only handle him for about an hour.” She laughed and joked that I probably annoy Greg too. But that’s when things started to get weird. She kept bringing up that coworker over and over again. It happened so many times that it went from mildly annoying to genuinely unsettling.
She even started asking questions about Greg. After dinner, she clearly wanted to keep the date going, but by then I was too put off. I thanked her for coming out, politely said goodbye, and went home.
13. Phone Faux Pas
On our first date, I was pumping gas when she started looking through my phone. I noticed what she was doing and kept filling the tank while she read my text messages. I’m a pretty open person and don’t have much to hide, but trust and honesty matter a lot to me. The moment the pump clicked off, she hurried to put my phone back. I didn’t confront her right away, but I knew exactly what I was going to do. Without saying anything, I canceled our dinner plans in my head and decided to take her home instead.
She didn’t realize I was heading to her house until we were almost there, when we had maybe two minutes left in the car. In a calm, disappointed tone, I told her I’d seen what she did and that such an obvious invasion of privacy was a deal breaker for me. She was 26—far too old to be acting that insecure—and she needed to work on that behavior before trying to build a serious relationship.
She knew she was wrong. She stayed silent the whole rest of the drive, got out of the car without a word, and never even apologized. If I can’t trust you with my phone, I definitely can’t trust you with my future.
14. He Made His Point, Alright!
The guy was in the bathroom for a while, clearly using the toilet, which in itself wasn’t a big deal. He lived in a tiny, odd apartment where the only sink was in the kitchen. When he came out, he didn’t go wash his hands right away. I asked him about it, and it turned into a minor argument. Then he refused to wash them at all because, according to him, “I was going to, but you made me feel like a child, so now I have to make a point.”
Any attraction I had disappeared instantly. It was unbelievably gross. I still can’t believe I let unwashed bathroom hands touch me. I felt sick.
15. Something Bad Went Down In Flavortown
When I was 16, I somehow ended up awkwardly third-wheeling a truly embarrassing date. The guy showed up in a white suit, blue sunglasses, and a trilby hat. It was so ridiculous that I started laughing in the car as we drove past the restaurant entrance. Who arrives at a date dressed like some mix of Michael Jackson and Guy Fieri? If he had been a genuinely kind or thoughtful person, maybe I could have overlooked the outfit. But that was only the start.
He would not stop talking about how he was the best at absolutely everything. He talked so much that my friend and I had finished eating before he had even really started. He kept insisting he was the best Guitar Hero player in the world and kept showing us leaderboard screenshots like we were supposed to be impressed.
I know we were only 16, but it was painfully embarrassing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that much secondhand embarrassment.
16. Phat Chance
I went on a date with a guy who really loved showing off how much money he had. We were at a carnival, and he was taking cash out of the ATM while I stood a little ways off. Then he waved me over and said, “Look at this.” He had a full $4,000 in his account. I was only 19 or 20 when this happened, and to someone like me, who grew up poor, $4,000 felt like a huge amount of money.
But the part that unsettled me most was the texts between him and his mom. Later on, he showed me messages where he was bragging to her about me, calling me “phat,” and his mom replied, “Get it!” That was enough for me. I was done. He kept messaging me nonstop after that. He was a really strange guy.
17. Blocked And Busted
A few years ago, I met a woman on Tinder, and we really seemed to click. About a week after we met, she deleted and blocked me on every social media platform with almost no explanation. We had been texting on iPhone, and after her last message, it switched from blue iMessage texts to regular green ones. I sent one more message a few hours later and got no response.
I checked Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, and she was gone from all of them. At first, I panicked because I thought we had made a real connection. But after a day or two, I calmed down and thought, “If this is some kind of test, I’m not doing it. This is childish.” So I opened Bumble and Tinder again and matched with someone on Bumble who seemed genuinely interested in me, and we started having a great conversation.
The next morning, I got a text from the first woman. That’s when she explained her ridiculous plan: “I see you’re back on Tinder. I made a fake account to see if you’d get back on, and there you are.” I actually laughed because I knew right away I had avoided a major problem. I replied with something like, “You blocked me on social media and blocked my number. How was I supposed to know you’d contact me again?”
