A guy I met at work asked me out and then took me for a coffee down the road. I thought that was our first date, but I was wrong—he made things a bit more complicated than that.
- He put a time limit on it. Our coffee started off as fun and lively and we discovered that we had a lot in common outside of the office. However, after a few minutes, he suggested we get back to work. It was our lunch break and I thought that meant we were going use the full time we had at our disposal but he was more interested in getting back to his desk to eat his sandwich than he was in our conversation.
- I thought the date had gone badly. I figured he was only cutting the first date so short because he didn’t have a good time. I was bummed but I tried not to show it as we paid for our takeout coffees and we headed back to work. I told myself it was all good. If he wasn’t into me, I’d forget about him. At least he didn’t waste too much of my time.
- Later that day, he sent me an email. We were in the habit of emailing each other quite often at work, so he sent me a message to say that he’d had a good time and he thought it had gone well, so would I be interested in going on a first date? His subject line was “pre-date successful.” Wait, what? I emailed him back and asked what on earth a “pre-date” was. He then explained that it formed part of his dating strategy, and that’s when things really got weird…
- He followed his own rules. He said he usually went on these “pre-date” dates in which he limited the time with someone to a few minutes to see if there was a connection. If there was, he then asked them out on a proper date. If not, then no harm done and the two people went their separate ways.
- I felt dissed. I know he’d had a good time on our pre-date and whatever, but the fact that he was now asking me out on a proper date felt like he was super arrogant. I mean, he screened me to see if I was worthy of spending time with? It was like he expected me to be glad that I made the cut and he’d asked out on a real date. What a jerk!
- He clearly didn’t see my worth. He really should have known I was worthy of a date before even asking me out to that stupid “pre-date” coffee. We’d been getting to know each other a bit for weeks. I should have been good enough to get asked out to a real coffee that lasted longer than a few minutes. If we connected as friends, why would he need to test that further?
- It was also confusing. By using this “pre-date” strategy, I’d felt really confused. Rushing out of a first date gave me the wrong impression that he wasn’t keen on seeing me again. Meanwhile, it was a test. It’s just a lot of unnecessary drama that I didn’t need to go through when trying to see if someone’s a good match for me or not! First dates are stressful enough without all this extra complication.
- He ruined a good thing. What also struck me as quite strange was how he pulled the plug on what could have been a fantastic first date. Why end a date five minutes into it with the lame excuse of wanting to go back to work if he was having a great time? By doing that, he put me off. I don’t care what stupid dating rules he lived by. They were blinding him from potentially awesome relationships that were right in front of him.
- I didn’t want to date him anymore. I really had thought he was a cool guy and I’d been looking forward to spending more time with him outside of the office. Unfortunately, he just showed me that he was arrogant and needed to tone down his ego a bit. I replied to his email and told him that I hadn’t had such a great time. He seemed taken aback. I guess he assumed that I was into him, so honestly, it felt good to throw him for a bit of a loop in return.
