There was the initial attraction. The eyes. The smile. It was enough to say “yes” to that first date. However, the more time spent together the more red flags kept popping up. Was he really joking when he said that? Was she really that clueless, or just having a bad day? The dates continue until the tipping point occurs. The point where there is no longer any doubt: you’re dating an idiot. Here are some stories of people left dumbfounded by the dull-witted, dense, and dim of the dating world.
1. Are You for Real?
My boyfriend and I were driving around this weird part of Las Vegas. Mesmerized by the lights, casinos, and Elvis impersonators, I said, "This is surreal." He said, "I know. It's so real." Startled and a bit curious, I repeated, "Surreal." He repeated, "So. Real." Exact opposite.
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2. A Bit Shallow
I went on a date with a girl and she talked about a quiz she got in one of her classes that day. It was a bunch of common knowledge trivia. One question was to name an ocean that borders the US. She said "Myrtle Beach." There were 50 questions like this. She got only one right. We're in college. She's going to be a teacher.
3. No Momma’s Boy
I dated a guy for about a month until I found out he didn't realize women's breasts made actual milk to feed their babies. He thought "breastfeeding" was just a way to hold a baby while giving it a bottle. I told him he was an idiot. He said with a disgusted sneer, "I didn't know that because I have never known any woman, who had or would breastfeed their child.”
I told him I had breastfed my son…he called me a pervert.
4. A Bumpy Ride
The first time I thought my boyfriend was an idiot is when he told my parents he was a “meatatarian” because he eats everything. The second time was when he told me that the bumps on the side of the highway are there so that blind drivers know when they are running off the road. Ah, high school boyfriends. He was hot, though.
5. Cat Got my Tongue
I had been dating this girl for a few months and we were serious enough that I was buying her Christmas presents. I found something that had a connection to a funny event involving her cat and my cat. I made the present to be from my cat. I thought I was being cute but instead, she got angry that my cat got her a present and I didn't.
I thought she was joking. She wasn’t. To make matters worse, her parents backed her up later at a family dinner. It was incredibly awkward.
6. Where in the World?
I was helping my girlfriend one night with her geography homework. I knew I was dating an idiot when I asked her to point out our own country on a map. She couldn’t find it.
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7. Kinda Spacey
I knew it wasn’t going to work out when she pointed up at a bluish star and sincerely asked, "Is that Earth?"
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8. A Word to the (Un)Wise
My girlfriend and I were playing the word game Madlibs. It was her turn and she asked "What is a noun?" I said, "It's a person, place, or thing." There was a long silence as she thought. It went on for so long that I thought she must be thinking of the best noun I had ever heard. Then she said, "Place."
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9. French Tribal Chic
Back in college, I saw a fleur-de-lis tattoo on the girl's back for the first time. I asked her what made her decide to get that tattoo on your back? She looked at me and said, “I don’t know. I wanted something tribal.” Yes, you are now permanently linked with the ancient tribes of affluent French royalty.
10. Rumor Has It
In high school, I was in an extracurricular program after school. There was one part that was pretty much all girls, including a girl I was dating. I went to all their events and helped out. I always wondered why none of the other girls or their parents talked to me. When I asked her about it, her reply was shocking. She confessed that she told all of them I was a horrible boyfriend and that I was very mean to her.
When I asked her why she told them that, she told me it was so no one else would take me away from her. I broke up with her shortly after.
11. Fake Plastic Trees
I realized I was dating an idiot when I saw her water her plastic plant. For the third time. I didn’t say anything the first two times I saw her do it as I was sort of stunned and curious. The third time she actually said, perplexed, "The water goes right through." She probably still waters it today and wonders why it doesn’t grow.
12. Historic Fail
I was dating this girl who was very cute and super sweet. We were watching another roommate play Call of Duty: World at War—it was still new at the time. She asked if the video game was based on a true story. We told her the game was based on WWII. She said, “What's that?” I told her she was pretty ignorant for now knowing about the time the entire world was in battle.
Her defense? “It’s not like everyone knows about it!” Well, the whole world kinda knows about it.
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13. Mixed Signals
I knew the guy I was dating was an idiot when we had this argument over colors. He seriously tried to convince me that the color orange didn't exist because it was really just pink and red mixed together. Agree to disagree? My Cheezies say otherwise.
14. You’re (Not) My North Star
My girlfriend and I were on a hike on a trail I had researched online. We get to a fork in the trail and I say, "Now we need to go north." She replied, "Haven't we been going north this whole time?" Confused, I look at her and ask why she said that. She replied, "North is the direction in front of you yeah?" Still not entirely sure about the origins of that logic. Our paths soon diverged.
