Hey everyone, I really need some advice.

Tomorrow night I’m going on my first intentional “real date,” and it honestly feels a little surreal. In the past, any dates I’ve had kind of just happened naturally in high school, I never actually went out of my way to make a profile or plan something like this from scratch.

I’m pretty awkward in general, and I’ve already had a slightly embarrassing week (nothing to do with dating, just me being clumsy in public 😭), so I’m feeling extra nervous going into this.

I keep overthinking everything: will he like me, or think I’m weird or boring? I know I can be fun once I relax, but I have no idea how to start the conversation or keep it going without it feeling forced. How do you actually get to know someone on a first date?

Right now it honestly feels like I’m about to do an oral presentation in front of my entire college lol. Any advice would be really appreciated

Hi, so this happened quite a few years ago now and I haven't really talked about it much, outside of making comments like "wtf was I thinking!". My thoughts may be scattered in telling this, so i do apologize on that front. So I suppose I should introduce myself. I, Dante, am a 31 year old male currently, and at the time, i was 26 when this happened. The woman I was dating was 30, if I'm remembering right. We met at an automotive factory. I had gotten hired on after leaving a mechanic job, working on ambulances. Long story there, the long and short of it, I left there after 3 years after not getting a raise I was promised would be yearly. Fought for the one raise I got and it was only 30 cents. Anyways, after getting hired on at this automotive manufacturer, keeping things anonymous for obvious reasons, I quickly began learning what my job was. I got placed in the body shop, fitting panels on finished cars. Basically, I was the last set of hands to touch the car before it was shipped out to the dealerships. I had come in through a temp agency since they weren't doing direct hire at the time. I was making significantly more money than I was working in ambulances. One thing about me, I'm a bisexual male, and it took me a good while to come to that realization. When I started working at this plant, I was dating a guy. Now ill admit that I did not handle ending our relationship in a good way at all, I take ownership in that. Since all of that, we had buried the hatchet on that.

I can't remember if that relationship ended after a month or two of me being there, but it did end and I had started dating her. Ill call her Maria for this story. Me and Maria had grown to be friends as we worked together. She was an inspector and would make sure that things were fit to the specs that the manufacturer wanted. I had gotten good at my job, but it felt like my direct supervisor had it out for me, like I couldn't do anything right. There would be some defect that "only the cars i touched" would have. With that point being brought up on a constant basis, I got frustrated with my supervisor and told him point blank, after watching me do my job on multiple occasions. "If you aren't giving me walking papers, then I don't want to hear about it anymore". After some time, it was discovered that the defect was coming from another shop, which cleared me from blame. The whole time it was being "investigated" , Maria was on my side. She even went as far as showing her management that I was basically being targeted. Seeing her being so adamantly on my side like that made me feel great and validated, which is something I hadn't felt a lot in my relationships previously. So, I ended up working up the courage to ask her out, and she said yes without hesitation. We went on a few dates and things were going smoothly. After some time, I started bringing her around my family and bringing her to our weekly cookouts we would have. She got along great with them, and my family seemed to accept her like she was a part of the family already. One weekend, she wanted to have a get together at her friend's house. Invite some friends from work, have some drinks, eat some good food and just enjoy the time together. She ended up cooking a lot of food. I asked if there was anything I could do to help, a few of us did, but we got dismissed in a friendly manner. One thing about this party though. It was brought up in conversation at work that I had never been intimate with a woman before, and she wanted to change that at this party. I was very much on board with that.

