On one woman's date, things went horribly wrong, landing one of them in hospital. Photo / Getty Images
On one woman's date, things went horribly wrong, landing one of them in hospital. Photo / Getty Images
Almost all of us, at some point or another, have been on a date that – simply put – was just plain bad.
Maybe they were shorter than they looked in their photo, were rude to the waiter or chewed their food like a combine harvester. It's part and parcel of the crusade that is modern dating. Pat Benatar didn't sing "love is a battlefield" for nothing.
But then are those dates that are so nightmarish they go right beyond bad to a straight-up disaster, a war story to be shared for years to come.
And that, my friends, is what we're gathered here to celebrate today.
From bed-wetting to sexual encounters that ended in a trip to the emergency room, here are the funniest, weirdest and most mortifying bad date stories, as told to news.com.au.
Sit back, pour yourself a stiff drink, and – just in time for the most romantic day of the year – ponder the great miracle it is that, in this day and age, any of us find true love at all.
The one with the burst capillary
"I had been on a few dates with this guy and we went home together. He was going down on me and suddenly I felt all this wetness around me, and he says, 'OMG. Omg, omg, omg, omg.'. I was sitting there like, 'F*** I've got my period this is so embarrassing'. I turned the light on and there was blood EVERYWHERE, soaked through the sheets, it looked like a crime scene. I said, 'Omg I'm so, so sorry' and then he looked up and his face was COVERED in blood and he goes, 'I had nasal surgery recently and I've burst a capillary in my nose and need to go to hospital'."
The one with the lifted leg
"On our first date, we were walking home from dinner when he suddenly walked a few steps ahead of me, lifted his leg, and farted. When I appeared shocked, he was like, 'I thought you'd think it was funny'. Then I said, 'What would you do if I did that?' and he said, 'YUCK'."
"A man asked me to come over to 'watch a movie'. I've been around the block a couple times, so I knew what that really meant *wink wink*. So I go over there in sexy lingerie and a full face of makeup only to have him turn on Grown Ups, sit on the other end of the couch, ignore me for an hour and a half and laugh HYSTERICALLY at every single joke in the movie. Needless to say, we didn't have sex."
The one with all the crying
"I'd just broken up with my boyfriend of three years and was totally heartbroken, couldn't imagine my life without him (it was my first proper relationship), and I was out one night and bumped into my Year 11 'boyfriend' who I dated for about three months. Anyway, we get chatting and it turns out he's just had a devastating break-up too. For some reason, we think it's a good idea to go on a date, so we catch up for a drink, which turns into two, then three, then about 12.
Almost all of us, at some point or another, have been on a date that - simply put - was just plain bad. Photo / Getty Images
"Anyway, we're sh*tfaced drunk walking home in the really boujee suburb he lived in and suddenly we both just starting CRYING about our exes, like full-on wailing, that crying where you physically can't stop – the two of us f**king drunk 20-year-olds just openly bawling our eyes out. Then suddenly, a light turns on and a man comes out in his undies and is like, 'Look, it sounds like you've both had your hearts broken and that sucks but some of us are trying to sleep and the entire street can hear you crying'.
"Years later, I bump into the same guy in London weirdly, so we try it again – this time just coffee and a walk in the park. About 10 minutes in, a bird sh*t on his head and I didn't say anything. I just couldn't stop staring at the bird sh*t on his head and it was so awkward. I kept thinking about how he would go home and see the sh*t on his head and be so embarrassed."
The one with the wall of fame
"It was days before Christmas and I was celebrating by catching up with some friends I hadn't seen in a while. After drinking and bar hopping through Newtown, I decided to meet up with a man I'd been messaging on Tinder. We were both out with friends, he was a doctor – what more could a girl want?
"After a night of fun at his place I couldn't remember his name. I went to the bathroom only to find he had not one, but THREE framed articles about when he was kidnapped in South Africa, including one opposite the toilet. It helped me learn his name, but I left swiftly after."