15. Mind Over Matter
My girlfriend and I were 16 at the time and were going to “do it,” however I realized I didn't have any condoms. I was surprised when she told me I didn't need one. She said, "I trust my body not to get pregnant." I asked her what she was talking about. She told me it takes a conscious effort to become pregnant and if she didn't want to be she would never conceive.
I kept my virginity for a while after hearing that.
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16. Shades of Grey
My girlfriend insisted that the past was black and white. She was serious. I don’t even know what she meant. How do you argue with that?
17. You Can Call Me Al
A girl I dated for five years seriously thought Al Qaeda was a lone terrorist named Al.
18. No Silver Bullet
This guy I was dating shot himself in the leg while cleaning his 9mm. Twice. The same gun. The first time, he accidentally shot himself in the calf. I guess he really didn’t learn his lesson that it’s a bad idea to clean a loaded weapon, because two weeks later he took out his knee cap. It took months of surgeries to fix his leg. Not sure anything could be done to fix his brain, though.
19. Animal Instincts
There was this one girl who was probably one of the funniest people I've dated but definitely wasn't too sharp. We were at a restaurant one evening and she saw a picture of a buffalo and said, "I wanna eat that pig." I almost fell over laughing.
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20. Begging for Mercy
We were loading groceries into the car when a shady looking guy comes walking up asking for money. I put myself between him and my girlfriend and politely tell him that I'm sorry, I don't have any cash and can't help him today. We watched him start to walk away. We turn and get into the car. The second my back was turned, the shady man returned and said to my girlfriend, "Miss? What about you?"
To which she responds, "I'm sorry. All I have are twenties."
21. Wasn’t Written in the Stars
We were laying out under the stars and he asked why some stars were brighter and others were dimmer. I told him that they were different sizes, brightnesses, and distances away. There was confused silence. He said, "You mean, they're not stuck up there?" I'm lying there thinking, “This can't be true.” But oh yes, it was.
Upon further questioning, I found that he believed the night sky was a big dark blanket-like thing with stars stuck on it. The fact that our sun was a star, too also blew his mind. I was crushed. I almost broke up with him there and then. But he was very earnest and wanted me to "teach him." So I tried. Two years and a whole lotta stupid later, we broke up.
22. An Anticlimactic Story
We were in a vacation camp for 15- to 20-year-olds. Naturally, we started drinking and talking about doing it. After about 30 seconds of silence after someone had finished her story, my friend said, "Wait, women can have orgasms too?" His girlfriend was present. The relationship didn't last long.
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23. Jump for My Love
I have rabbits and one of them hopped by him in the living room and he said, "Oh my God, what's wrong with him?" I said "Uhh nothing, what do you mean?" He said, "Why is he jumping like that? Did he hurt his legs?" He had never seen a rabbit hop. He thought they walked like cats.
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24. How Now, Brown Cow?
My girlfriend was out for a run one day and when she came back she said she had to cut her run short because an animal charged at her. Concerned, I asked her what the animal looked like. She said, "Like a cow, but brown." It was a cow. A brown cow.
25. To the Moon and Back
We were out for a drive and we noticed the moon is visible in the clear blue sky. My girlfriend seemed surprised. She asked, “How is the moon out at the same time as the sun?” I answered matter-of-factly, “Sometimes that happens, it's not that uncommon.” She became agitated. “No,” she argued. “They are the same thing, so how can we see both at the same time?”
Now I was becoming a bit startled and said “The sun and the moon are two different things. Are you serious?” Her response? A flippant, “Yeah, not everyone went to college like you schoolboy.” I was floored. “You learn this stuff in Grade 2,” I said. She was in her early 30s.
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26. A Bit Starstruck
An old girlfriend of mine wouldn't fly at night because the plane might hit the stars during the trip and she didn't want to risk it.
27. A Capital Moment
We were watching a movie together when he asked, "Where is this movie filmed?" I answer, "Massachusetts." He said, "Oh." Later in the movie, a cop car that says "Boston PD" appears on the screen. He turned and looked at me with a “gotcha” look in his eyes and said, "Ha! Massachusetts? It's in BOSTON!" I still love him.
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28. Something Was Fishy...
I had a vegan boyfriend who ordered a Caesar salad. I told him Caesar salad dressing had anchovies in it and wasn't vegan. He told me that anchovies are mythical creatures, like mermaids. He enjoyed his mythical salad.