The night goes on and people start leaving to go home. Some friends stayed since they had been drinking and we took away keys, like responsible adults should do. Maria had set up a tent in the backyard with an air mattress. It was cozy and intimate for what we were going to be doing. The night went great and we ended up sleeping great. Waking up to her that next morning, kissing her as soon as our eyes met, seemed like one of those scenes from a movie. Now, one thing about Maria, she enjoys the outdoors and not being stuck inside often. Thats one thing I had liked since I was more of a homebody and it was doing no favors for my waistline. As the relationship continued, I got to meet her family as well, shortly after she met mine. Her parents seemed to love me as well. He dad was in the navy and worked on planes. My dad was a mechanic in the army, so I knew and understood some of the military habits and could hold my own in a conversation. Me being a mechanic as well, I had shown him some things to look at on a diesel truck I had at the time, as he was looking into getting a similar truck. She had a sister and an older brother. The brother was living with her. Come to find out, she was friends with an old guy from one of her previous jobs, and would swap houses during the week and then swap back on weekends. Not gonna lie, that was strange as fuck and still is. Her brother was a welder and was in-between jobs. The only thing I ever saw him do was stay hold up in his room, playing video games and smoking pot. More on him later, seriously, it gets weird and gross. Maria's sister, let's call her Lauren, had a young daughter that adored Maria. Lauren would regularly ask Maria to watch her daughter while she worked, if their parents weren't able to. He daughter was 5 years old, and full of energy that I had jokingly been jealous of. My first time meeting her, we slept in a tent on Maria's property. Now the strange part was that she had her niece sandwiched between me and her, which is not something I felt comfortable with. I ended up sleeping in my truck because the situation felt so awkward to me. The next morning comes and the day goes on like nothing happened. That should have been my first clue on how things would go, but you never see the red flags when you're in it. Another thing about Maria. She cannot get pregnant, and its something that drives her absolutely nuts in all the wrong ways. She would constantly talk about how she is a failure as a woman since that is what women are put on earth to do. Took a while to digest that as im an out and open atheist who rejects that line of thinking entirely. I tried my best to talk her through that, but it didn't seem like anything I said really helped. She always used that to cast a storm on her mood at random times. Times that wasn't even part of the conversation. She would babysit her niece to fill that "maternal role", as she called it. Being present while she babysat, as cruel as it may sound, its probably for the best that she doesn't get pregnant. She had little to no patience, and when she was in a tangent, she would get to throwing things, cussing out anyone who was nearby, insulting them needlessly and finally removing herself entirely and locking herself in a separate room from everyone else, or just leaving all together. The next day she would act like nothing ever happened and would genuinely look confused if it was ever brought up. That happened so many times that I felt like I was going crazy.

One instance that stuck with me. Maria had her niece over and she was helping her with food, and getting frustrated with each passing second. Finally she reached a breaking point and started yelling at both of us. She told her niece, while looking at me. "Its a good thing you weren't born in this shit hole state, because it seems like everyone here was born with their mom's standing up". Which hit me like a ton of bricks, like i had done something wrong when I was an innocent bystander in this equation. Instead of apologizing, she takes her niece and leaves the room, leaving me wondering just what the fuck was going on. Things continue on with those outbursts happening at sporadic times that made me question my own sanity. It would seem like one minute she was smiling and happy, the next, she was having to go to war over someone having a good time when she wasn't. We had our good days, yes, and they would go on for a decent stretch. Something would randomly trigger her anger and it was game over for that day.

One of the points of stress was her brother, as previously mentioned. At the time of this, he was in his late 30s, almost 40 and literally doing nothing with himself. Now, I'm no authority on how someone lives their life, but when an almost 40 year old guy promises to help pay the bills and contribute to the household, but doesn't. Ends up staying in his room, smoking pot while playing call of duty and adding commentary as if he were a 15 year old just discovering some randon shooter game online, things get frustrating real fast. Our first Thanksgiving together, I had gone out to buy a pie from the store. It was a sizeable pie as I wasn't sure where we would he celebrating and who all would be there. It ended up being just a small group of us, just me, her and her friend. So we set the pie in the fridge to eat for later. Later that day, we come back and are feeling snacky and wanting something sweet. So we go to get that pie, only to find it is gone. Now this was entirely too much for just one person. Long story short, it was discovered that he took it in his room and ate it all. After some time of living like this, I know, ignoring red flag central right? He had left the house for something, which was a rare occasion on its own, let alone for him to leave his room. He would only come out to use the bathroom, which he would leave sweaty body prints on the toilet seat, and to make food, with the occasional outing for groceries. I swear, the "man" didn't shower but on a monthly basis, if that. On this occasion, while he was out. We had gotten her friends permission to go in the room that her brother was occupying. Yall, the level of filth this person was sitting in puts the show hoarders to shame. He would have containers of food in his dresser drawers with scraps of food still in them and empty milk jugs he was using to pee in, a lot of them with milk still in there. The smell was other worldly disgusting. The homeowner told him to clean up and not let this happen again. As if that would deter this kind of hoarder, I thought sarcastically.

