Online dating is not simply reduced to online dating apps like Plenty of Fish, OK Cupid, or Tinder; it can also include online games, Craig’s List and, for the OGs, MSN Messenger and MySpace. No matter the platform, the stories are always interesting; from success to failure to near kidnapping, these Redditors have shared the good, the bad and the ugly of online dating.
1. Caught Swiping
I was single and on Tinder. One day, I was scrolling through and made a disturbing discovery. I saw my sister's boyfriend on there. I thought, what the heck is this? And then I came up with a plan to get revenge. I made a fake profile to catfish him and talked to him for a bit—it was obviously him, and I got his number.
Showed it to my sister and she broke up with him. Mission accomplished, jerkwad.
2. Prize Specimens
Highlights of my experience with online dating include the dude that kept texting me pictures of ol’ Adolf H. until I blocked him, several dudes who got too drunk to stand, one guy who puked as I tucked him in and then got mad because I didn’t sleep with him, and finally, the guy who licked my face with no preamble on the ride home. Yeah, I'm about done.
3. Full Dance Card
I met a girl online, and we dated for a few months. Turns out she was temporarily separated from her husband, and she started seeing another guy (me) without anyone else knowing—but it got worse. I then found out that she was also cheating on me and still married when the wife or girlfriend of the third guy she was messing around with spray-painted her car when she was caught at his house one night.
The police called me to figure out where I was that night, and then told me she was married, but not to the guy she had been spending the night with.
4. Communication is Key
I met a guy online who, after I told him I didn't want to go somewhere noisy, took me to an arcade bar. It was so loud that I couldn't think. Then he put his arm around me and I shrank away and called it a night. Then there was the guy who took his shoes off at every restaurant we went to. I thought I could overlook it because he was a super nice and intelligent guy, but it was too much.
5. A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Lies
To start I want to say that if fat people want to be fat, that's fine. Own it. I personally choose not to be. I am very active and try to eat healthy-ish and being very active (hike, bike, climb or some other active outside thing almost every day of the week) is very important to me. I met this girl on Tinder or some site and she looked super cute.
She was a little curvy in all the right ways, incredible skin and these crazy green eyes. We chatted for a while and agreed to meet at a local bar. The girl who met me was not that girl. She was about 275lbs, 5'5"-5'6" ish, horrible skin that look like she wiped her face off with the greasy bottom of a fast food bag, and these sullen dark brown eyes.
Clearly the pictures were of her to some degree because I could see her in the pictures. After we said our hello's and got a drink there was a long awkward silence. Nothing to talk about. We had talked about how she also enjoyed being active outside and everything, but I did not get that impression from our initial conversation.
I decided to jump right in and asked if she sometimes wore colored contacts, to which she replied no, she just liked the way it made her look. Some more less than subtle probing from me (I was annoyed that I clearly had been deceived onto a date) and she admitted she was a graphic designer, and quite talented with Photoshop.
She basically photoshopped herself into a 5'9" tall, 165lb, green-eyed, fair-skinned bombshell. She admitted she had photoshopped herself to get dates. I was dumbfounded. No, I probably would not have gone out with her if she had been real, but I know there are guys that would have, who maybe didn't care about the lifestyle things I care about.
But the fact that she had intentionally deceived me made me despise her. She then had the audacity to claim that I was an asshole because I never "gave her a real shot.”
6. Not Worth the Mileage
Not me but my older brother’s best friend. He had been talking to this girl online for a really long time. He was planning on driving to Texas (we live in north Georgia) to visit her. When he told her that he was going to drive over to see her, she confessed that she was actually an overweight 43-year-old lady. He was 23 at the time. He doesn't like to talk about it...
7. Misleading Photos
I met a guy online, and in all of his pictures, he had a tight-lipped smile. When we met in real life, I couldn’t believe my eyes. He had not one whole tooth. What teeth he had were yellow stumps. He also did not have all of his fingers. It was a rather traumatic experience because I was caught off guard and didn’t know how to respond.
If he had been upfront about it, I would have felt way less awkward. I am not in a hurry to get back online.
8. Playing the Game
I met a girl on Xbox Live when I was 17, playing Black Ops 2. We ended up exchanging Instagram handles, and eventually phone numbers. She was in Texas & I am in Washington. After about six months, we started to do long distance dating, as we’d both taken an interest in one another. However, I had to accept that I was probably never going to meet her due to the distance, so I broke things off after a few months.
Apparently she didn’t like that. Two days later, I came home from school to make a bizarre discovery. She was sitting on my front porch with her bags. She packed up her life and moved to Washington because she wanted to be with me. We ended up dating and living together for three years until she left me for another guy that she met on Xbox while playing a game that I bought for her.