The one with the naked cat cradler
"After maybe a week of mildly funny banter on Instagram and a few cancelled dates on my side, I finally invited this guy over to mine for a date (read: two, maybe three bottles of wine). Everything was going fine. There was a bit of drunken guitar playing and bad singing (do all men see a guitar as an open invitation to play some B-grade Ben Howard??) and we ended up sleeping together. Again, fine, whatever.
"Except after, he said to me, 'How funny would it be if we got married?' To which I (jokingly) replied, 'How funny would it be if I kicked you out?' and graciously, he did comply. I ran to the bathroom to give him some time to get dressed, but as I came out, I was confronted with the sight of this stark naked man standing in the hallway holding my cat.
"I then remembered the cat was previously outside – so he would have opened my apartment door, stark naked. It's the last point I find most horrifying."
The one with the Rapunzel escape
"I went on a date in London, we went home together. He had a drug-induced psychotic episode and locked me in his room and I tried to climb out the window but it was really high. So I just waited it out until he calmed down."
"The guy I liked in high school asked me to 'hang out' late one night. So he comes and picks me up in his mum's mini-van and we park around the corner and climb into the back seat. I was chewing gum so I'd have minty fresh breath and it briefly crossed my mind that I should spit it out at some point but since I was young and naive, I thought we'd just be making out and it wouldn't be a big deal.
"However, one thing leads to another and I find myself unzipping his pants. Not to go into too much detail, but there's a lot of heat emitted by that area of a person's body and apparently, if your mouth gets too hot, gum melts into this disgusting, sticky, cement-like substance. I just KNEW I was getting gum all over this poor man's [redacted] but I was too awkward and shy to stop and just spit out the gum. When he got home he texted me, 'Were you chewing gum?' So I blocked his number and never spoke to him again.
The one with the spilt 'wine'
"I'd been seeing this dude for a few weeks and we met up one night when we were both out – I was sober, he was drunk. He stayed over and at about 3am in the morning, he shakes me awake and is like, 'You've spilt something all through the bed'. I get up, groggy and confused, to find the bed absolutely soaked, with a strong smell of urine coming from his side.
"And he's like, 'Yeah, I think you've spilt wine on the bed, it's going everywhere'. He'd clearly p***** himself and was too embarrassed to admit it so in his drunken state thought it was a good idea to gaslight me. I washed the sheets and we slept in a different room, and when we woke up in the morning he had absolutely no recollection of the moment AT ALL but sheepishly admitted that it'd happened before and he was prone to p*ssing himself when he's drunk. This is why you don't date 21-year-olds."
The one with the little brother
"I went on a date with this girl and it went really well, so I invited her to my brother's going-away party for our next hangout (my little brother was moving to Europe). Anyway, she ended up getting along really well with my brother so the three of us – me, him and my date – headed out to a bar in the city. I got up to go to the toilet and came back to find her making out with my little brother, so immediately left.
"She ended up going home with him, not realising that he lived with me. I was up and having a drink, so the three of us had a laugh about the situation and kept drinking. And then she ended up sleeping with me, her original date."
"I was on a second date, and he came around to my place to 'watch a movie', and the whole time I could smell this funky smell and I was like, what the f**k is that. Anyway, I'm sure he could smell it too because nothing happened, he didn't even try to kiss me. When I left, I realised I'd stepped in dog sh*t and was like, draping my legs over his lap, with my dog sh*tty feet. Never heard from him again."
The one with the burst seam
"Our first date, he invited me to a really fancy hotel bar and I was meeting friends for dinner after so I was quite dolled up, in a slinky dress I'd just bought on sale from Zara. I walk in feeling sh*t hot, strutting, fashionably late, and see him sitting down waiting for me. I sit down and suddenly hear this huge ripping sound.
"The zip on the side of my dress, from my underarm to my hip, had COMPLETELY BURST OPEN exposing the entire side of my body, including my ugly granny Spanx undies. There was literally no way to hide it, and it happened while he was talking so I'm just sitting there with all my shit hanging out, awkwardly trying to cover up from the other people in the bar with my arm, thinking, 'Oh my God, I'm about to be kicked out of this bar for indecent exposure', just gradually getting sweatier and sweatier palms as he continues talking.