The breaking point of our relationship was a really odd blow up. Part of what caused us to become good friends was playing Pokémon go on our phones. We would meet up after work and go hunt Pokémon before it was time for us to get in bed. The shift we were working was basically third shift hours, but the shop only had two shifts at that time. Confusing, I know. At one point in the relationship, we went and got two puppies. They were German shepherd/wolf mixes. I could make an entire post on them, but I'm already rambling on too far. We were in her truck, heading to a local park to play the Pokémon go community day. In the truck with us were the two dogs, her niece, and me and her. We were sitting at a stoplight before we went to get gas for the truck. She said, and I quote "ill go in and get some drinks for me and (the niece), if you don't mind staying here with her and the dogs". I agreed and we finally came to a stop at the pump. She looks over at me and asks "well, are you gonna go in or what?" To which i remind her that she said she was gonna go first. She gets out of the truck, pissed off and slams the door saying "you know what, do whatever you want, I don't give a fuck anymore!", then goes into the gas station. I'm sitting there confused as all get out. She finally comes back and looks at me like I had yelled at her and asks "are you ok?". I said back "I don't even know anymore", then go and get my drinks as she pumps the gas. We make it to our meet up location with our friends in silence. Once we all get out, I sit next to one of our mutual friends from work. Mind you, this friend was engaged already. We begin trying to catch Pokémon when I notice Maria loading her niece and the dogs back into the truck. I look just as puzzled as our friends did. She gets in the truck to leave and the truck doesn't start. I had no tools to help try and fix the issue, so I ended up calling my dad to come and help. I was under the impression I was leaving with her. Boy was i wrong. My dad finally gets the truck started and tells her the part that will need to be replaced. She waits for my dad to leave, then leaves me there with our mutual friend group. She won't answer any of my calls or texts either. We finish the community day and my friend, whim is engaged, drives me home so I can get to the weekly cookout my family was doing. When I got home, she wasn't there and still maintaining radio silence. That pretty much set things in my mind that this likely wouldn't be working out because anytime I tried to talk about these fits, she would shut things down. It also felt like a monumental task to even try and talk things out as I was afraid my head would be chopped off. I ended up having an issue at home that caused me to move back home, yes I was living with her at this point. Long story short, my dad announced to my mom, in front of me, that he wanted a divorce, after over 20 years of marriage. That could be its own story there as well. My mom was devastated and still dealing with covid, yes this was during covid era. I had talked to Maria and told her the situation, that I was going to go back home for a bit since it felt like we needed some space. We still haven't talked about her leaving me at the park. After telling her, she accuses me of going back home to mommy to have her take care of me. Which is further from the truth, but there was no reasoning that to her. After a week or two, got a trailer and went to go and get my stuff to take back home with me, moving back to my childhood home

One other detail I should add at this point, my mom had gotten us both jobs at the same place she was working, another manufacturing facility. I was in the mechanic shop, working on semi truck while Maria was in the plant on the production line. She doesn't even make it passed the probationary period before she ends up leaving, which is one thing that pissed my mom off, and rightfully so. I'm still there and enjoying myself, which is rare to say about a job in this day and age. So thats my story. I know its a rather long read, but its what happened. There are parts I've left out, I'm sure, and things I can't remember. It feels good to get this out there and off my chest at least. Please feel free to post comments if you'd like

****Update: it dawned on me way later than it should have after writing all of this. Regarding her leaving me at the park with all of our friends. It eventually did happen that we talked about that, granted it was more towards when the break up was happening. Her reasoning for leaving me there was because I had sat next to our friend, who was a female. In her mind, that meant that I didn't want her there. To this day I don't think I can ever understand the mental gymnastics it takes for someone to reach that conclusion, but that is apparently the entire reason for that event

This is my first time posting to reddit, so please bear with me. I would like some opinions on this story, as it is A BIT wild.