9. Call of Booty
I met a girl playing COD Zombies and realized that she was in my city due to her area code. Long story short, she would come over to my house every Thursday for “game night,” where we played Skyrim for about 5 minutes before taking off all of our clothes. It was awesome, honestly. I called her my “Call of Booty.”
10. My Sister Is Pretty Cool Too
I met this young man named "Shane" on the Neopets when I was 13. My best friend was 16 and so was "Shane." He lived in Holland and we would chat daily. I told my mom about our international friend, and she reminded me that "you never know who you're talking to on the Internet." I got freaked out and wouldn't talk to Shane for a couple of months, while my best friend would still talk to him daily.
The strange thing was, Shane shared an email address with his sister "Rowena" and we had only ever seen one picture of "Shane." Whatever, not many people back then had digital cameras or video cameras. My best friend fell madly in love with Shane and, like I said, talk to him daily. They talked about meeting up, but something would always get in the way, even when my friend was in Holland with her family.
We also found the same picture of Shane on Vampire Freaks, which was weird, because it was under a different name. After years of talking, like four freaking years, my best friend received an email from her lover. He told her there was something he needed to tell her and was just so embarrassed about, but he had been hiding something for quite some time, and to look for an email to her about it.
She responded and waited for the email for months, it never came, she never heard from Shane again. She sent emails and instant messages to Shane, but he never responded again. She started digging and found out the awful truth. She found Shane's sister's—Rowena's—social media site. On it were all the photos and drawings Shane had been sending her for years claiming that they were his.
Pictures of Shane's new shoes, of a drawing he had made for my best friend, all of Shane's favorite bands, etc. My best friend then realized he had not fallen in love with Shane, but a girl from Holland named Rowena. It's been four years since she's spoken to Shane, and the first year after they stopped talking, she sent Rowena an email letting her know that she knows that Shane never existed. I know deep down she still wants answers, but I'm pretty sure she’ll never get them.
11. Dodged a Bullet
I met the girl of my dreams on Tinder. We bought a house together after nine months of dating. Five years later, on one completely random afternoon, I got home from the dog park to find all of her stuff packed. She told me, with zero warning, that she was moving out and getting her own apartment. 18 months have passed since then. She's now a raging alcoholic and sees a therapist 2-3 times a week.
12. Welcome to the 21st Century
I had a guy that I met online pat me on the head and say that my belief in the inherent equality of the genders was “cute.” No more dates.
13. The Doctor Is out (of Existence)
My very good friend Ben's dad has always had an online girlfriend called "Dr. Sam." She was the reason Ben's parents divorced about 12 years ago. I don't know the story of early Dr. Sam, just that she claimed to be a doctor of some kind, and also have some kind of cancer. Steve (Ben's dad) sent Dr. Sam all kinds of money. Enough that his wife divorced him.
When those little hands-free phone headsets came out, he got one and was on the phone with her literally every second of the day. She would make him talk to her cats on the phone, and he'd be places like the grocery store, meowing into a headset no one could see. He tried to visit her many times, but every time he had his tickets squared away, she'd come up with the most ridiculous excused.
Her cancer would come back and she'd need emergency medical treatment, or (I kid you not) her pet tiger would bite her and she'd go to the hospital. Steve is a high-ranking naval officer. When he had to go to Afghanistan a few years ago, he sent his cat to live with Dr. Sam. She had it put down immediately, because "he wasn't happy."
Eventually, Dr. Sam claimed to have died. I wouldn't believe a word of this if Ben's mother hadn't confirmed all of it.
14. Mass Messager
I met my current boyfriend on OkCupid in 2009, but before him, there were so many creeps that it was definitely discouraging. I distinctly remember one user who used to message me all the time about wanting to tie me up and/or watch me smoke. I think he was just copy-pasting and mass messaging, hoping something would stick, as a friend of mine also received the same message from him.
15. Self-Esteem Booster
I met a girl on Tinder. We had fun but in the end, it didn't work out. After a few months, there just weren't any feelings. Then, she shared the darkest story I’ve ever heard. She told me that the last guy she dated off of Tinder was once so drunk that he urinated and pooped in the bed while she slept beside him.
And that wasn't even the worst guy she’d met! Since then, I see myself in a lot more positive light.
16. Nothing Heals a Heart
A fairly attractive Asian girl started messaging me in a chat room on gay.com. I am lesbian, so the gay.com chatrooms for the women weren't really known for having bots. She comes on strong and actually shows a lot of interest in me even though I didn't really have much interest in her at first since she was in Florida and I'm in Oklahoma.
I actually start to really like her and think maybe we could really hit it off if we met. We started talking/texting pretty much 24/7. Then she tells me about how she can't date anyone locally because her dad is a marine engineer and builds multimillion-dollar yachts for famous people. I don't really believe it at first, but then she takes it to the next level.