She actually said, “It was supposed to be a test of your loyalty, and you failed. I could never be with someone who would start talking to other women right away over something so small.” I replied, “Alright, sounds good. Take care,” and then blocked her too. I ended up marrying the woman I started talking to on Bumble right after that first woman blocked me. I went from someone completely chaotic to the most amazing person I’ve ever met. Talk about an upgrade.
18. Gone The Second Time Around
I gave dating him two chances because I really liked him. The first time around, I brought him back to my place after our second date. I definitely thought we were going to sleep together, but during foreplay, he was way too rough. I kept asking him to slow down and be gentler, but he just didn’t listen. It felt like he was copying things he had seen in movies. It completely ruined the mood and my interest in him.
I told him I wasn’t interested in dating someone who wouldn’t pay attention to my needs and boundaries in bed. But that wasn’t the last time I saw him.
A few months later, he reached out again, and I agreed to go out with him. I thought maybe he had actually taken in what I said. We met at a great local place to watch a basketball game since we had originally bonded over liking the same team. I had spent a lot of time getting ready for the date. I looked nice and smelled nice. He arrived after I did, and the first thing I noticed was that he looked pretty careless.
More specifically, he was wearing an old, worn-out zip-up hoodie, but honestly, that alone wasn’t a deal breaker. Then he sat down next to me, we shared a quick hug, and that was it for me. He smelled terrible. He reeked of smoke, and his breath was awful, like he hadn’t brushed his teeth. I still had a good time watching the game and eating wings and fries with him, but from that moment on, it was no longer romantic for me.
At that point, it just felt like I was watching the game with a friend. I’m still disappointed about it, because I really did like him. He was super sweet and clearly liked me too. He just didn’t seem mature enough to be in a real relationship. What a letdown.
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19. She Got Your Number
I missed a call from her on my cell phone, so she called the landline at my parents’ house because I was home from college on break. Want to hear the creepy part? I had never given her that number. She had never been to the house, never met my parents, and didn’t know anyone else who could have given it to her. I hadn’t even told her I was back in my hometown, and she lived a few hours away.
I didn’t answer because I recognized her number on caller ID and just stared at it in shock. Then she called five more times in a row. I ignored every call and ended things completely not long after that.
20. Forced Into The Friend Zone
I dated a girl for over a year. We were really happy, never fought, and eventually started making plans to move in together. At one point, I had even bought a ring and was planning to propose. The day before I was going to do it, and just one week before we were supposed to move in together, she ended things because she was worried we wanted different things out of life.
I was ready to settle down and have kids. She still wanted to go out to bars a couple nights a week and didn’t want to feel responsible to anyone, and there was nothing wrong with that. So we broke up. If only that had been the end of it.
Forty-eight hours later, she wanted to get back together. I still loved her, so we did, with no plans for marriage, since that was what had scared her in the first place.
We moved in together, and things were okay for about a month and a half. Then one night, we were planning to go out for dinner, and when I got home, she was crying and wanted to break up again for the exact same reasons. We kept living together as “friends,” and surprisingly, things were mostly fine. One day we went shopping together, had a great time, then went out to a nice restaurant and had a really good evening.
We got home, and I went to bed. A few minutes later, she came into my room, got into bed, climbed on top of me, started kissing me, and tried to start something. And in that moment, I instantly got the ick. After a year and a half of loving her, wanting a future with her, being rejected twice, and then trying to survive as “just friends” under the same roof, her suddenly wanting that after a fun night out was just too much.
It hit me all at once that everything had been on her terms, and I felt used. Lying there in the dark, I suddenly saw the whole situation clearly. After that, I had no trouble moving on, and she moved out not long after that night.
21. Dinner In The Raw
My ex-husband put on a lot of weight because he didn’t really take care of himself and would eat enough for several people at every meal. That worried me, especially because of his health. Then one night, I brought home dinner, and he did something I’ve never been able to forget: instead of sitting at the table with me, he took his food into the bedroom. He took off all his clothes, lay completely flat on the bed, balanced the takeout container on his chest, and ate dinner like that.