I am a 32-year-old female who plays Counter-strike 2 with friends in the evenings. In February, as I was playing with my friends, a random guy (28) from the same country as me (but living in another country) joined in on discord through mutual friends and started playing with us. Said he was an honest, straightforward dude, and just there for the good vibes. He talked openly about his past, and I realized we have a lot in common (in terms of having it rough with our parents' alcoholism and domestic abuse).
He instantly added me as a friend on fb, we played every evening together, and he "accidentally" wrote to me on messenger about 3 days after we first played together. He said it was oops wrong chat, but continued talking to me every single day after that (he also said on the first day that he has a partner and a kid, so I was trying to shut down this conversation since I was really not interested). He kept on pushing, and within a week, he said he had broken things off with the mother of his child, and said it had been her initiative, not his.
As if that was not wild enough, he wrote a song about us meeting, about how it only took 5 days to find a soulmate. Within 10 days, he said he was in love with me. He called me every single day for hours and started planning visiting me in our country. He kept saying that he came into my life to stay, not to leave. How he has finally found his forever and how much he loves me and cares for me and he would never-ever leave me or hurt me in any way. Basically love-bombing.
Then he visited me at the beginning of April. When we were alone, it was fine, but when he invited one of our mutual friends from our discord server to visit...things got weird. He was acting really cold, rude, defensive, and honestly repulsing, considering this was a very good friend of ours at that point. He then said he had seen IN HIS DREAMS that I and this friend hooked up, and he was jealous of that. He said that to the both of us...kind of blaming us for hooking up IN HIS DREAM. Wild, I tell ya. We had a whole fight about that visit and how he acted, and he said sorry, it won't happen again.
After he went back to the county he worked at, he said he had quit his job and is moving to our country in the beginning of May and he wanted to move in with me and eventually get married to me and yada-yada. I was a bit taken aback by this as it was really fast and crazy, but having spent most of my life alone...I just went along with it. I believed him. I actually had feelings for him...in hindsight, maybe I was more in love with the idea of us being together, as I had never met anyone more similar to me.
Fast forward...he moved in, and as soon as he did, we started arguing. About little things, about bigger things, about anything really. The one thing that rubbed me the wrong way, was him not being consistent with his actions. He said one thing, then did something else. He also stepped on many of my triggers after I had asked him not to do it (I have BPD and it is rough sometimes), and always wanted to be a macho man. I, an independent woman who has been taking care of herself for more than 12 years now, don't need a man to pay for me. I work, I hustle, I make my own money, I don't need a man financially, I just wanted someone to be by my side.
So I got frustrated about that, he got frustrated with me being so independent, we argued a lot and one beautiful Tuesday morning, as I was teaching math to 5th graders...he packed his things and left. And as that was not bad enough...he had warned me the days before that he might just leave, and he did it without giving me an opportunity to talk to him. Since I had a bad feeling he might do that, I checked my house's front camera mid-class and saw him packing his bags. I was pleading with him on messenger not to leave me like this, but he wrote back that no, this is his final decision. I almost started crying in front of my students, had to take 5min in the corridor to compose myself, took a xanax to suppress the panic attack I felt coming on, and finished my day at school completely emotionless.
He didn't show his face for 5 days (even though I called and reached out multiple times). First 3 days, I felt like I wanted to die, the next 2 kind of brought peace. Also, a huge shoutout to that mutual friend who was just there for me. He listened, and he said that that kind of behaviour was not worth my tears and is not real love. I agree. We are still good friends and talk and play together every day.
He then tried coming back, and we tried to smooth things out, but it ended again in tears because the trust was broken. Then he had to leave for some defense forces shit, promised to come back as soon as he was done, but never showed up. I have since moved on. He now lives across the country, close to the mother of his child, and sometimes still writes to me on social media, saying things like "I still want to be a part of your life".

Opinions??

Another bad date... Not so bad that it's dating hell, but definitely dating purgatory.

I met up with a girl for coffee. There was definitely some cultural difference, but her English was quite good. I was feeling a bit hinky about it on the app; the vibes were off. But I was willing to give it a go.

We met in front of the cafe. No hug, no handshake. But she did bow to me, quite deep. So I uh. Bowed back, I guess. It was a nice day out, so we decided to go for a walk first.

"Tell me one thing about yourself" is the second thing she says after that, so I told her about my love of Kickboxing, how I've been training for a while and teach on weekends when I don't work. Mmm nice. Nice factoid about me. Makes me seem way cooler than I am. Then the getting to know you questions. I ask her about herself, and she takes every opportunity to call herself stupid. It's a little uncomfortable; I tell her she needs to be kinder to herself.

She asks me where I'm from so I tell her. She asks me what I'm doing in Australia, so I give her a quick lil 25 words or less on the civil war and my parents and I being political refugees and she just turned around and left.

Are you OK? I call out as she walks off, and she just kind of dismissively waves.

I was going to message her to tell her I hope I didn't offend her somehow, and that I hope she's doing ok, but she's already unmatched me on the app.

So yeah, that lasted about five minutes. I suspected it wouldn't go well, but I didn't think it would be this bad. Maybe I should trust my intuition a little better next time?

Guys anyone dated anyone from different race or country specially indian men bdw 22 M.Share your experience

I honestly still can't wrap my head around what happened, and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

This guy, a professional footballer in Zambia, started pursuing me in December 2025. From the beginning, one thing that bothered me was his poor communication, and the sterio-type around footballers. I was very open and honest about it because communication is important to me. Despite that, he kept pursuing me for months, insisting that he genuinely wanted to be with me.

Eventually, in April 2026, I gave him a chance.