"Eventually I had to interrupt, so I'm like, 'I'm so sorry, my dress has just completely split and half the people in this bar are looking at my undies' and turned to show him the damage, and he absolutely lost his sh*t laughing. I managed to fix it in the bathroom and we were able to laugh it off and have a good time (and about three bottles of champagne)."
The one with the model scout
"I was on a date with a guy who owned a sunglasses company. I was halfway through telling a story and he literally put his hand up to stop me and said, 'I'm sorry, I've just seen a really beautiful girl with flippy brown hair across the bar who would be PERFECT for my next campaign'. And he got up and went over to her and asked her to be a model."
The one with the commando denim
"I drunkenly slept with a guy and as he was getting dressed to leave I noticed he was wearing jeans with no undies underneath. I asked him why and he gave some flippant answer about her just prefers going commando. UNDER DENIM JEANS. Needless to say I had a violent yeast infection for about two weeks afterwards."
"It was partially my fault because I let it go on for so long but the conversation was awful. He was the hipster trifecta and didn't ask me a single question as he blabbed on about coffee, sourcing independent beans and all the independent brands his friends had started. He also worked as a barista for an indie cafe, and said the phrase: 'Corporate girls seem to really like me because I just offer such a different perspective to their life', which would have been fine but he strongly hinted that I – a lifestyle journalist (at the time) – was wowed by his bohemian lifestyle.
"THEN when I finally was like, no this is enough and got the bill, he was like: 'If you get this one, I'll get the next one?' And I was so confronted, I tapped my card and got stung with an $80 bill. I was also a bit tipsy so I'm pretty sure I made a very unsubtle face to the waitress as I got out of my seat. To his credit, he probably noticed and texted me and was like: 'What are your bank details?' and he did end up transferring me half."
The one with Kmart's biggest fan
"I went on a date with this really indie guy when I was about 20, really broke at uni working at a bowling alley, and he's going on and on about how much he loves specially curated Japanese denim and like one-of-a-kind $3000 vintage jackets and I'm sitting there in my Kmart finery thinking, 'Wow what a pretentious douche'. So I decide to be a bit cheeky and I'm like, 'Well, my dress is from Kmart. I shop there all the time and I love it. Quantity over quality baby'. And he literally looks at me with a disgusted expression, gets up and LEAVES which I thought was hilarious.
"But then, I'm at the bowling alley one night and it was super quiet so a group of us are talking about our bad recent dates (naturally) and I start to tell the story about how I got walked out on for saying I shop at Kmart. And one of the girls goes, 'Hang on a second, I went on a date with that guy and he told me about you'.
"He was telling her about how he went on this horror date with a girl who rolled her eyes at him for wearing fancy clothes then bragged about shopping at Kmart and said 'quantity over quality baby' and I was like it's ME, I am the Kmart girl. She (the friend) ended up sleeping with him but never went back because he had Hot Wheels posters all over his room."
The one with the wife
"I was out at after-work drinks when we were told the bar we were at was closing and decided to move the party along. We went to a not-so-nice pub and as soon as I walked in, I noticed this handsome man and his friends were looking at me. Given the liquid courage, I went over and introduced myself. Irish, handsome, slamdunk, I thought.
"After chatting for a bit and exchanging phone numbers, he confessed he was married … with kids. I asked why he was chatting up a 22-year-old woman and he said, 'No one is happily married', and I replied that I'd hoped my parents' 25-year marriage was proof of that. Being someone with a conscience, I told him to delete my number and left.
"I woke up the next morning to 40 text messages and multiple missed calls. Messages included photos of him at work, a sad selfie, songs, and confessions to how beautiful I was. Others said he was in a 'world of s***' and would leave me alone, only to send more. The texts continued for a few days but I ignored them. I feel bad for his wife."