She starts mailing me all these fairly expensive things like clothes, flowers, gift cards, etc. to 'prove' it, even though I tell her I didn't really want them.The weird thing is she wouldn't tell me her last name and would be very weird about it, saying if I found it out I could Google it and it'll pull up her dad's yacht business and I could see how rich they really are.
She said she wanted to make sure that I really wanted to be with her and wasn't just in it for the money....Even though she kept sending me gifts without me asking to "prove" her wealth. She also said she was a head hair stylist at Tony&Guy and made $700/day in tips. Anyway, one of the gifts she sent the company sent a receipt slip that had her last name on it.
I Googled it, and nothing really pulled up. Even (name) Yachts, nothing. (Name) yachts Florida, nothing. Nothing at all came up for it. Things started to seem weird, so I called the Tony&Guy she claimed she worked at and asked if I could schedule with her. No one worked there with that name. I waited a couple days to tell her that her name came on the receipt.
When I did she flipped out and said I was crazy, and that she was going to stop talking to me anyway because she has cancer, then hung up on me and disconnected the number within minutes. It was so weird. I don't know what the point of that catfish was, I'm the one who got a bunch of stuff, and I didn't even ask for any of it.
17. Digital Gifts Are Worthless
I met a girl while playing a game online, and I gave this girl rune armor. She promised me she'd never leave my side in the wild (in the game) because she thought I could protect her from PKers. After she got the time set, I never heard from her again.
18. Bros Catfishing Bros
A friend of mine was Catfished to an insane extent. Apparently, he had been dating this girl on Facebook for the longest time (around two years) and one night at a party got drunk and made out with a mutual friend. However, it was just a drunken fling with no attraction and as it turns out—he told the online girlfriend. The revenge she took was so, so horrific.
She proceeded to lock him out of his Facebook profile (since he had given her his password) and for the next two hours following she uploaded every single intimate photo he had sent her. Literally. Cover Photo. Profile pic. Shared multiple photos of just my friend, iin multiple positions and angles. Sometimes with a cowboy hat. Other times with a ribbon around his lower regions.
Needless to say, we all saw a bit too much of him. And then the real truth came out. Turns out at the end of it all, the girl wasn't real. It was a group of guys playing a really sick prank on him. He's all good now though.
19. No Harm In Being Sure
A friend of mine was dating my cousin, and she suspected him of cheating on her. So to see if he would really be capable of such a thing, she made a fake Myspace (yes it was back in the day). She found pictures from the Internet of regular girls his type and compiled together the ones of girls who looked similar enough to be mistaken as being the same girl.
It was actually pretty talented of her. Every picture was of a different girl, but you would have thought they were all the same. I have no idea how many man hours she put into this account, but she friended my cousin and talked for a while, then asked to meet up. When my cousin said ok, my friend promptly broke up with him. It was total entrapment, but it got the truth out, so kudos to her.
20. Letdown
I agreed to meet up with this guy that I met online. We had no chemistry, had nothing in common, and couldn't even continue the conversation. After a few minutes, he asked if I was going to finish my drink, I said no, and we both left.
21. Who Needs Soaps When You Have AIM?
Back when AIM was all the rage, I started exchanging messages with a young woman. She described herself as being petite, attractive, and physically active, and the pictures that she sent seemed to confirm those claims. For a while, we discussed standard (boring) teenage topics...but eventually, our conversations took a turn for the bizarre.
One evening as we were talking, she told me a story about how she and her twin sister had "switched boyfriends" in the middle of the night. They were caught, and neither boy was particularly pleased about the situation...so in order to make it up them, the girls agreed to have a foursome. The tale struck me as being more than a little bit odd, but I could see no reason for someone to lie about it, so I went right on believing.
Things got stranger from there. As the months progressed, I was treated to a dramatic saga of epic proportions. First, the girl's twin sister was killed in a car crash that also ended her father's life. Not long after, her mother was killed in an accident (which was strongly implied as having been a suicide). The girl herself—being under eighteen—was sent to live with her uncle, who forced her to work at a club in order to pay the rent.
When I asked how she, a 16-year-old girl, was allowed to work there, she told me that "the fire marshal said it was okay." A week or two later, she attempted a suicide of her own, but was caught by her piano teacher. That was about the time that the alarm bells in my head drowned out my sense of trust. I went back and reappraised everything that she had told me, and I noticed some rather glaring inconsistencies.
After coming to terms with the fact that I'd been blatantly lied to for months, I started calling out every potential untruth that I spotted, and I gave the girl an ultimatum: Unless she came clean about who she was, I would cut off contact with her entirely. She protested at first, going through such acts as being angry that I didn't believe her and depressed because her "only real friend" had stopped trusting her word.