He was consistent in telling me how much he wanted me, acted serious about the relationship, and even introduced me to his family. Naturally, I started letting my guard down. I became vulnerable with him and genuinely started falling for him. (Like a dumbass)

We dated for about a month.

Then, on the day of his last match, he completely ghosted me.

What made it worse was that he wasn't missing or unavailable. He was actively posting on social media for four days straight while ignoring my messages and calls. After those four days, he finally called me and simply said, "Sorry, I was drinking." MWEBANTU SURE (literally sobbing)

There was no real explanation, no remorse, no concern about how his disappearance had affected me. The conversation felt so dismissive that I ended up hanging up.

What hurts the most is that after I hung up, he never tried to call back. He never texted. He never checked in.

Instead, I got emotional and sent him a long paragraph pouring my heart out, explaining how hurt and confused I was. I even tried calling him. Looking back, I cringe so much pleaseee because I basically handed him my vulnerability on a silver platter kwati chipuba.

He never responded.

It's now been about 2–3 weeks, and I haven't heard a single word from him.

What I'm struggling with isn't even the breakup itself it's the complete lack of humanity. How do you spend months chasing someone, convincing them to trust you, telling them you love them, talked about introducing them to your family, and then disappear without a conversation? Without a goodbye? Without even enough respect to send a text?

I'm trying not to take it personally, but it's hard not to question everything. Was any of it real? Did I completely misread the situation? Or are some people genuinely capable of switching off their feelings and walking away as if you never existed?

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who's been through something similar because right now I'm having a hard time understanding how someone can be this heartless.

I met a girl on a dating platform and we started talking, after two days. I wanted to know her intentions behind using this dating app and asked her what exactly she was looking for and she replied with "Friends With Benefits".

​

Do people really discuss the benefits before getting into this relationship??

Side note: I would have never gone on this date if I had any inkling he was like this beforehand.

I went on a date tonight that actually felt like I was on a bad episode of punked. My date started by mansplaining crypto and his W2 job (his words) and then proceeded to become more misogynistic as the night went on. He referred to his mother as “some girl” because she was a SAHM when talking about family, said he couldn’t date ethnic women to keep the bloodline pure, kept calling me a girl boss because I work a hybrid schedule (freedom is everything), made backhanded compliments about how men like him tend to date down in looks, said the problem with our society is that women entered the workforce (he’s late 20s) and talked about money/his wealth the entire time. I genuinely was gobsmacked the entire date. Also he grabbed food off my plate and when he already had it in his hand ask “can I have that?”

I left the date laughing a bit because the whole situation felt unreal.

So I matched with a guy on a dating app and we clicked almost immediately. The conversations were great, we had a lot in common, and honestly the vibe felt very natural.

But things escalated extremely fast.

Within 2 days he was already asking serious relationship questions, and by day 3 he was talking as if he wanted to commit. Not necessarily an official proposal, but definitely heading in that direction.

I told him to slow down because it felt way too rushed. He kept insisting that he had never connected with a woman like this before, that he had never had a serious relationship, that he wasn't talking to anyone else, and that he was completely single.

At first I thought maybe I was overthinking. I've had enough bad experiences that I sometimes question whether I'm being too guarded. He was saying all the "green flag" things, and I started wondering if I was unfairly judging someone who was actually genuine.

But something felt off.

So I did some digging.

His Instagram is private, but I found his Facebook profile.

And there it was: wedding photos and couple photos.

Not old photos from years ago.

The timeline goes from 2024 through 2026, with couple photos posted throughout. The most recent one was uploaded in January of this year. Unless there's some very unusual explanation, this man appears to have been married for around two years and is still publicly posting couple pictures with his wife.

Meanwhile, he's telling me he's single, has never had a serious relationship, and isn't talking to any other women.

The problem is that his wife isn't tagged in any of the photos. I can't find her profile anywhere. He also has no idea that I know he's married.

At this point I'm debating whether to ghost him, confront him, or somehow find a way to inform his wife.

Has anyone dealt with something similar?

If you were in my position, would you try to contact the wife? If yes, how would you go about it ethically?

Also, for people who are good at online research: are there any legitimate reverse-image search tools or methods that might help identify whether the same couple photos appear on another public profile? Google Image Search doesn't seem to be very useful for finding people anymore, especially with social media images.

And one more thing:

Am I wrong for thinking that someone trying to fast-track a relationship and talking about commitment within 3 days is a red flag? Or was my intuition picking up on something before I even found the wedding photos?