29. Birthday Suits
A girl I was dating was a good student, well-liked, and really nice, but just lacked some of the most basic common sense and was just off somehow. She thought that pudding and yogurt were the same thing. She found it slightly unnerving that animals walked around with no clothes on and tried to get her cat to wear clothes—and that’s not all.
She baked a birthday cake for Jesus at Christmas. She put candles on it and went outside to wait for the wind to blow them out, believing it was Jesus blowing out his candles. She was outside with the cake for almost an hour before giving up.
30. Timeless Love
My husband tried to make me feel like an idiot for contradicting his statement that there are two 12s on a clock. He pulled the whole annoyed, "Have you ever even looked at a clock? There is a 12 at the top and a 12 at the bottom!" I just stared at him and let it slowly sink in. It took some time.
This was last week and I've been married to this idiot for three years.
31. Protecting His Organs
A guy I was seeing was getting his drivers’ license renewed. They asked him if he wanted to be an organ donor. He said no. When I asked him why, he told me it was because he didn't want the government to come knocking for any of his organs when he still needed them. He really thought that becoming an organ donor meant that, at any time, his organs could be taken.
32. All Over the Map
My girlfriend thought that Alaska was actually to the southwest of the contiguous US because on the map we were looking at it was pictured right next to Hawaii.
33. Something Didn’t Add up
An ex-girlfriend said on multiple occasions that she wished she had been born in 2030 so that she could live to see the year 3000. She had better start eating healthier to have a lifespan like that. That's 970 years, folks.
34. The Meat of the Matter
My girlfriend and I went to a grill house and she was amazed to learn that steak came from cows. Upon further conversation about the origins of meat, she was also confused by the fact that bacon and ham came from the same animal. I thought bringing up ham and pork chops might make her head explode.
35. Man or Beast?
My boyfriend thought a wildebeest isn’t a real animal, and that it’s like “a Sasquatch.” I had to explain that a wildebeest is an African mammal that is very much real. He thinks I’m the idiot and didn’t believe me that it was a herd of wildebeests that stampede in The Lion King until I had to look it up and show him.
36. Cash and Karma
My boyfriend actually believed that if you had money, it was because God thought you were a good person and that only bad people were poor. The truly ironic part of this was that he couldn't get enough work to make a living, and had to ask his wealthy father for handouts all the time.
37. In a Class by Herself
As she was leaving her finals for a geology class, this girl I was seeing had a surprising revelation. "I just found out yesterday that I don't even need this class,” she told me. “I was supposed to take geography. What's the difference, anyway?" Well, I hope she learned enough about rocks to realize that her head was full of them.
38. Playing Chicken
My girlfriend tried to explain to me how chickens and hens were different animals. I wonder what she thought a rooster was…I should call her.
39. I Hunger for You
My boyfriend always called lingerie, "linguine". As in the pasta. “Why don't you put on some linguine and come over?”
40. Left Stranded
I was on my way to pick my girl up when my truck broke down. I called her to let her know that I wouldn’t make it. She proceeded to get really mad and me and screamed, “But you have two trucks, why not just take the second truck!” I replied, “Because I'm 20 miles from home, where my other truck is.” But that wasn't a good enough excuse for her.
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41. The Ignorant Hipster
My ex was the oldest of six siblings. We had been dating for about a week, both 20 years old. I commented, "You have wide hips for a man." He replied, "It's from carrying children." I was totally baffled. That was, until his youngest brother walked in. He picked him up and held him to the side, rested on his hip, as you do with toddlers. I saw what he meant.
I had to sit him down and explain that you don't get wide hips from literally carrying children around.
42. Idiocy Uncorked
One night my boyfriend took me to a fancy restaurant and we ordered a bottle of red wine. When the waiter came back with the bottle, he gave my boyfriend the cork to sniff. I couldn’t believe what he did next. He grabbed it, sucked on it, and licked it like a lollipop. He was quite excited while he did it. The waiter, looking obviously uncomfortable, poured our glasses and slunk away.
43. Plant Power
When my boyfriend told me, quite seriously, about how people with enough willpower can survive by photosynthesis. Photosynthesis. The process where plants turn light into chemical energy. He was dumb as a tree but I still don’t think he could do it.
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44. Epic Fail
It was college finals week, when my boyfriend finally tells me he's failing algebra—not even real algebra, "business algebra." I offer to help him study for his final. Instead of saying thanks, he just laughed at me and said, "What could you possibly know about math?" I was studying engineering.
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45. Hot and Cold Relationships
I can’t get my girlfriend to understand that Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same thing. They are both methods of measuring temperature. She thinks Celsius is cold, and Fahrenheit is hot.