Still, I stayed adamant, and eventually, she agreed to let me see her on webcam. It turned out that she was an overweight girl who bore absolutely no resemblance to the pictures that she had sent me. Her stories—or so she claimed—were all invented to "keep me interested," because (according to her) I wouldn't have kept talking to her if I'd known who she really was.
Truth be told, she was probably right. Still, I made an effort to keep conversing with her after that, and to learn who she really was... but I never felt like I could trust anything that she said, and eventually, we just stopped talking entirely.
22. Searching for: Partner in Crime
One girl that I met online went crazy and started to stalk me. She even found out where I worked. She said that all of it was because I wouldn’t help her steal a gosling from a petting zoo.
23. Always Be on Your Guard
I met a girl on Tinder who lived in a small city about a 40-minute drive away, which is known for substance use problems and higher than average crime rates. Due to this, I decided to bring my firearm. I have a license. She wanted to take a walk with me to a nearby park, so I agreed. As we were walking, two larger, burly, muscular guys showed up and called out her name.
They were talking when I noticed Guy 2 was slowly moving behind me, while Guy 1 stayed in front. The girl stayed to the left of me, and there was a wall to the right. I basically was blocked from any escape route. I thought fast, pretended to yawn and stretched, flashing my weapon. Girl and Guy 1 saw it, and their demeanors changed.
Guy 1 told Guy 2 that they had better get going and gave him some excuse about his mother needing help or something. Guy 2 was confused but went along with it. I continued to walk with the woman for a little longer, but then she said she needed to go into a shop really quick for something. I waited for five minutes, looked inside the shop, and she was gone.
I guess thee must have been a back entrance or something. I was relieved, as I was pretty sure I had just avoided being robbed. So I moved quickly back to my car and got out of there as fast as I could. I checked my Tinder after that, and she had unmatched me. I blocked her number and moved on to the next disappointment.
24. You Must Be This Tall to Ride
There was one girl who asked me how tall I was when we were texting, and I told her 6’1” tall. I guess that somehow didn't compute until we met in person. As soon as she saw me, she said I was shorter than she expected, and that she only dates taller guys than me. I said something along the lines of "Well, thanks for wasting both of our time," and walked off back to my car.
25. Pay Attention to Red Flags!
A friend recommended that I check out Tinder for dating, as I was having absolutely no luck on PoF or OkCupid. I matched with this really cute girl from a nearby large city, and we chatted for a few weeks before deciding to meet up on Halloween. I drove down and discovered that she lived in one of the high-end areas of the city.
She told me to park in Garage B, under her building. So, I parked my car and walked up the stairs to the street-level sidewalk. I texted the girl to let her know I’d arrived, and she walked out of the apartment building in a glorious sundress. She was gorgeous, and everything her photos depicted. She was all smiles, hugged me, and said she'd like to go for a walk in a public park.
We walked to the park, and chatted for about an hour, when all of a sudden, she got all serious and said, "Why are you yelling?" I got confused and said that I wasn’t aware I had been yelling. She insisted that I was screaming our conversation. I guess that was the first red flag? The conversation kind of died at that point, and she said she had some shopping to do, and asked me to join her.
So we went to one of those high-end shoe/purse stores. As she was trying on shoes, I told her that they looked nice. She then said, "What, you have a foot fetish or something?" Red flag number two? At that point, I told her I'd wait outside. It didn’t occur to me at the time that she was looking for someone to buy her these things, so I inadvertently weaseled out of that, I guess.
I felt kind of bad, so I asked her if she was hungry, thinking I could somehow salvage this bizarre date. She suggested a wine bar across the park. This was where the real horror began. Her first glass of wine was a full glass, and she was probably 5’2” tall, and maybe 110 lbs., max. She gulped it. One gulp. A full glass of red wine.
She told me I could be a hottie if I worked out. And she was insisting that she'd never sleep with me on a first date. This is when I suspected red flag number three? Ok, fine. She got her second glass, and once again drank it all in one gulp. She was starting to slur her speech. She told me she had problems having a boyfriend keep up with her sex drive.
She then asked if I was circumcised, and basically told me that I needed to get that “fixed” before we slept together. I rolled my eyes, looking for the waiter to ask for bill and peace out. She got her third glass of wine and gulped that too. She told me not to let her have more, or she might end up doing something she regrets with me later.
I told the waiter we were done and asked for the bill. The girl absolutely freaked out, knocked over her glass, and then said, completely deadpan, "You didn’t ask if I wanted another glass,” to which I responded, "You asked me to not let you have a fourth glass." She started yelling, "No man tells me what to do!" Fourth red flag.
I got her the fourth glass, and by the time she finished, she was wasted. Like trashed. She was slurring and could barely keep her eyes open. She needed help to get out of the chair, and I had to carry her purse and shopping bags. We were walking distance to her apartment, but I decided to hail a cab. I was holding up this girl when the cab pulled up.