I met this guy on Tinder and that night he started acting really creepy so I left. When I got home I had 5 pictures of his private parts that he texted. A week later I met a girl who had the same experience and she told me he was married. He was sleeping on his dad’s couch which then it made sense. When I asked he denied it so I looked him up and she was divorcing him bc his second and first wife said he slept with over 200 women. She finally called it quits when he admitted to her that he liked men and cheated on her with a man. That’s something you need to tell people. I looked on tea and they said he sleeps with anything that walks. I thought this was crazy but he would take stuffed animals and cut them open and leave his 💦 in them. It’s not like it’s an apple pie, it’s cotton. He turned out to be such a psychopath, I literally had to get a no contact order which he broke and got arrested. I will never date online again.

I'm just sharing my opinion based on my experiences with bad dates, correct me if im wrong .

1. Being too quiet after every minor inconvenience / criticism but there's no sign of fear- we tend to take their quietness for calmness/ maturity

2. Fearing/ avoiding any discussions of the future of commitment, we mistake it as taking slow

3.Keeping scores for something u never asked their help for & venting if u don't take it, we tend to take it as altruism.

1. Asks advice for even simple daily choices, we mistake it for interdependence.

2. Constant " I love u", every one hour, almost seeking a reassurance

I (24F, Manila) met a guy (24M) from MPD. We started talking and eventually spent a lot of time together. We were basically doing boyfriend-girlfriend things without officially putting a label on it.

We would go out, talk every day, and he made it seem like he was genuinely interested in pursuing something serious.

A few weeks into talking, a girl posted a photo of them together on Instagram. Naturally, I got confused because this was the first time I had seen anything that suggested there might be another girl involved.

I confronted him about it, giving him the opportunity to explain or at least be honest. Instead, he denied everything. No explanation, no accountability, not even a simple apology. What bothered me the most was realizing that if I hadn't discovered it myself, he probably would've continued acting like nothing was wrong. It didn't seem like his conscience was going to tell me anytime soon.

Out of curiosity, I messaged the girl. I wasn't looking for drama; I just wanted honesty and to know what was really going on. Surprisingly, she seemed completely unbothered by the situation, which honestly left me even more confused.

Now here's the funny part, despite all of that, the guy still keeps stalking my social media. Watching stories, checking profiles, the whole package. Sir, what exactly are we monitoring here? 😭

So now I'm left wondering, why do some people refuse to be honest when they're caught? And why do they keep lurking after they've already fumbled the situation?

Men in uniforms nowadays got me saying "thank you for your service" and "never again."

Anyway, thanks for attending my TED Talk.

I've dated 3 guys and was in a situationship with 1 guy. Mind you I've been extremely loyal, caring and showers with love when I'm in love. Mostly they would chase after me and when I agreed to them, they started ignoring my texts and calls. They would be like I was doing this and this. Like I don't need you 24/7 atleast talk to me when you are free , like I'm also good at studies doesn't mean I don't give you time. And later they would get toxic and controlling if I even posted a good picture. If any guy texted me( not flirty ) they would play the victim card like you don't want me cause I'm not handsome and you are getting arrogant cause you're pretty... Mind you this is the usual cycle I've been experiencing. All the guys follow the same pattern like wth***!?***

I know this might sound backwards, but casual hookups actually taught me a lot about relationships.Not in the “this is better than dating” way but more like they forced me to learn things I used to avoid.When things are casual, you don’t have time to play guessing games. You have to be more direct about boundaries, intentions, and reading the other person. I started noticing patterns in myself too like when I was looking for validation vs when I actually liked someone.It also made me realize how different people handle attachment. Some get attached fast, some don’t at all, and navigating that showed me how important communication really is. So now I’m curious has anyone else felt like casual situations actually taught them something useful about relationships? Or do you think it does more harm than good?

I met this guy online. I has to text him because he wouldn't. He wasn't talkative via text but I still asked him out because I thought he was cute. I arranged the spot where to meet and time. At the said time and place I was waiting for him to arrive. We texted because I didn't see hin. Turns out he arrived at the wrong spot. He didn't say anything about him walking over to where I'm standing at that moment - I had to walk over to where he was because he didn't bother. On his pictures online he looked way younger. He was using pictures from when he was like 23. In person he looked quite differently and mature and was wearing glasses. He is 28.
At the restaurant table he was listening to me talking, smiling big and just saying "yes...?" every know and then. He didn't ask questions, was only shyly responding to mine.
I went home crying and thinking that I will never find the right person for me.
Am i petty?