Burst

Posted On March 13, 2020

Munich, Germany In the event that I go missing in the near future, please tell the police that the culprit is likely my deranged Tinder stalker. I don’t like to give trolls the satisfaction of having the floor on this site, but I will make an exception in this case, as once again, I feel this person is an actual public safety risk for all the single ladies using The Apps.

The stalker in question, Bubble Boy (you know, because he resides in his own little, delusional bubble) had initially set himself apart from my other Tinder matches by being unusual. He was very persistent and continuous in his messaging. He messaged me non-stop for the better part of a week, trying to keep me engaged in games he had devised to “lay out all his red flags” before the date.

Well, his games were successful, as he quickly began revealing things to me that were definite signs that we weren’t really a match. He was making himself sound like a bit of a cliché as he spoke about the (only) type of woman he dated – tattooed, rainbow-haired goth girls who wanted to be choked during sex. This isn’t so much a red-flag as it is evidence that I was the opposite of what he was looking for. That and the fact that on no less than ten occasions did he belittle people who travelled as thinking they are superior and interesting, but that they are really just basic bitches.

“I couldn’t care less if you travel or how many countries you’ve visited,” he repeated. Considering I am quite active as a traveller and make no secret about it, I wasn’t really sure what he was trying to prove with this. Perhaps he felt that his hobbies – dressing up like comic book dollies and patronizing women – made him intelligent and evolved. But from my perspective, all his arrogance towards travelling and travellers further suggested we weren’t a match. Bubble Boy failed to see that just because he didn’t care about travelling, women who travel are going to care that he doesn’t care about travelling. You know – common interests – that whole thing.

Of course, these things are nitpicky and I really try not to do this anymore than the rest of the general population. I mean, dating is really about being slightly judgemental as you seek out your perfect mate – not everyone is a match. And just because two people don’t match it doesn’t mean either one of them is bad or deficient. The belief that all of your Tinder matches are wife material and that the only reason things didn’t work out is because she is crazy, insecure, undeservedly confident, ignorant, a bitch or whatever (all things Bubble Boy was secretly thinking about me) shows a serious lack of self-awareness, mental stability and intelligence.

One of my biggest errors in dating is that I don’t act on the red flags before the first encounter. Even though I can see the problems coming, I talk myself out of it and scold myself for being too judgemental and not giving the poor boy a chance. Sure, he seemed slightly desperate, was a time suck and had nothing in common with me, but he also seemed to have put me up on a pedestal – when he wasn’t making casual micro-aggressions, that is. The guy was certainly attentive and frequently complimented me. He had creeped into this blog and devoured probably every single entry, gushing to me about what he had read and jokingly asking me to marry him. It was definitely flattering to say the least.

If he was truthful in his affections for me then he deserved a chance to prove my suspicions false. But his affections were not genuine and really just seemed to be the same misguided fantasies he attaches to all women equally. I think probably Bubble Boy treats all of his matches the way he treated me. Putting us up on the same pedestal only to knock us down in the face of rejection. If his affections were real it would have been much harder to push me off of my perch, and Bubble Boy would later reveal that for the entire duration of our one-time date, he had me under a very disgusting and alarming microscope.

The date itself was a recipe for disaster. I had been having a terrible week with work issues, I was the sickest I had been in years and I was basically at a point where I wanted to drop everything, pack up my shit and leave Germany. I told Bubble Boy that for the aforementioned reasons I didn’t think it was a good night for a date. I do try to practice what I preach in terms of dating etiquette, and most dating gurus recommend not meeting someone for the first time when you are having a bad day. Bubble Boy insisted that I still needed to eat and should just meet him for dinner anyway. I reluctantly agreed, but warned him that it had been a long day and I was dishevelled – a state I would normally not go on a first date in, but I didn’t have the time to freshen up before I met him. I trusted, however, that Bubble Boy actually liked me and so if any of my Tinder matches would be able to look past my tired, sick and messy exterior, surely it was him.

The date was perfectly fine from my point of view, but it was nothing to write home about. It was a perfectly average, perfectly acceptable first date, which involved food and conversation. Definitely not worthy of a spot on this website. The most noteworthy thing of the whole experience was that we discovered that we actually lived across the street from each other. The date ended there on the street corner, but probably five minutes after he got home, Bubble Boy texted me that he was still smiling and that meant that it was a sign of a good date.

The following day, Bubble Boy just wouldn’t leave me alone, as he was apparently feeling “euphoric” after our first date. Don’t get me wrong, I like male attention, but I don’t need it 24/7 especially when I’m busy working on a project all day (which he knew I was doing). Whenever one of his texts went unanswered, I’d get three more. The dinging was starting to drive me nuts. Bubble Boy really was a time suck. When I finally took a break from what I was working on, he started bombarding me with unsolicited mansplaining about what I should be doing differently. Again, this sounds nitpicky, but it wasn’t the first time. Prior to our once-ever date I found myself being mansplained to again and again. It seemed he lacked the social aptitude to be able to differentiate between when a woman is making a general statement and when she is discussing a problem that she wants help to solve. I let it slide the first five times, but on this occasion I actually just told him that I didn’t ask for feedback and I wasn’t looking for input at that moment.

