I went on a date with a guy my friend set me up with. Honestly, I had low expectations \u2014 blind dates usually end in awkward small talk and forced politeness. But this one started differently from the moment he arrived. He showed up with flowers \u2014 real roses, not the cheap grocery-store kind. He smiled, handed them to me, and for the first time in a while, I felt genuinely surprised.<\/p>\n
Dinner was perfect. He was charming in a calm, confident way. He opened every door, pulled out my chair, listened when I talked, and never once made the conversation about himself. I kept thinking,\u00a0Finally, someone who actually gets it.<\/em><\/p>\n When the check came, I reached for my wallet out of habit. Big mistake. He immediately slid his card down and said, \u201cAbsolutely not. A man pays on the first date.\u201d Normally I\u2019d argue, but the way he said it \u2014 steady, self-assured, not controlling \u2014 actually made me smile. I walked away thinking this might have been one of the best first dates I\u2019d ever had.<\/p>\n Then came the next morning.<\/p>\n I woke up to a long message from him. At first, I thought it was a cute \u201cgood morning,\u201d maybe a follow-up to plan a second date. But when I opened it, my stomach dropped.<\/p>\n The message wasn\u2019t sweet \u2014 it was an invoice.<\/p>\n He had broken down the entire cost of the date: the roses, the dinner, the drinks, the Uber he paid for. Line by line. With prices. And at the end, he wrote:<\/p>\n \u201cSince you insisted on paying your share, here\u2019s your half. Please send it by noon.\u201d<\/p>\n At first, I thought it had to be a joke. No one could go from romantic gentleman to accountant-in-a-mental-crisis overnight. I replied, asking if he was being sarcastic.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n He doubled down. Said it was \u201conly fair,\u201d and that he didn\u2019t want to \u201cstart a relationship with someone who expects to be spoiled.\u201d Spoiled. Me. The same me who literally tried to split the check the night before.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t send him anything, obviously. I blocked him and told my friend never to set me up on a date again unless she personally ran a psychological background check first.<\/p>\n The funniest part? She told me afterward that he\u2019d bragged for years about how he was a \u201ctraditional man,\u201d how he believed in paying for women, how he treated dates \u201cright.\u201d Turns out he only meant for the first twelve hours \u2014 until the bill processed on his card.<\/p>\n So yeah, best first date ever\u2026 followed by the most chaotic morning-after message I\u2019ve ever received. And honestly, I\u2019m still laughing about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I went on a date with a guy my friend set me up with. Honestly, I had low expectations \u2014 blind dates usually end in awkward small talk and forced … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2142,"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions\/2142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyintheworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}