In his Tinder photos, he has a pretty nice smile. He’s definitely cute. One of them is way too blurry, I really don’t get why some guys put up such low-quality photos sometimes.
It looks like he likes the outdoors, and he’s sitting with a pint in two out of five of his pics, so he must like beer as well.
He looks fun overall, so I swipe right.
After some messaging back and forth, we decide to meet up and go for drinks. He compliments me right away: “You look great,” he says. I blush and say thank you.
It’s not too often that a guy compliments you right away; in my experience, most of them are too shy to do so.
The first date goes pretty well until about the third — and final — drink in. I notice that he’s starting to make jokes about women here and there. “But that’s you women in general: you’re fussy,” he says to me when I tell him I can be choosy when it comes to restaurants.
Our conversation somehow turns to US politics, and I quickly discover he definitely wouldn’t have been a Hilary supporter, that’s for sure. “She wasn’t fit for it, she didn’t have the stamina,” he says.
I remind him that Hilary Clinton is actually younger than Donald Trump, and ask him if he thinks that because she’s a woman.
“Of course,” he says with a laugh as he takes a sip from his pint glass.
OMG, he sounds just like Donald Trump, I think to myself in disbelief.
On my way home I ponder our conversation. Hey, we can disagree on politics, and I definitely don’t like what he said about Hilary or some of the jokes he made, he did go a bit too far I think to myself, but maybe he is a nice guy.
He sends a text a few days later asking me to meet for dinner. “Apologies for winding you up a bit, I get like that after a drink,” he writes. “Normally I’m quite a nice guy 😜”.
I decide to meet up with him again, and this time we go out for pizza at a low-key Italian restaurant. Who doesn’t love a good pizza?
The conversation is going pretty well, he’s pretty fun to talk to again. I find out that he has two brothers and that his mom is a single mom. He tells me he also owns a house in England that he rents out.
Well, that’s a plus, I think to myself.
Our delicious looking pizzas arrive and our conversation turns to shows on Netflix. He asks me what I’m currently watching. I tell him that I’m currently into the Real Housewives, and he rolls his eyes. “You women are what’s wrong with the world,” he replies, shaking his head a bit and sharply squinting his green eyes.
I just about choke on my bite of pizza …
Excuse me: it’s date two and he’s already openly criticizing all women like that? Did I hear that right?
Oh you did, Becca, he just said women are the source of the world’s entire problems. Don’t second guess yourself.
“Whoa, what are you talking about?” I answer with a disgusted and shocked look on my face that I just couldn’t hold back.
He had just offended my entire gender, after all, and me in the process.
And then he said what often comes out when some people realize that they’ve gone too far and offended someone: “I was only joking,” he attempted to assure me.
“I don’t think you were,” I say. As if a statement like that could be a joke… this guy sounded like a woman-hater, and a future gaslighter to boot!
I kept my cool, finished my artichoke pizza and Italian Dolcetto and motioned to the waiter for the bill.
“Did you want to grab another drink somewhere?” he asks while putting his wallet back in his jean shorts’ pocket.
“No,” I say, telling him I have to be up early tomorrow, which wasn’t true at all.
We say goodbye and part ways, with me knowing that I definitely won’t see him again. His comments that he would later call “jokes” just weren’t sitting right with me. I started to wonder what he would eventually say about me if we were together for a while. He’d likely end up telling me that I was what’s wrong with the world.
Well, he already had!
So potential husband number two after the ex is a short story, ladies. I will not stand for blatantly sexist comments and woman-hating at all.
He also threw it out there that he thinks all nurses are crazy, which really made me wonder (1) how many he had dated to really think that? and (2) if he thinks all women of a certain profession are ‘crazy’, he’s not too far off from thinking all women are so, too?
I just didn’t want to know.
As difficult as this experience was, I realized that I have a potentially good jerk detector on hand, though: by bringing up Real Housewives on a date, I can potentially determine what a guy thinks about women. If he right away criticizes the women on the show without even having seen it (and especially women in general!), I’ll know he’s not worth my time!
Such jerk detectors can probably save us a lot of time and trouble.
I’m off to watch an episode of Real Housewives, I hope it’s not too crazy 😉
xx
Becca