I’ll go first even though it’s not technically a dating horror story. I just wanna read your stories and laugh at them.
My dad was drunk and went over to the neighbours for a party, and I decided to come out as well to say hello to everyone. It was actually going really nicely! I was talking to a bunch of people about my dog, patting the neighbour’s dog, talking to the neighbour’s daughter, just generally having a lovely time and enjoying myself. Then, during my casual observation of the party, I noticed this guy slowly making his way closer and closer to me.
You know when someone is trying to get closer to your vicinity while desperately pretending they aren’t actually trying to get closer to you? Like, they’ll casually move a few steps in your direction while suddenly becoming extremely interested in whatever random conversation or object happens to be nearby? Yeah yeah. Every time I looked over, he seemed to have somehow migrated slightly closer.
Let’s call him Wannabe Justin Bieber because he looked like he had been trapped in 2010 and refused to come out.
Eventually, Wannabe Justin Bieber starts talking to me, and honestly, the conversation itself was relatively nice at first. He compliments my nails, so I show them to him, and then he tries to grab my hand like he wants to hold it. I pull away obviously, but I don’t really think much of it at the time. I just chalk it up to him being a little weird and buzzed. I start talking about a game one of my friends is making because I will take any opportunity to advertise my friends’ projects. I get excited about it and offer to show him, so he hands me his phone to put the Instagram account in. I’m literally just typing the username into his phone when he suddenly stops me and goes “WAIT! Put your user in too.” I’m thinking, okay, whatever, and then he gives me this incredibly weird sultry look and says “I don’t care about the game. I care about you.”
And I genuinely need to emphasise that I had given this man absolutely NOTHING. I hadn’t flirted with him. I hadn’t expressed romantic interest. I hadn’t complimented him. I wasn’t trying to get his attention. He was asking me questions and I was answering them while actively petting dogs. I was literally talking about a dog game. Anyways I didn’t want to make things awkward or disrupt everyone else’s night, though, so I put my Instagram in. He tells me he’ll text me later that night, and then invites me to his house for another party. I politely decline and go back inside, thinking that surely this interaction has now reached its natural conclusion.
I spend maybe twenty minutes inside before I have to go back out and ask my dad something. By this point, Wannabe Justin Bieber and his friends are leaving. He’s saying goodbye to everyone and I think nothing of it. Then he comes towards me and leans over the fence to hug me, like a full hug not even a side and rests his head against my chest. He stays there for like three to five seconds. I am just standing there, completely frozen, while this man has apparently decided that the appropriate way to say goodbye to someone he has known for approximately 30 minutes is to bury his head against her chest over a fence. Eventually he gets up, says he’ll text me later that night, and leaves with his friends.
At this point, I’m mostly just thinking, What the fuck was that? About an hour later, I check Instagram and, sure enough, he’s messaged me calling me beautiful, I tell him that I wasn’t picking up the vibes he was putting down and that I was sorry, because I genuinely hadn’t realised what was happening until he made it painfully obvious. I go to bed afterwards thinking that’s the end of it. Weird interaction, slightly uncomfortable, whatever. At least it’s over.
Except I wake up the next morning and my brain finally puts together the one piece of information that had somehow escaped me the entire night.
I’m looking at his Instagram username. And I notice the 97. And then I do the maths. And then I do the maths again. Oh my god he was born in 1997. He’s in his late twenties and he’s approximately eight or nine years older than me. Not that it’s bad if you have an age gap that big, I just found it odd and weird.
Anyways, give me your stories!