She immediately puked on the cab. The cabbie got out. He was absolutely furious and threatened to call the cops. I was freaking out, I offered to clean it up and tip well. We went to a nearby store where I bought sanitation wipes and cleaned up the cab as best as I could, as well as the girl. I was afraid the cabbie was going to call the police.
We got back to the apartment, and the doorman saw us and recognized the woman. He gave me a knowing nod as if he’d seen this before. Yet another red flag. In the elevator, she asked me to look in her purse to find the key card that she needed to get the elevator to the 13th floor. When I was digging around in her purse, I found a loaded revolver, with no safety on.
Glancing at her hunched form, I decided to unload the revolver and put it at the bottom of her purse for safekeeping. We got to her apartment, and I led her to the bathroom and told her to get cleaned up. I also said I was leaving, as she was obviously not well. As I was walking out the door, she walked out of the bathroom...naked, and with a dribble of vomit on her.
She asked, "I thought you were gonna join me?" I ran out of her door, but she followed me out into the hallway, screaming for me to come back. One of her neighbors’ doors opened to see what was going on, and I was concerned that I was going to get arrested for domestic violence or something, so I went back to her and told her it was okay, that I was only pretending to leave, and that we were going to have a great night together.
She calmed down and let me lead her back into the apartment—then I slammed the door behind her and ran for it. I then quickly ran down the hallway to the opposite end to a stairwell and ran down two flights of stairs before I realized I was out of shape, and could not run the entire 13 floors. I hopped on the elevator and pressed the first garage button I saw without thinking...Garage Level A.
Well, Garage A is private resident parking. I needed a garage opener, or that key card in her purse, to get in and out to street level, and back to my car in Garage B for visitors. All the doors were locked, except the ones leading to a private sitting area surrounded by an 8-foot fence. I was desperate and wanted to go home, so I decided to hop the fence...and guess what was waiting for me on the other side?
A city cop. I relayed a shortened version of my story, except for the revolver part, and he started cracking up and said he believed me because no one could make anything this stupid up on the spot. I got back to the street entrance to Garage B, got in my car and had myself a little screaming session. I blocked this girl's number and unmatched her from Tinder.
I then decided to drive home and drink myself stupid for the evening.
26. Can’t Live Without It
I don't know about going online with the intention of dating, but my parents met online playing Quake back in 1997. Here I am 21 years later, so I guess you could say I wouldn’t be alive without it?
27. Not The Present He Was Expecting
I got engaged to a girl I met on Tinder. We were together for two years—and then she went back to her ex two days before Christmas. So, I’m back to online dating because I’m an idiot.
28. Dial-Up for Drama
I only remember bits to this story so forgive me. When I was about 7 years old my mom was on AOL (about 1996) and had previously met a couple guys online, before online dating was known to be common or dangerous. She started talking to this one guy and eventually he planned to fly to where we lived and meet her.
This is where my memory gets sketchy, as she has only told me the story while drinking with me. He had claimed to have his doctorate degree and told her he had published a well-known book. She searched for the book and eventually she searched it in some online database (I want to say library of congress?) and found nothing. His lies before they met got worse.
Something led my mom to go to the police and they said he was actually a wanted man for previously killing or attempting to kill women. The police used my mom to catch the guy at this point, he agreed to fly down here, and she was having him meet her at her office. When he arrived, the authorities were there to apprehend him.
29. Love’s Aroma
When I was 24 years old, I went out with a guy that I met on OkCupid. When he took me on our first “date,” his car smelled like cat pee mixed with fast food restaurant fries and B.O. It made me sick to my stomach! He didn't even take me anywhere; we just drove around until he tried to do the “arm over the shoulder” move while we were talking in his stinky, messy car.
This was the first time I'd ever dated someone online and met them in real life, so it freaked me out and I had a panic attack. After that, I went home and have never again tried online dating.
30. Femme Fatale
I was getting ready for a first date with a girl I had been talking to over FaceTime for a few weeks. I was about 10 minutes away when she started texting me weird questions, asking me things like what kind of phone I had, and what kind of car I was driving. I said that was a weird thing to ask, and she flipped out and canceled the date.
Out of curiosity, I drove by the place where I was supposed to pick her up, and what I saw made my blood run cold. There was a car sitting there with heavily tinted windows. A very sketchy looking guy got out of the car I tore out of there. I ended up calling the cops. It turns out this girl would pick up guys online, and then her roommates would rob them at the meetup point.
31. Stranger Danger
I used to be on Meetme, specifically for their skeeball online game and to try to make some more friends. I was talking to one guy, and I told him that I wasn't looking for a relationship, as I'd just dumped my last ex. One day, he texted me asking what I was up to—and then told me he was outside the lounge where I was just chilling with some friends and smoking hookah.