It was the most off-putting thing I’d ever seen him do. The level of laziness was unbelievable, and he always had an excuse for it. My feelings for him were already fading for plenty of other reasons, but that was the final straw. I could never see him the same way again.
22. Face-Eating Fool
I’m over 40, and after this experience, I more or less gave up on dating. I saw a man last year after we connected through a shared interest, and he asked me out. We got along well, and I felt hopeful. One thing that gave me pause was that he said none of his relationships had ever lasted very long. So I stayed cautious, though at first things seemed fine.
The first time we really kissed, I almost gagged. It felt like he was trying to swallow my whole face. I told him it was a little too intense and asked him to be gentler. It improved for a minute, and then he went right back to the same thing. Even so, I kept trying—probably unwisely. He was kind, generous, and liked a lot of the same things I did. I wanted it to work.
The first time I stayed at his house completely ended it. Even though he owned his home, ran his own business, and seemed financially stable, his place felt strangely immature. It was neat and very clean, but it looked like the home of a 12-year-old bachelor. After a night of talking, cuddling, and watching films, we went to bed.
It turned out the kissing wasn’t the only problem. He would completely zone out and ignore me when I asked him to slow down and be gentler. In the end, I had to actually raise my voice to get him to stop, because asking calmly did nothing, and that deeply unsettled me. I ended things the next day after lying awake beside him all night, feeling angry, uncomfortable, and put off.
Even now, I still feel bothered by it and have had no interest in being intimate with anyone since. I understand it may not have been easy for him either, but it affected me too.
23. Hat Hangup
He wore a hat to bed. Not a bonnet or a wave cap, but an actual hat—sometimes woven, sometimes with a real brim. The same hat he had on all day came to bed with him. There were other issues too, but he was never without some kind of headwear. He had hair, but his head was shaped in a very unusual way, like he’d had a rough entrance into the world. It was a truly almond-shaped head.
He also didn’t tuck in dress shirts—fine in some situations—and tied ties like a small child. He didn’t work in an office, so it wasn’t always a practical issue, but I kept imagining what it would be like if the relationship became serious and I ended up marrying someone in an untucked shirt hanging like a tunic, with a tie dangling far too low, and wearing a baseball cap or beanie on our wedding day. I just couldn’t do it.
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24. His Big Mouth Did Him In
I was on a third date with someone, and up to that point everything had been going really well. I liked him a lot. He had been completely respectful...until then. He was making dinner at his house when his three-year-old German shepherd jumped up playfully and scratched him a little. He grabbed this fully grown dog by the scruff of the neck, carried it into another room, and slammed the door.
All I could hear was shouting, banging, and the dog whining. I just sat there in shock. When he came back, he told me the dog frustrated him and said, “It’s fine to carry puppies by the scruff. That’s how their mothers move them.” This was a dog that weighed close to a hundred pounds. I didn’t want to leave right away in case that made things worse, so I stayed and watched a little TV with him.
He put on Big Mouth and kept pausing it to explain how the show was secretly sending coded messages to fight left-wing propaganda and wake people up. He kept congratulating himself for not being prejudiced and said he had taught his ex-girlfriend not to be prejudiced either. Then he started showing me Candace Owens clips and said, “You’re good like her.
“She’s one of the good Black women. She’s a great example for you.” After that, he went on about how Black women are better matched with Black men because, according to him, they’re too aggressive and dominant for White men, who he described as weak and unable to control them. I’m a Black woman, and he was a White man trying to date me. I went from really liking him to completely despising him.
25. From Hot To Hot Mess
I traveled six hours to meet up with an old high school friend. Back then, she was a very cool goth girl and incredibly attractive too. We had been a little flirtatious in school but never actually got together. One day she messaged me to catch up, and things turned suggestive almost immediately. I had no idea what I was walking into.