46. Time Stops for no One
My girlfriend thought flashing red lights on the road—as in traffic lights blinking red—meant you were entering a different time zone, instead of indicating a stop sign. I don’t let her drive anymore. Or ask her for the time.
47. Save the Date
"Oh wow, Halloween is on Friday the 13th this year!" No, my ignorant boyfriend. No, it's not.
48. Put Him in His Place
My boyfriend thought the Nation of Islam was a place. When I explained to him this was not the case, and that it was actually a political and religious movement, he responded with, "Agree to disagree." He has never pointed it out to me on a map.
49. Obsessive Love
We were texting back and forth and my girlfriend said she was “upsest with Bon Jovi.” I realized that it was a typo and asked why she was upset with Bon Jovi. After a few minutes, she messaged me back “No, I love him. I can’t stop thinking about him. I'm upsest with him.”
50. Island Dreams
My girlfriend thought Scotland was its own island, as in separated by water. This would be understandable, except…we live 30 minutes from the Scottish border and have lived in eastern England our entire lives.
51. Erect Dysfunction
When she flipped out because her third-grader came home with "erect" on a spelling list, and was on the verge of calling the school. She honestly had lived her entire life not knowing "erect" had any other use aside from describing the male anatomy.
52. Cooking up Stupid
She thought I was crazy for putting Pop-Tarts in a toaster. Or maybe it was the time she tried making Hamburger Helper for the first time at 27 years old and called me from the store to ask where they sold the "brown hamburger meat" Oh, and I almost forgot the best part. She's teaching your children right now in a public school.
53. Surprise!
You know there is a fine line between an idiot and a sadist that secretly hates you, right? I’m still not sure what side of that line my girlfriend ended up on after she "surprised" me by inviting her mother on our 16-day Hawaiian cruise.
54. A Bad Sign
A girl I was seeing told me with a straight face that our horoscopes had changed and it was a bad idea to be together.
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55. Stay Classy
I found it charming and endearing that my boyfriend did funny voices, made funny idiosyncratic jokes, and occasionally called me "m'lady." Then I made a disturbing discovery. After I watched the movie Anchorman, I had an “Oh my God” moment. He literally was doing a 24/7 Ron Burgundy impression. It eclipsed his entire personality. I'm not sure I ever really met him.
56. Time is Relative
When we got into a legit argument over how many years there are in a decade. Baby, if you are reading this, there are only 10 years in a decade. Not 12.
57. Creepy Role Reversal
I told her a story about my childhood. Two weeks later, she told the same story to me, but this time it was her childhood.
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58. Lack of Direction
She tried to argue that we could get to the moon easier if we just built a spaceship that could go underwater, and flew it through the ocean to the moon during the daytime rather than straight up.
59. All You Need is Love
When my girlfriend told me that babies could only happen if there were love, and the only way to get pregnant from an assault was is if you loved your assailant.
60. Call Waiting
My ex-boyfriend thought that whenever I missed his call, the phone would still be ringing even after it went to voicemail. I got at least three voice mails a week that consisted of silence and the odd annoyed, impatient sigh.
61. Shaken and Stirred
My ex-girlfriend is 5'4" tall and petite. She wouldn't eat all day and then go out and have three martinis and blackout. She would then claim she was allergic to booze.
62. Daydream Believer
A guy I was seeing had this big dream that he wanted to be a mortgage broker. His dad was one and was really successful. He just couldn't do the math. He had to take a course and I tried to teach him the formulas, but he just couldn't do it. We were running through problems and then he turned to me with an exasperated look on his face, "Why do the numbers keep changing?"
As in why would the numbers change in a certain formula from one problem to another…
63. Security Breach
A girl I was dating told me her most common password was very secure because it was a bunch of random numbers. It was her social security number.
64. Heading for Breakup
My girlfriend at the time genuinely believed that it was the headless horseman that ran through Lexington and Concord shouting "The British are coming, the British are coming!"
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65. Dr. Emoticon
She claimed to have a doctorate in “emotionology.” A doctorate. I asked her what her Master’s thesis was on and what her dissertation included. She looked at me like I was eating doorknobs stupid. She insisted it was a legitimate study and would get really angry if her friends didn't call her “doctor” when introducing her—but that’s not even the craziest part.
She kept a ledger of "unacceptable words and colors" that were not to be used in her presence. Her field of expertise proved that these words and colors oozed negativity and bred evil. One of the worst parts was meeting this whack job’s gaggle of friends that believed all this. It's like the stupid could be contracted and spread.