Apparently, this guy looked up my info and found me on Facebook, and then looked up the lounges in the area based on a photo I had posted. He wanted me to come outside, refused to come in to meet everyone, and when I told him no and that my friends felt like it wasn't safe for me to meet him alone—which I vehemently agreed with—he lost his mind.
He was yelling at me, telling me my friends don't know him and that they were too cautious, etc. I told him that if he couldn't come in and be friends with everyone, we couldn't be friends. That was the last I heard from him. Looking back, I think he might have been trying to kidnap me or something. The whole refusing to come in and wanting me to go outside alone was kind of a huge red flag.
I wound up deleting my Meetme after that whole ordeal. The skeeball game was amazing, but between that guy and some German dude calling me his treasure and wanting me to move to Germany and become his wife randomly, I was pretty done with it all.
32. Chilling
An acquaintance of mine once went on a date with a future criminal. Apparently, the person seemed more or less normal online, besides being really into guns, which isn't that weird, since this was in rural Iowa. They didn't have a second date though, and a while later there was a news story about someone who tried to shoot up a Pokemon tournament. One of them was the guy she had met.
33. Reddit Shout out
I had a bunch of really awful dates using dating apps, and then met a really amazing person on Reddit, of all places, and that's worked out pretty well so far!
34. Desperate Measures
One guy that I met online faked his own death. His “mother” texted me, saying he had died by suicide. I was devastated until I realized he was using a fake account and pretending to be his mother so that he could get with two of my best friends simultaneously without them knowing that they were dating the same guy.
35. No Luck
I’ve been trying online dating for four years on Tinder, OKC, Bumble, POF, Hinge, and CMB. I’ve lived in two cities during that time. I’ve probably spent like $2,000 at this point. I've even gone as far as to rotate Tinder accounts in case of shadowbanning or whatever the other theories are, but I've since stopped because I got tired of getting new phone numbers.
Now I just use one account and hope for the best. In all that time, I’ve met 12 people in total, and had two short-term relationships. 99% of the matches I make never respond after "matching." 0.5% of the others are bots, and another 0.4% respond to the first message, then never respond afterward, or respond with one-worded responses.
The last 0.6% make small talk, and obviously a fraction of them even meet. The absolute worst is when you meet someone, you go on a few dates, and they continue talking to you despite very clearly not being interested.
36. A Match Made in Cyber-Heaven
I met a few crazies online, but then found someone truly psychotic—they were crazy enough to marry me.
37. Dial-Up Dating
I met my wife online in text chat in 1995 while using a one-month-old ISP start-up company whose internal chat servers overloaded three months later. To continue talking, we had to learn to use public IRC chat. We weren't even using a dating service. I was just web surfing and the ISP showed its few users that were online, and she saw my name and clicked it to chat.
My name is common, and she actually thought I was someone she'd met earlier in a chat on AOL, but I'd never used AOL. By October, my online usage said we had texted for 450 hours. Two weeks into October, she said something like "I feel I've known you forever," and I mentioned that statistics said most married couples only communicate about 3 minutes a day, so we were probably up to around 20 years after the first couple hundred hours of texting.
I flew out to California for Christmas with her. All the rest is history. Now, 25 years later, and 23 years after we got married, I can confirm this fact: Most married life communications are someone shouting something from the far end of the house, only to have their spouse reply, "What? I'm coming. Wait 'til I get there and ask me again."
It’s still communicating, though. Sometimes, she still just texts me from the other end of the house because it's easier than shouting, but now we do it with smartphones, not PCs on dialup modems using IRC.
38. Long-Distance Love Story
Back in 2016, I created an anonymous Twitter account as a place to blow off steam and rant about things I didn't want my current/future employers seeing. I wasn't looking to make friends and definitely wasn't looking for romance, but one day, another anonymous user sent me a private message me one of my tweets with a message saying, "OMG yes, I totally agree with this."
We started talking about random topics and hit it off immediately. Over the next few weeks, we talked on the phone a lot, Facetimed every night, and before either of us realized what was happening, we were falling in love. People will argue about whether you can fall in love with someone you've never met, but I can tell you that it's absolutely possible.
There was one problem. I lived in South Georgia at the time, and she lived over 1,000 miles away in Chicago. Another minor problem: both of our parents were absolutely opposed to us dating and did everything they could to keep us apart. She was a freshman in college and I was a sophomore at the time and both of us were still living at home, so that became a challenge.
If you thought a long-distance relationship was hard, try having a long-distance relationship in secret. Her parents wouldn't let me visit her, and every time we'd try to plan a trip to meet up, things would fall through. After about seven months of waiting, I did the craziest thing I've ever done. I got on a plane and flew to Chicago without telling anyone where I was going, or telling her that I was coming.