We were supposed to spend from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon together for a very wild weekend. But once I arrived, I couldn’t reach her to be buzzed into the apartment building, so I had to wait until another resident let me in. When I got to her unit, I knocked on the door and saw it was basically a sheet of plywood with a drawer handle screwed onto it. It felt like a warning sign all by itself.
She eventually opened the door after I knocked for quite a while. She was still very attractive, but her posture was so bad that she looked more than a foot shorter than her actual height when she stood up.
We hugged and kissed, and she immediately dropped to her knees and got very forward. At that point I mentally overlooked the inconvenience so far, along with the thick cloud of cigarette smoke filling the room. Then she asked me to come with her on an errand, and I agreed. We got into her car, and it took her several minutes just to plug in her iPod because she kept drifting off. And somehow, that still wasn’t the biggest red flag.
For reasons I still don’t understand, I let her drive us to a friend’s house, where she borrowed several pills. They crushed and snorted a couple before we left. I hadn’t realized that was what the errand was going to be until they started counting pills and keeping track in a notebook of who owed what. I just sat there trying not to let my alarm show too clearly on my face.
I drove us back to her place. She kept drifting in and out for the rest of the evening, more out than in by that point. Even having a short conversation with her took several minutes. Once we got back, she offered me mushrooms she had grown in a storage bin. I accepted them even though I was already deeply uncomfortable. I felt a slight buzz but nothing major. She, on the other hand, became intensely affected and spent the next few hours crawling around the room with a flashlight looking for something.
She seemed to be having some kind of breakdown all evening, saying her ex was listening to us, knew what we were doing, and all kinds of other alarming things. She clearly wanted to sleep with me, but there was no chance I was taking that risk. While she was busy searching all around the room, I pretended to go to sleep and then quietly got out of there at dawn on Saturday.
26. All Arti-Choked Up
She asked me to come along while she ran a few errands, and I did. It ended up being a fun day, but the whole time we were both talking about how hungry we were. When we finally got back to her place, I was starving, and she said she couldn’t wait to eat. Then she cooked a whole artichoke and ate the entire thing right in front of me without offering me any or even acknowledging that I was hungry too. That was the end of the attraction for me. I wouldn’t want to be with someone that self-centered.
27. Re-enactment Gone Wrong
I met her for the first time at a cafe. She brought her best friend with her, which was fine and honestly made sense from a safety perspective when meeting someone new. What happened next, though, felt like something they had planned in advance, probably inspired by something they’d seen on TV or in a movie. My date excused herself to go to the bathroom.
From what I understand, women usually go to the bathroom together to talk or whatever, but not this time. My date went alone, and her friend stayed behind. That’s when I realized what was going on. The friend leaned in and said, “If you hurt her, I’ll hunt you down,” or something along those lines. I understood what she was going for, and I’ve seen that kind of thing played as a joke before. But the way she said it was so serious that it came across as unsettling.
I immediately lost interest and knew there was no coming back from it. When my date returned, I put some money on the table, shook her hand, wished her well, and left. I didn’t think an explanation was necessary. They could probably figure it out, and by that point, I was done.
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28. Movie Night Madness
When I was in my 20s, I met this fun, cute woman at a wedding reception and asked her out for the next weekend. She said she’d stop by my place, and we could go out from there. When I opened the door, she was holding a few DVDs. She came in and asked if I wanted to skip dinner and instead hook up while watching homemade videos of her and her ex.
At first, I thought she was joking. She laughed and said she wasn’t. She put in a DVD, and I ended up seeing far more than I ever wanted to. I said no, and she left not long after. It was the shortest first date of my life.
29. Out Of Touch With Reality
During a conversation, I casually mentioned that I saw their family as pretty well off. They immediately reacted with disbelief and said, “Me? Well off? We’re poor.” I realized I probably shouldn’t have assumed, so I said, “Oh, I just figured that because you have two houses, what, six cars, and your family has taken trips to Japan and Austria in the past few months.”
They replied, “Well yeah, but compared to my friends, most of them have four houses. One has a house here in town, a lake house, a beach house, and an apartment in New York City.” I had honestly expected them to explain that maybe their family was in debt or going through a hard time financially, but that wasn’t it at all. They were just incredibly sheltered and completely out of touch. For me, someone who grew up below the poverty line, that was an immediate no.