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66. Universal Questions
We were sitting stargazing having a good time when she blurts out "Do you think that our sun might be a star?" She was totally genuine about it. I was a senior and she was a junior and we were both in our high school’s elective class at the time: astronomy.
67. She Just Needed Space
I had just bought a new (used) car, a Fiat 500. My girlfriend took it to go shopping. No problem, right? Wrong. She comes home fuming with anger that I should have cleaned out the trunk if I expected her to get groceries. So she had stuffed part of the groceries on top of the engine.
68. The Blame Game
My girlfriend always acted like I was plotting and planning things against her. One time, she and her mom set up a trip to Las Vegas. They made all the decisions (when to go, where to stay, and so on). When we get to our hotel, it's hosting a swimsuit competition. She looks at me and says, "You planned this, didn't you?"
69. Taking Things Literally
We went to some chain restaurant, I can't remember which, but it was something like a Chili's, or Applebee's. The menu had quips on some of the items such as, "Mom's meatloaf was never this good!" Or, "This burger is more than a mouthful!" So next to the loaded nachos, it says, "Caution, heavy lifting may be required!"
She asks me what that meant and I tell her that the nachos must have a lot of toppings. She asks the server, "Excuse me, but what does heavy lifting may be required, mean?" The server kinda smirks for a second thinking that there's a joke there somewhere, but then gets a look of dread when she realizes that my date was deadly serious.
70. Going to the Dogs
So me and some friends all went out for a group movie, sort of a low-key date for several of us who were interested in each other. We let a girl I was sort of interested in pick the movie. Big mistake. For some reason, she picked the Chuck Norris movie Top Dog. If you are unfamiliar, the poster for this movie is Chuck Norris and a dog. Nothing else. Very clean and simple.
So, we all show up for the movie. The previews play, Top Dog starts, and the first scene is Chuck Norris and a dog. This girl says in an incredulous tone, "There's a dog in this?" Less than five minutes later she gets her purse and leaves the movie. Since all of us were only there because she picked it, we all left too. So yeah, that's when I knew
71. Donde Estas?
My boyfriend thought Spain was in South America. The worst part is he didn't even know where Mexico was. We live four hours away from the bloody border. He vacationed in Mexico, too. I bought him a map for his birthday. He didn't find that funny.
72. No Dice
We were playing board games, and she would continually drop the dice so high that they would roll off the table. I asked her if she could roll them softer, and she snapped at me in front of my friends, "I can't! No one taught me how to roll dice as a child!" After that moment, she would always roll them in a box and before starting any board game she would have to explain to everyone why she can only roll dice with a box.
It's like she physically couldn't roll dice without dropping them. To this day it still puzzles me why I didn't end it right there and then.
73. An Intelligence Vacuum
I was looking at apartments. I mentioned to my girlfriend that I had a Roomba and it keeps the floor pretty clean. She seemed so normal—I never could’ve predicted her bizarre reaction. She started freaking out, saying there was no way she'd allow a Roomba in the apartment. She asked why I wasn’t scared of the Roomba coming to life and harming us in our sleep.
I asked her how she could fear the Roomba but not suspect her smartphone of gaining sentience and taking over the world. This idea scared her even more and she actually freaked out. She was literally screaming.
74. This Vixen Was no Cupid
We were watching Django Unchained, and there’s a moment where the camera pans over a herd of reindeer. My ex said she thought it was weird that they would include reindeer in the movie because it breaks the immersion. Confused, I asked what she meant. What she said next blew my mind. She explained to me how reindeer weren't real.
She seriously thought reindeer were make-believe animals—because of Rudolph and Santa’s reindeer.
75. Dr. Dense
This guy I was dating insisted that women cannot be doctors, only nurses—and vice versa. When I argued with him about it he explained that doctors and nurses are the exact same thing, except doctors are male and nurses are female. He was in his early 20s and definitely was not on his way to medical school.
76. How Do You Like Them Apples?
I asked my boyfriend if he wanted an apple. He said yes, so I pulled one out of the fridge and handed it to him. He looked confused. I asked him what was wrong…his answer still blows me away to this day. He asked me to slice it for him. He'd never eaten an apple whole before. He wasn't sure how to bite into it. He was 27.
77. A Surprising Response
My girlfriend called to RSVP to a surprise bridal shower. Instead of calling the person throwing the party, though, she called the bride. Ruined everything. When I asked her how she didn't know, she said the invitation wasn't clear. I looked at the invitation and it said in big letters "SHHH! It's a surprise party!" It specifically said, "Don't tell [bride’s name]!"
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