I called her from the O'Hare airport and nearly gave her a heart attack. Her parents somehow agreed to let her come see me—after loading her purse with mace and pepper spray—and we spent an incredible few days laughing together and falling more in love than we thought possible. Amazed that I would go to that much effort to date their daughter, her parents eventually relented and gave us their blessing.
We continued to date long-distance, and in September 2018, I dropped to one knee on the Chicago waterfront and asked her to marry me. She said yes, and made me the luckiest man alive.
39. Feline Fanatic
One guy had a Twitter account for his cat. I thought it was pretty cute and clever. I figured out that the human behind it was male, and because he ordered take-out a lot, he was probably single. So one day, I asked the cat if his human was as cute as he was. The human then popped up on his own account and introduced himself.
He was in Ohio, and I was in Texas. After throwing out hints for a while, I finally just told him I liked him. He said he had vacation time and could come visit. He called me for the first time that night. We both agreed it would probably only last five minutes. We talked for five hours. I messaged a friend and told her to start looking for bridesmaid’s dresses because I was going to marry this man. A year and a half later, I did! We’ve been married for almost seven years now.
40. Small World
I’ve been dating a girl that I met on Tinder for five years. We met while in college, and found out that our parents are the same age and went to the same high school, in a completely different state from where we met!
41. Best Pick-Up Line Ever Dropped
My online dating experience has bee an on and off journey for about ten years. Now, my absolute best match ever is sitting next to me and life is grand. I had relationships that lasted years, horrible first dates, adventures I never would have expected, stories for a lifetime, and not a second of hesitation when I found him.
I was just about at my wit's end. I had gone on a series of particularly painful dates; everyone was telling me to just take a break. Something told me I needed to keep going and one afternoon, I swiped so hard I nearly broke my thumb. I told him as much, and that's been our story of the best pick-up line ever dropped.
Overall, I met great people that led me to my forever. While dating, my favorite pastime was giving them all fun nicknames. My friends would gather around to hear why the name was fitting, and we mostly don't recall their actual names anymore—but hey, at least we all got a laugh out of it.
42. Fifth Time’s The Charm
I’ve been through it all during online dating. I think I am a decent looking dude, but I’m awkward and goofy and never liked meeting a girl out at a bar or something because I felt like I had to be someone else and not myself. All my official relationships have been with girls I have met online, and there have been some doozies.
With the first girl ever met online, we ended up getting engaged…until I found out she had a Facebook profile under a fake name and was dating someone else for a few months at the end of our relationship. The second girl I met online? We ended up going to college together and moved in together for about six months until she cheated on me.
Then there was the girl I dated for a few months. We had a great relationship, but it ended because she was moving to Florida to be with her family. With another girl, we dated for 4 months and then I broke up with her on New Years'. My feelings for her just ended out of nowhere, and it really confused me. Finally, after all that, my luck turned around with the last girl I met online.
We are living together now, and have been together for over a year. I moved to a different city to be with her, and got a great job there as well. Our awkward, introverted, goofy selves complement each other, and I can fart in front of her. She’s the one.
43. Indirect Connection
I swiped on this guy in 2015. We started dating, and in that time I needed a new job, so I thought I'd apply to the hardware store he worked at because I liked the store, and 19-year-old me thought it would be cool to work with the person I was dating. Approximately two months later, we broke up. He ended up moving to a different state, and I continued working at the hardware store.
Fast forward to two and a half years later, and this super cute guy started working at the hardware store. I awkwardly chatted him up when I was in his department needing help, and we eventually started to hang out. Three months later, super cute guy and I started dating officially. This past June, super cute bearded guy asked me to marry him.
We are getting married this year. Thanks, Tinder, for indirectly finding me the love of my life!
44. When Craigslist was Safe
Back in the early days of online dating, before Match or Tinder or OkCupid, it was Craigslist and some other sites that are probably not around anymore. The Onion used to have personals, and I thought that would be a good place to meet someone with a sharp sense of humor. After many terrible dates, I met the guy who I would eventually marry.
For the first date, we met up at a show and then decided to grab coffee again the next morning and ended up spending the entire day together. We’ve now been married for 11 years, together 16. This was so early in online dating that we would lie about how we met for a long time! Now we tend to tell people about it all the time.
45. Fast Lane
Whenever I’d match with girls younger than me on Tinder—them in their mid-20s, whereas I’m almost in my mid-30s—it seemed very fast-paced. I’d get a message from a girl asking to meet in the next couple of hours, I’d ask if she’d like to go out for a drink, but she would want to come to my place immediately and get right to it.