30. Not The Cream Of The Crop
One summer, I dated this woman, and things were going well. One day, she decided to show me her tap dancing, and for whatever reason, I really didn’t enjoy it. I told her it was nice and kept my real opinion to myself. But after that, she kept doing these little tap dance routines from her middle school days all the time, and I couldn’t stand it.
What really ended it, though, was when she tried to argue that “creamy” was a flavor rather than a texture. She kept insisting on it and wouldn’t let it go. It was such a random thing, but somehow it completely erased whatever attraction I still had.
31. The Fox And The Hound-ing
When I started dating again after ending things with my fiancé, I met a really nice man who was a bit of a silver fox; I was 33, and he was 55. We really clicked. He was smart, cultured, and funny. He invited me to a fancy bar, and I wanted to look nice, so I got dressed up and went to meet him. After 15 or 20 minutes passed, I called him and found out he had fallen asleep.
He apologized over and over and rushed to meet me, but he showed up in shorts and flip-flops. Then he sat next to me and kept trying to kiss me and put his hands on me while I was just trying to have a conversation. I was completely creeped out.
32. Living In A Hoarder’s Paradise
I went to a guy’s house for dinner, and it was like stepping into a hoarder’s dream. He had supposedly “vacuumed and cleaned” before I came over—maybe just the little paths between the piles of stuff. There were nine dogs inside. I lost track of how many were outside, especially since there wasn’t even a back door on the house. Everything was covered in dirt, there were no windows, and the toilet didn’t flush.
The only running water in the house was in the bathtub. Maybe the washing machine on the front porch had water too, but I didn’t check. Dinner was served in the dining area, but the table was piled so high with stuff I couldn’t even see him across from me. I had to balance my plate on my lap, and bits of food kept falling onto the floor for the dogs to eat.
I was nervous about eating because there wasn’t even a kitchen, so I had no idea where the food had been prepared. I left as soon as I could and never went back. That was about 20 years ago, and I still feel like I can remember the smell.
33. I Couldn’t Turn A Blind Eye To His Comment
I went on a first date with a guy and told him a heartbreaking story about something that had happened to one of my customers earlier that day. My customer was legally blind, so he was sitting in the passenger seat of his van while his wife drove. While they were stopped at a red light in the middle of the day, a woman came running toward them screaming, with a man chasing her while holding a blade. He caught up to her beside the passenger side of the van and fatally stabbed her.
My date said, “It’s too bad your customer is blind.” I replied, “Yes, I’m sure he felt even more helpless, though I don’t know that he could have done anything.” Then my date said one of the worst things I’ve ever heard: “No, I mean it’s too bad he’s blind, because he missed the chance to watch someone get murdered.”
34. Looking For A Way In
I had been seeing a girl for a few weeks, and I was away on a business trip. One night around 2:00 AM, she called me in a panic and said she’d had a fight with her roommate and needed somewhere to stay. Then she told me she was parked outside my house and needed me to let her in, even though she knew I was out of town. She begged for my garage code and asked if I had a hidden key so she could get inside.
She had only been to my house once before, and it was still very early in the relationship, so I had no reason to trust her with that. I told her, “You’re almost 30. You can figure this out. Get a hotel or call a friend who’s home.”
35. Dating This Guy Was A Gross Mistake
I live in a pretty remote area, so I turned to online dating because it was really my only practical option. I met this very charming guy, and it turned into a long-distance relationship. We met in person a few times and had been talking for months. A few months in, I took a week off work and flew down to see him.
When I got back to his apartment, I walked in and made a horrifying discovery. He had a dog, but he didn’t take it outside to use the bathroom. It just peed and pooped all over the apartment, and only the poop got picked up—sometimes. The smell almost made me sick.
There was a year’s worth of buildup. I had taken my shoes off at the door, and I immediately regretted it. After just a few steps, my socks were soaked in dog pee.
