Had had two dates with someone I met on an online dating site but quickly realised I wasn’t into him on a romantic basis. I told him this straight, explained I didn’t think we were quite suited and wished him the best. He said he wanted to stay friends and, against my better judgement, I agreed.
A few weeks later, after a bit of pestering to meet for a drink etc (should have been the warning klaxon), we agreed to spend the day together in central London. On one of our dates, I’d mentioned that even though I’d lived in the South East / West London for a while, I’d never visited a number of the usual tourist attractions.
On the tube journey into the City, he kept making snide remarks about just being mates and little digs and started talking about his ex and their sex life. Then, out of the blue, he starts singing the chorus to the Daniel Merriweather song “Red”; “And I can't do this by myself. All of these problems, they're all in your head. And I can't be somebody else. You took something perfect and painted it red.” It was loud enough for me (and others) in the carriage to hear and was the final passive aggressive straw, not to mention being really bloody cringey and embarrassing. I had zero patience for his nonsense so cut the day short.
I should have just blocked him then and there but I was clearly too nice in my mid-20s! Anyway, after a few texts and emails from him apologising over the subsequent days, the following week after work I agreed to meet him in my local pub so he could apologise face to face.
For background, I’m a huge Everton fan - a fact everyone gets to know about me pretty much straight away. I arrive and after a pretty perfunctory apology, he tells me he’s got a surprise for me to make amends. I don’t like surprises at the best of times, but certainly not from someone who has already irritated me.
In his wisdom and In order to prove how sorry he was for the week before, as well as to ‘show me what a huge mistake I was making by not giving us a chance’ (there never was an us - we’d had 2 dates!), he’d created an Everton themed quiz and, in the middle of the busy pub, pulled out this quiz paper and rattled off 10 questions about Everton, legendary ex players etc. I think he thought it would be some grand, romantic gesture that would make me swoon. I just found it really awkward, weird and honestly, a bit desperate.
That said, the thing that ultimately gave me the ick was him having the utter fucking cheek to tell me I got an answer to one of the questions wrong! This man didn’t follow football or know anything about Everton other than what he’d Googled, yet was sat there argumentatively mansplaining the “correct” translated meaning of my Club’s Latin motto. A Club I’ve supported since birth and a motto I think I learned before I knew my own home address! I left very shortly afterwards and text him later that night to say I wished him well but reiterated I didn’t feel any romantic connection and as I wasn’t looking for another friend, I thought it was best all round to just go our separate ways.
He reached out a few times afterwards by text and email, which I ignored hoping he’d get the message. Sadly not. A few weeks later, he sent me a lengthy missive by email in which he: chided me for ignoring him, expressed his disappointment in my failure to wish him happy birthday the previous week, again begged me to reconsider a romantic relationship as he was convinced he’d made me happy and I’d just been too hasty to call it off and finally insisted we should at least be friends if we weren’t going to be more.
His final p.s. at the end of the email was him telling me that I knew he’d make a good mate and he didn’t care what I said, you could never have too many friends.
At this point all of my patience and niceness was thoroughly exhausted, so my reply was a blunt one: Fuck Off and leave me alone. Then he got removed and blocked on everything.
Sadly, I’ve got a few other stories of icky / cringey / creepy dates from around that time period. Thankfully, a year later I met my husband and we’ve been together 15 years and will be celebrating 6 years married in 2 weeks time.