Bubble Boy fucked off for about twenty minutes, but then my phone made that familiar ding.  Bubble Boy was furious at me for not accepting his advice and he told me that I am the most ignorant, self-important, unintelligent blah blah blah (I don’t know because I didn’t bother to read the whole novel-length message, but I know it had something to do with all the superior qualifications he felt he had and that therefore entitled him to take authority over my life, work and decisions). I had seen enough red flags. There is nothing worse than a misogynist masquerading as a feminist. I blocked that toxic POS on the spot. There is no use giving explanations in these situations as this might have given him false hope that feigning reformation would grant him a second date. Nothing was left on the table for his bipolar bullshit.

Yeah, I hate this story too. It’s boring AF and makes it seem like my life is so unexciting that these are the only stories left for me to write about. Wrong. About a month later, Bubble Boy decided to resurface so he could tell me exactly what he thought about both me and our date.

He sent me an email via this website telling me that he had seen me on the street and that it reminded him of this “tribute” he wrote to my blog. Oh you saw me? Was it with your binoculars? He wrote that he thought it was fine that he emailed me because he “didn’t think I was crazy enough to get a restraining order against him” even though I was “a psycho.”

He had written a story about our date with the sickeningly cringy title of Maple Leaves – you know, because I’m Canadian and I left but also maple leaves. At first I thought this might be a sad little story that was designed to make me feel pity for him. But the opening paragraph was basically all about how ugly I looked on our date, and that was enough for me to close the file.

Becoming a bit concerned that an angry little gremlin was living across the street from me, spying on me and writing fantasy stories about the two hours of his life I spent with him in a restaurant, I decided I better read the full story to get an accurate idea of just how sick he truly was. And I’m glad I did.

The story goes on with such gems as, “I could tell she probably wanted me to take her home and fuck her and then quickly discard her like every other guy,” but then claimed that his standards were too high to do that given how I looked etc, so “it wasn’t going to happen.” Well, all I can say is that sex with Bubble Boy did not cross my mind before, during or after our date. Largely because of the week I had, the day I had, and the fact that he was clingy. This delusional statement is probably the reason I have taken the bait and given Bubble Boy exactly what he wanted – the satisfaction of knowing that I have had to spend some of my precious time thinking about him again and immortalizing him on my blog. He had told me on our date that he thought most guys probably try to give me bad experiences so that I’ll write about them. Seems like a lot of effort for Tinder if you ask me, but OK. He said he would be honoured if he got his own story one day. Well, congratulations, you made it.

The reason that statement has led us here is because it is dangerous. I am deeply disturbed to learn that there are men out there who are going on dates with me or with any woman and running delusional internal narratives about how they know we want it, we need to get fucked, they can just tell, it’s obvious, we’re asking for it. It also reiterates exactly what I said. All these false flirtations, were exactly that – false. A normal person doesn’t go on a date with a woman he claims to really, really like, and immediately start minimizing, objectifying, criticizing everything about her. If Bubble Boy really thought so highly of me his first impression of me would not have been that I was an ugly, desperate slut.

His poorly written drivel talked about all sorts of flaws that he imagined I had – specifically that my confidence was obviously fake because he could tell how insecure I was on account of which table I was sitting at in the restaurant when he walked in. Although I do not see a correlation between table locations in a restaurant and self-confidence, what I do know is that I was sitting where the restaurant hostess told me to sit. What a bizarre thing to judge a person on.

He also wrote that he could see how unimpressed and disappointed I was when I saw him walk in – another thought and opinion that had not entered my brain at any point. When I saw him walk in I was actually relieved that he was cute – I had my doubts about it given his desperate behaviour leading up to the date. It seems like, between the two of us anyway, I’m not the one with confidence issues here.

The second point that inspired me to write this was from his “list of my hypocrisies” that he included at the end of his story. One of them being that I complain about men finding me intimidating and then persist in writing this blog, making me a dating critic that men fear, as I only look for problems when I go out with them. If you are a person who doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to understand that on this blog I have shared only extreme and unique dating experiences to entertain my readers at my own expense (and that this does not suggest that I hate men or hope all my dates are bad), then I do not want to go on a date with you anyway. But for the good guys out there let me be clear:

• 99.99% of my dates are not written about on this blog.
• I have plenty of good dates, and I go into every date hoping it will be successful.
• I take the “damn, oh well” approach when I get ghosted by a date that I liked. I don’t look for reasons to bad mouth him or make up stories to justify why I am better off. And unlike most people, I don’t actually think ghosting is an accurate reflection of anybody’s character.
• I would never disrespect a person I have had something special with by sharing their story here even if it’s a crazy one –  if you made it to the fourth date, chances are you’re safe (not that I ever use real names anyway).

I do feel bad for Bubble Boy. It’s sad that he has spent all this time trying to vilify me instead of taking a look in the mirror and asking himself why he has a history of women “suddenly blocking him out of nowhere.” If he doesn’t work his shit out, well, I hope he stays single instead of trying to gaslight and damage every one of his Tinder crushes. I, on the other hand, hadn’t given Bubble Boy or our short date a second thought since the day I had blocked him. And now that this story is posted, I will not think about him again.