I yelled and pulled them off, hoping the kitchen tile would at least be clean, but it was even worse. The kitchen floor was sticky with dog pee. It felt like stepping on flypaper. He ran to grab his vacuum while apologizing over and over as I hopped back across the floor to my shoes. As I looked around, I saw the bottoms of the walls were stained a gross brown color, and there was clutter everywhere.
I could barely focus because the smell was making me feel nauseated. I ended up getting a hotel for the week and made up an excuse that I wasn’t comfortable staying with him yet. Over the course of that week, I found out even more about his unhygienic habits, like the fact that he never washed his sheets because he didn’t think it was necessary.
He didn’t believe in brushing his teeth and said plaque was good for them because it protected them. He drank a full 12-pack of Diet Coke every day, cooked with expired food, and would leave pizza sitting out for days while continuing to eat it. And I’m not exaggerating—he spent more time burping and passing gas than not. He also never cleaned the apartment.
When the dog peed or pooped, the pee was left to dry and the poop would just get scraped up. There was buildup across the whole floor because of it. At restaurants, he would only order burgers, and if I ordered anything else, he’d wrinkle his nose and say, “How gross.”
36. This Dude Needed Housebreaking
I dated a guy I met at work who drove a sports car and loved showing off about what he owned and what he did. He was nice enough, but he was in his late 20s and still lived with his parents. In the end, I had to break things off because he was completely unprepared to take care of himself. He didn’t know how to do laundry or fold clothes, and he had no idea how often his sheets were changed because his mom handled that. He didn’t know how to pay bills because his dad took care of that. He just spent his full-time paycheck on whatever he wanted and enjoyed himself.
I got the feeling his mom expected me to step in and take care of him the way a wife supposedly should.
37. An Irksome Image
We talked on Tinder for a while and had our first date at a museum. When I first saw her, I almost walked right past because I barely recognized her. It was strange, because I don’t think she edited her photos, but in person her face looked very different from what I expected. She wasn’t unattractive, but the difference caught me off guard and I felt put off almost right away.
Still, I tried to talk myself into giving the date a fair chance since we had enjoyed chatting before. That turned out to be a big mistake.
Things started off okay, so afterward we went back to her apartment. As soon as I walked in, it smelled strongly like pet mess. Just to the left of the door was a puppy pad covered in poop. Then I looked at the carpet in the living room and realized it was basically one huge urine stain.
I ended things that same day and never told her exactly why. She even messaged me a week later asking for an explanation, but I wasn’t going to tell her that I found the whole situation incredibly unpleasant.
38. Child Pawn
I dated a guy who introduced me to his 6-year-old daughter after only about a week and a half. His daughter was wonderful—very smart and well-behaved—but she got irritated with him easily and always wanted to sit next to me, hold my hand instead of his, and ask me to play with her. He shared custody with his ex, and not long after I met his daughter, he started badmouthing his ex to me. I became deeply uncomfortable almost immediately.
He would constantly push his daughter to say he was a better cook and smarter than her mom. He told me his ex had cheated on him, played with his emotions, and still tried to send him pictures of herself even though she was remarried. We broke up soon after that because he got angry at me for working overtime instead of going to the park with him and his daughter. That was the point where he went too far.
He tried to make me feel guilty for ending things, saying I was abandoning his daughter after he had trusted me enough to introduce us. After the breakup, he sent me voice messages of his daughter saying she missed me and wanted to see me again, asking when I could come over. It became way too much. I finally contacted his ex and told her what was happening; she eventually got full custody.
39. Money-Loving Maniac
Years ago, I went on a date with a woman I knew from college. She was incredibly attractive, and I was very interested in her. I had planned a really nice evening—a movie and dinner at a fancy, very expensive restaurant. I picked her up at home, and we headed out. It was a pretty long drive, around 45 minutes.
The entire time, all she talked about was her ex-boyfriends, the cars they drove, how much money they made, and things like that. Everything seemed to revolve around image and wealth. She came from a wealthy family, drove a very nice car, and had never worked a job. I came from a poor family and didn’t have much money at all. After about half an hour, I was done. I got off the freeway, turned at the end of the ramp, crossed over, and headed back the way we came.