I’d tell her I was at work but I’d be free later, and she would un-match me instantly. This has happened a few times. I prefer getting to know the person a bit before being intimate, but that feeling’s not always mutual apparently. I figure I don’t belong on Tinder, so I deleted it. I still have hope I can find my person, though.
46. Incognito
I met my husband on Plenty Of Fish. I was paying for premium, which means I could see how many times he was looking at my profile. He viewed it quite a few times without sending me any messages. Finally, I messaged him, saying "Hi, can I help you?" since I liked his beard—and his face in general. We're now married with a baby.
He still says to this day that he didn't message me first because he thought I was out of his league. He also had no idea that I could see how many times he had viewed my profile.
47. Good Timing
I was skeptical about Tinder, but I swiped aggressively (both left and right) for two weeks, hoping something would work out. After three weeks, I had two dates planned with two separate girls. The girl I was supposed to see on Saturday flaked the morning of, claiming to be too hungover to make it. I was cool about it and said we could reschedule for later in the week.
The second girl messaged me that afternoon asking if I wanted to meet that night instead—we had originally planned for Sunday. I said yes absolutely, thinking, "Hey, that worked out well." So we agreed to meet at a restaurant of her choosing, and I showed up five minutes early. But, there was a problem: the restaurant was hosting a private event that was closed to the public.
When she arrived, we didn’t panic, and she agreed to go somewhere else. I’ve been seeing her for over a month now, and it's going great! Sure, there are plenty of horror stories, but my personal opinion is that even if you have nine bad dates, it only takes one for it all to turn around. I may have gotten lucky—it is still early—but even if I hadn't, if you are serious about wanting a relationship, then you have to keep trying.
It won't fall out of the sky.
48. If at First, You Don’t Succeed….
When I first started online dating, I messaged around 30 women, and after a couple of weeks, I had three different dates three days in a row. The first was awful. The second one was meh. The third was great, and the girl and I dated for a few months, but it didn’t work out, so I tried to get back into online dating for a few weeks.
I went on one date with a girl that I hit it off with just chatting online, but then it was like talking to a different person when we actually met up. I then met this other girl, but after a couple of dates, we just didn't click at all. I got really discouraged. I then moved cities and took a break from online dating for several months.
When I eventually did get back on my profile, I messaged a beautiful girl and met up. We immediately connected, and we are getting married in March.
49. Too Young to Run
The second time I got catfished was the last time I tried to meet a girl online. I was a junior in college and had been talking to this girl a few states away for weeks online. She claimed to be 19 (I was 20) and she was a cute redhead in the pics she sent me, so I chatted her up regularly even though she lived far away.
At some point, she surprises me with her plan to take a bus out to my university and spend the weekend hanging out and partying with me. When I picked her up at the bus stop I barely recognized her. She sort of looked like the cute redhead I had pictures of, but waaaaaay younger, like she could be the daughter of the girl I had been talking to online.
I played it cool, trying to be a gentleman, but quickly decided that spending the weekend partying with what appears to be a 14-to-16-year-old would be a bad idea. I told her that there were no good parties on the docket and took her home to my parents’ house where I figured we could lay low until Sunday when I could shuffle her back onto a bus and be rid of the jailbait.
Well, late the next evening while we were sitting on the living room floor watching a movie with my parents, the phone rings. I answered the phone to hear a crying woman pleading to know where her daughter was and if she is ok. That's when it hit me...I was somehow harboring a freakin' teenage runaway. Not a good look.
I got the girl on the phone with her mom and started grabbing all of her stuff and putting in my car. Apparently, her mom had found my phone number on their phone bill and traveled to my school looking for her daughter. I promised to meet her on campus with her daughter ASAP. Well, we didn't even make it out of the driveway before the police cars showed up.
The cop looked at me, then pointed to the girl and said, "Is that her?", and I replied, "Yeah, take her home man" and that was it. Luckily for me, I think this girl may have had a history of running away from home because they didn't ask me a single question or anything, they thankfully just took the girl and left.
Then my mom came out into the driveway asking why the cops were there...I had some 'splainin' to do. And then, when I returned to school, all of my roommates and neighbors told me that the campus police, local police, and state police had been scouring the campus for me and an underage runaway. I spent the next couple weeks explaining to everyone I knew how I got hoodwinked by an internet girl and that the police had the story wrong.
50. Taking the Term "Blind Date" a Little Too Far
Not sure this counts since the date didn't actually happen, but I was set up on a blind date through an online service. We planned to meet at a restaurant. I got there first and since it was a nice day out, I sat down on a bench outside the restaurant. He ended up calling me on his way over and I told him where I was sitting. He was still on the phone when he started walking up to the building.
He took one look at me, hung up the phone, and walked back to his car. I tried to call him back, thinking something must have happened, and he didn't answer. No more answers to calls or texts afterward.
