I believe it was two Tuesdays ago when I began asking a few friends about a NonDoc content idea: “What if people started telling us their outrageous online dating stories?”
The response was positive.
As a result, here are four women telling five anonymous stories from their online dating nightmares. Experiences come from either Match.com, OKcupid.com or the Tinder phone app (which are all owned by the same company).
Assuming it will be just as easy, we’ll be asking men for their worst experiences next. (As in start typing, bro: letters@nondoc.com.)
While I hope we someday hear from some folks who found love and happiness online (or in real life), strap yourself in and see how much you can stomach on the Shame Train.
Five of the six stories took place in Oklahoma, and all names have been changed.
‘What if the sex was amazing?’
The first time I got on Tinder, it was pretty soon after a fairly traumatic heartbreak. The kind where you become a hermit in your house watching Gilmore Girls for eight hours a day and survive on cheese, wine and tears.
My best friends forced me to get on Tinder and go on at least one date with the men of their choosing. I ended up matching with a lot of really great candidates. My favorite date was a pilot that was moving across the country in two months, because relationships with expiration dates are the best kind. Near the end of our courtship (read: drinks and Thunder games and never introducing him to anyone in my life and NEVER EVER letting him into the personal sanctuary of my home), I decided I was bored of him. Couldn’t even bear the thought of one more date with The Pilot. Except for one thing: We hadn’t slept together. What if the sex was amazing?
So, after a couple of whiskeys with The Pilot, I invited myself over to his bachelor pad in Deep Deuce (warning sign No. 1 of less-than-amazing sex).
We got straight to it, and the next thing I know, there’s a jackrabbit in bed with me who apparently knows nothing about the female body. I politely try to end the coitus before I got a concussion, but to no avail. Thinking, “Maybe it will get better,” I reached for my phone to distract myself and decided to go ahead and order Uber in case the wait for a ride was long. It wasn’t. The Pilot never completed his flight, if you know what I mean, and my Uber, um, arrived before I did.
Matchless: A tale of disappearing dudes
On a whim, I decided to try Match.com. If nothing else, I thought, maybe I’d get some good stories from it. But while I suppose the relative anonymity of the site makes it easy to put yourself out there, it also seems to make it easy to be an ass.
I’ve been on several dates now, and each guy I’ve met comes on strong and then disappears just as quickly. A case in point: I met a guy, and we’ll call him Terry, because why not?
He messaged me and we talked through the Match app for a few days. It was nonstop banter — fun and interesting. We had a lot in common — things we liked to do, places we liked to visit, similar political views, similar world views — like an actual match.
We met for drinks, and it was great. Conversation was easy, and there was a lot of laughing. For the next week, we texted and talked on the phone. We talked about the mundane, about the ridiculous — like the presidential debates — and life in general. He asked when we could get together again, and we made plans for Saturday night.
Saturday morning, early, I get a text: “Good morning beautiful, can’t wait to see you tonight!” Throughout the morning, we texted back and forth. I got the last text about noon. And by the last text, I mean THE LAST TEXT.
That was it! I sent a couple of texts to confirm our plans and find out exactly what time. Then another to say “Really?” Never heard from him again. No explanation, no “never mind,” nothing.
You might be thinking, who does that? I did too, but apparently, lots of guys.
Another one, we’ll call him William, presented a similar situation. We dated for about a month. He went so far as to introduce me to his friends and family, and to include me in weekend getaways. One morning, without explanation, he stopped talking to me. No more phone calls, no texts. That lasted for a couple of days, and then I got a “Dear Jane” text. Yup, a text. You know: “It’s not you, it’s me, blah blah blah.” Well, I guess I should be happy I got a text.
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Another one, “Harry,” messaged me on the app. We talked for a couple of weeks — there were long pauses in his response time — and he asked if we could meet. He said he wanted to get to know me. Even with the long response time, I was interested, so I said yes and gave him my cell. That was it. Nothing. No response, no call. No clue what happened.
So that’s the only thing I can say about everyone I’ve met so far — no clue what happened. I find myself wondering if I’m incredibly old-fashioned. I respond to everyone who messages me, even if I’m not interested, and I tell them, gently, thanks but no thanks.
But that doesn’t seem to be the same for the guys I’ve met on the site. If I meet someone in person, and I’m not interested, I tell them. It just seems to be the grown-up thing to do. And, really, if you’ve only met someone once, what’s the big deal? Are egos so big that they think I’ll be crushed?
The world of online dating has left me perplexed and a little leery. Is it the new bar scene where everyone there is just looking for the hook up? So far, it’s just left me matchless.
‘I’m sorry, I’m really high right now’
I met a guy on Tinder.
