So I was feeling spontaneous this past week and decided to meet up with a man who had been nonstop texting me from Hinge. I finally responded to his messages and agreed to meet him the next day. I’ve never met up with a guy in such a short amount of time, but I figured since I was visiting his state—which is about two hours away from mine—I might as well. I thought maybe if I tried something different, did less chatting like y’all suggested, and actually met up quickly, I’d have a different outcome.
I met up with him at a cute little drink/food spot that had board games and card games. The place was nice. He walked in, gave me a hug, we ordered, and sat down. Almost immediately, he seemed to be checking to see who I was looking at. He asked, “Who are you looking at so hard?”—mind you, I was just looking around because I was kind of nervous. We started talking, and there was intense eye contact on his end, which made me even more nervous.
He then started jumping into really deep conversations, talking about his past and his upbringing. Which is fine—some people overshare because they’re nervous. He started telling me about his past trauma and how he overcame it, then asked me if I’ve ever been to therapy. He pulled out a picture and showed me a baby photo of himself. At this point, I was thinking everything was moving fast. Then he started asking me these deep questions:
“What’s one thing God has spoken to you?
“Give me a couple of things you’ve learned about yourself this year.”
Don’t get me wrong—these are good questions, but we had only been talking for less than 72 hours and had just met. I’m not going to tell you my whole life story, plans, and goals right away. Those things come out naturally; you can’t force conversations like that. He then started talking about his parents and asked me what my mom’s personality is like. I paused because, in my head, these didn’t feel like normal first-date questions. He then said, “I’m a different kind of man. I’m making you think. I don’t ask surface-level questions like other dudes.”
We were sitting across from each other, yet he kept pulling his body closer to me and trying to touch my hands. I felt like I was giving off a nonchalant, closed-off vibe, which I didn’t intend—I was just kind of in shock, honestly. He then started asking if I liked his personality and if he looked like his pictures. He complimented my eyes and said I looked just like my photos as well. He told me girls approach him all the time, that he’s never nervous, and that he’s overly confident. Which may be true—he’s a 6’4”, man in good shape—but if you truly had it like that, you wouldn’t need to say it. It would just show. Plus, if you have all this “motion,” why were you blowing up my phone? I had 12 messages from him where he was basically talking to himself in our chat.
Then he got a phone call and visibly looked guilty, shrugged his shoulders, and put his phone down—then pulled it out again and said, “I’ve got so many Happy New Year texts.” He then read one out loud that said, “Happy New Year, boo.”
I ignored it at that point because I’ve dated enough to recognize that game and what he was trying to do. I told him I needed to head back since I was leaving that day. He walked me to my Uber, grabbed me a little, and said, “Don’t forget my hug.” We hugged, I left, and shortly after I got a text from him saying, “How did you enjoy it? Hope we can kick it again.”
At this point, nothing surprises me anymore. I really think I need to get off the apps this year.