She asked what was going on. I told her, “This isn’t going to work. You care a lot about money and appearances, and I just don’t. We’re not living in the same world. Let’s just both pretend this never happened.” She cried the whole way home, but I didn’t feel bad about it.
40. Like Father, Like Daughter
This may sound pretty awful, but I once dated a girl for about six months, and eventually she invited me to her family home. I was actually excited to meet them because she had said great things, and it was also my first serious relationship. I met her dad, who was a really kind man. He was sitting on the couch, hanging over the sides a bit, eating Cheetos in a way I found hard to watch.
But that wasn’t actually what bothered me, because he was genuinely one of the nicest and smartest people I’d ever met. What threw me off was that his daughter had every one of his facial features, and after that I couldn’t see her the same way. It really unsettled me.
I tried to get past it because I figured my brain was being ridiculous, and she did make me happy, but two weeks later I ended things with the weak excuse, “I need to figure myself out before getting any deeper into this.”
41. Too Plastered To Be Prudent
I was on my third date with a guy. I drove about 70–80 minutes to his town to spend the weekend with him. His company had offices in both of our cities, and he was working on a project in my city pretty often, so I rode back with him on a Friday after work. The plan was for him to drive me back Monday morning when he headed in again.
The first night was fine. We had dinner and spent time at his place. The second night was supposed to be dinner, then a pub to see a band we both liked. It was meant to be a pretty low-key night since we were planning to go hiking the next day. But after just a couple of drinks before heading out, he got so drunk that he started yelling at a convenience store employee for absolutely no reason.
After that, things got worse. He was kicked out of the bar during the show, thrown out of two cabs on the way home for acting ridiculous, lost his wallet somewhere between the first and second cab, and then peed into the open window of a parked car while we walked the last few blocks to his place. I got him home, where he immediately passed out. I packed my things and left without leaving a note.
I knew some friends were in town at the same concert, so I messaged them and got a ride home. He called and texted me the next day around noon. I let him sit with it until that evening, then I called and told him exactly what had happened. I ran into him in my town a couple of years later. We talked briefly on the street, and within the first minute he told me I hadn’t done enough to help him and that it was wrong of me to leave that night. I stayed polite, then said goodbye and walked away.
42. Hung Up On The Rear
The attraction honestly wasn’t really there from the start, but he seemed like a decent guy with a kind heart. Still, he was very lazy and didn’t take care of himself. He was the classic basement-living gaming nerd, anime posters and all. I’m not saying that to be mean, but he was definitely a specific type. The worst part for me was that it was obvious he wasn’t washing himself properly.
He would hang up his towel after showering, and there would be brown streaks on it. It was maybe one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever seen. After a day or two of use, the smell was unbelievably bad. I genuinely had no idea how to bring it up. At one point I casually suggested that he should shower both in the morning and at night. In general, he didn’t have much body odor, but it was very clear he wasn’t cleaning himself well.
43. Ah-chew!!!
I swear this guy acted like he was allergic to eating, because every single time he ate, he sneezed. I can overlook badly timed sneezes, but the issue was that he never covered his mouth, so chewed-up food would go flying everywhere. The first couple of times, I thought maybe it was just bad luck, but no, it happened all the time. And instead of apologizing and wiping it up with a napkin, he would pick the food back up and eat it. Even years later, it still makes me feel sick just thinking about it.
44. On The Wrong Side
I was talking to a guy about a local scandal where a young woman took a shower at a party, and a man came in and assaulted her. He was a musician and her mentor, and he had invited her to the party and then refused to take her home. I was horrified—but then the guy I was talking to kept going. He said it was the girl’s fault because she should have known something like that could happen and should have stayed home at night.
He also felt sorry for the man who did it, saying that because he claimed it was consensual, maybe no one really knew the truth, and now his reputation was damaged. He said he could easily imagine being in that situation himself and having someone accuse him too, since he was also a musician and mentored young people. But I had the perfect reply.