We chatted/texted for about a week before we met up. He’s one of those types who sends “hey beautiful” texts every morning at 7 a.m. even though we haven’t met yet.
I was only marginally interested, but I didn’t have anything else going on, so I agreed to go out with him.
We were meeting for dinner at 7:30 p.m. At 7:30, I’m at the table and had just ordered a beer. At 7:31, I get a text that says “I’m running late, be there soon.”
Eye roll.
Seconds later, I get another text from him that says, “I’m sorry, I’m really high right now.” Third text: “please don’t leave.”
Which I absolutely would have, except I had already ordered that beer. He shows up a few minutes later, high as a kite. I’m not the least bit friendly, and I go out of my way to be rude. I learn that he does not like work; believes that he is smarter than 90 percent of all humans and that he purposely eats “80 percent” of a regular diet because that will lengthen his life.
Through all of this, he compliments me constantly. Beautiful, smart, the works. Eventually he says, “I’m only going to have children with a blonde-haired blue-eyed woman.” (That’s my complexion.)
I just laughed.
Bro needs to learn punctuality and a work ethic before he can start making demands like that.
Taste the disaster
Met a guy on OkCupid.com. Went on a date, and within 20 minutes he was telling me about his anonymous Tumblr that had 5,000 followers.
“Why anonymous?” I asked.
“Because it’s sexy stuff.”
I’m cool with that, but, looking back, what followed should not have been a surprise.
First date was fine. We chatted.
We got together for lunch a few days later, and it became clear we didn’t have much in common. At least, it became clear to me.
After this second-date lunch, he texts me and says it’s time we get to know each other in “a more intimate way.”
He talks about wine, a fur rug and “tasting” me.
I didn’t respond because … no.
A few hours later, I get another text. It says: “I had a sex party last Halloween and this was one of our decorations.”
It was a picture of two skulls on a sign that said “these men didn’t eat the ass.”
So I guess that’s what he meant when he said he wanted to taste me.
A boozy lawyer loses his dignity and his pants
He was the type of guy who looked stellar on paper and not too shabby in his Tinder photos either.
He had the tall, dark and handsome covered and was an education lawyer to boot.
As a single mom, I thought this father of two seemed all too perfect, and our conversations over the phone would wind on for hours at a time.
So after a week, I made the hour-long trek to where he lived. I needed to give my obligatory first-date verdict: frog or prince?
The rendezvous point was a craft-beer house with dozens of high-percentage spirits on tap, a low-light ambiance and a solo hipster strumming John Mayer tunes in the corner.
It had all the makings of a perfect date — until it wasn’t.
At first, the discourse was pleasant enough and very organic, not like the typical interviews I had recently waded through on at least a dozen prior encounters with men.
But things took a turn for the bizarre when the lawyer guzzled down half-a-dozen too many brews. At least that’s where I lost count.
His newly acquired loose lips gave me a run-down of his financial ruin, which included a $4,000 alimony-child-support check he penned monthly to his unemployed wife. And no, that’s not a typo. He was, in fact, still legally bound to her. The finality of their divorce seemed nowhere in sight, he revealed amid slurred words and broken gazes.
Eventually, he began to undress at the bar, and the words “check, please” broke free from my subconscious and forced their way out of my mouth.
I knew in all good conscience that I couldn’t let my inebriated companion wander the 15 blocks back to his house, so I offered him a ride home. He was, after all, a stumbling mess.
A few doors down from his house, I begrudgingly allowed a kissed. The desperate barrage of begging that followed, just for a walk along the shore, was the nail in our first-date coffin.
After 15 minutes and nearly having had to pry him out of my vehicle, the lawyer finally made his exit, much to my relief.
But 10 minutes up the road, my floorboard began to glow, and I looked down to discover a phone that didn’t belong to me.
I answered the call, and the boozy lawyer instructed me to hold onto his cell until our next date.
Ha! I insisted that I would return it that very moment.
As I pulled back up to his driveway, there he stood, almost statuesque in his well-lit front yard, with one unavoidable caveat: He was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs — his chiseled abs and his underwhelming manhood on display for all the world to see.
Aside from the heckling neighbors who had gathered outside to have a late-night laugh at the oblivious lawyer’s expense, his 6-year-old son sheepishly hid behind the man, as yet another witness to this public display of buffoonery. At least the youngster had the common sense to put clothes on before traipsing outdoors.
The lawyer introduced me as his friend before leaning in for another kiss, audience and all. I swiftly rebuffed the gesture and completed the phone hand-off, only seconds before disappearing down the road. I finally crawled into my bed at around 3 a.m. that night.
Later that afternoon, I woke up to find a text from the lawyer waiting for me, “Had a great time last night. Hope it wasn’t too wild for you.”
Um, yeah. It kinda was.
