Even if I've asked you not to a 100 times.
On Wednesdays, Amanda Chatel will be sharing stories about her strange, fascinating and sometimes wonderful dating life. If it makes you want to date, check out TheGloss dating page.
Normally for “Dating Hijinks,” I go through your emails and take out the bits and pieces that are the best, and thread them together. I do this mostly because I like to slice and dice and I want to make room for more than one tale. However, Sami’s essay I’m printing in its entirety, because my god, you guys, this guy is the devil.
I know over the years I have written about my qualms with and general misadventures in dating. This year I got into two situations (Chatel note: we’re saving that one for another date) that were way over my head in a Friday night Lifetime movie sort of way. I’d like to think of myself as a savvy dater. Since I’ve spent most of my life not in a relationship, I have never felt intense pressure to be one half of a couple. I have really awesome friends that probably, more than anything, make me a very lazy dater. I’ve tried to frame what occurred in a way so that it could at least seem like a cautionary tale.
I met up with this guy for a first date at the local mall. He was the first person from an online dating site that I had ever met up with for a date in the years that I’ve been on dating sites. He had asked me out two years prior, but I had tonsillitis at the time, and never ended up meeting up with him. The fact that he literally signed back up for online dating to contact me should have been some sort of red flag. My screen name was different and pictures were all different. He remembered everything about our conversations from years before. I remembered a few basic details.
He outright refused to call me Sami, as he hated my name. He only referred to me as Samantha. Our “coffee date” turned into us going suit shopping for him. I may be in the minority of women who really dislike shopping. At one point in the date I was talking about something, he stopped me, and said, “No, I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t care.” To which I surprisingly replied, “you can’t just say things like that to people.” I had to pay for his hot chocolate because he left his wallet at work the day before. He never did drink the hot chocolate because it was hot and he didn’t generally like chocolate. He just ordered something to order something. Again, why we were suit shopping when he couldn’t afford a hot chocolate… the world may never know.
I saw him more times that week. He got away with far more than he should just based on the fact that I found him very attractive, and felt lucky that he was going out with me. Genuinely, anyone would find him very good looking. What I liked most of all was how easy he was to talk to. That, for me, is kryptonite. Through our conversations though he would slowly chip away at me:”Don’t you know that for most guys you talk too much?” “What you wore on our first date was not attractive.” “Your hair is a mess.” etc. Granted, he did pick out good clothes for me, and a good new haircut… but this was a slowly building terrible situation. I made excuses that he was advanced in school, and didn’t socially adapt well. He didn’t have friends, and I felt bad for him. He called me two weeks into dating. At this point we had decided that we were exclusive.
One night he had silenced a phone call from his mom, and it turned out that call was to tell him that his dad was in the hospital with meningitis. I felt awful for him, and offered to help however I could since I knew he had a busy school schedule too. This is the point where he blamed me for his dad’s meningitis. He felt that in the two weeks since meeting me, his life had fallen apart, and that clearly I was to blame for all of it. I brought “bad Karma”. He made it very clear that he never wanted to talk to me again. I unfriended him on Facebook to go along with his wishes. He called two weeks later acting as if nothing happened.