I simply told him that maybe he should stay home at night too, so he’d never be in a situation where someone could accuse him and there’d be no problem. Apparently, that wasn’t what he meant. I ended the conversation right there.
45. Too Much Brain Drain
They started talking to me about their past relationships like I was their therapist. At first, it sounded like they were just trying to explain that they wanted to change and take things slowly because they usually rushed into relationships. I told them I understood, but instead of moving on with the date, they went into detail about who these people were, how many there had been, how long the relationships lasted, where they lived, and more. It felt less like a date and more like an emotional dumping session, and by the end I was completely drained. I never spoke to them again.
46. Leave Me In Peace!
I went on vacation, and this person texted me every day asking me to buy things for her and run errands. She’d done this several times before, and it was never returned, so this time I decided to ignore the messages. I was only away for six days, and I had already told her I’d get in touch when I got back. But after four days, while I was still away, the messages became nonstop, and once I returned, it got even worse.
She just would not accept no. I felt completely overwhelmed because she wouldn’t stop bothering me. I wasn’t trying to be rude; I just wanted a little peace and quiet. In the end, I had to tell her not to contact me anymore. As expected, she insulted me after that, but I never looked back.
47. The Cat’s Meow
I went on a date with a girl who seemed pretty normal on the surface. We went back to her place, started kissing and getting close, and then she began meowing and acting like a cat. At first it was small meows, but then she stopped, licked her fingertips, and started “grooming” her ears. She noticed my reaction and asked why I made that face. I was honest and said, “Because you’re pretending to be a cat.”
I definitely wasn’t ready for her reply: “Oh, was I? Sometimes it just takes over when I’m in the mood.” We tried again, she started meowing again, and I left pretty quickly after that.
48. Dumped Over Her Dogs
I dated this girl briefly—about a month—and one time I went to her house while her family was out of town. The place was a disaster and smelled awful because she had a lot of pets—birds, cats, a micro pig, and some badly neglected dogs. The dogs were matted, smelly, and desperate for love and attention. It broke my heart. I asked about them, and she said, “I don’t know. They’re not mine.”
Later, when I was saying goodnight from the car, she leaned in to kiss me, but I just didn’t feel the same anymore. I couldn’t stop thinking about those dogs. I called her later and asked more about them. They belonged to her father, and he was hardly ever around. She and her sisters didn’t take care of them. That’s when I knew I had to do something. A couple nights later, I took the dogs and brought them to a rescue shelter.
They’re now in a loving home, and her family didn’t even seem to notice the dogs were gone. I ended things a few weeks later, once I realized they were completely unaware. She was a sweet girl and really liked me, but I couldn’t be with someone who could ignore innocent animals like that.
Freepik, freepik
49. Intestinal Anguish
This wasn’t a serious relationship, just a casual hookup. We’d only known each other for about four months, and during that time he pooped his pants twice. The first time, I thought, “Okay, people get sick, things happen,” and I tried to move past it. But the second time, he texted me about it and said it happened while he was walking out of the bathroom. It never happened in front of me, but he kept telling me about it and even brought it up around my friends.
He seemed to think it was hilarious and totally normal for a grown man. He also passed gas while we were being intimate, which I ignored because, again, things happen, but then he immediately started talking about it and wouldn’t drop it. He was proud of it. There were plenty of other red flags too, but that alone was enough for me to leave.
50. She Was An Odd Duck
After my divorce, I went on a first date with a woman. We met outside a restaurant and talked for a while, and things seemed to be going well. We went in, ordered food, and kept chatting. Eventually the conversation turned to where we worked. She said she was an inspector at a duck processing plant, which honestly sounded pretty interesting. But when our food arrived, she was still talking about inspecting ducks.
For the whole meal, she kept describing duck carcasses, saying things like, “Know how to spot tuberculosis in a duck’s lungs? I do. I wish I didn’t, but I do.” No matter how I tried to change the subject, she kept coming back to her job and all the things that can go wrong with duck meat. I paid the bill, we walked out to the parking lot, and then we went our separate ways.
