Bad Reception

The worst date I ever had was in fact both not that bad and excruciatingly painful at the same time. Let's go back in time 2 and a half years shall we. I had just moved to DC and flew back to Chicago to both run the Chicago Marathon and attend a friend's wedding (not at the same time although if I could have coerced the bride into having her special day during a 40,000 participant race it would've been awesome). After driving 4 hours to said wedding (Bride neglected to tell me the wedding was 4 hours away in BFE Indiana) I could only stay for the ceremony and rush back to Chicago for the race. However, at the ceremony I met a cute, single, Christian guy who came recommended by both the bride and groom. win, win, win, win. right?

Fast forward three months. Wedding Boy and I had been conversing via email and phone since then. Those phone calls quickly grew to long, deep conversations that meant I only had 3 hours of sleep each night. If you know me sleep is a REALLY big deal to me and lack of sleep is what i consider hell to be like. Hot, steamy, and perpetually exhausting. Kind of like DC in July.

I had planned on going home for Christmas like a good daughter would do and stopping in Chicago along the way to see my friends and Wedding Boy. By this time I was sort of over Wedding Boy. Its hard to do long distance. Long phone calls meant I couldn't see my friends at night and I knew I'd be in DC for at least two years and didn't have it in me to continue these phone shenanigans anymore. BUT I felt I owed it to him in person to break things off and who knows maybe I'd like him more in person? right? wrong.

He offered to pick me up at the airport where we could have a date. When I say pick me up I do not mean in a car I mean on the CTA. No offense dude but no girl wants to hop in a date after hanging out in airports and planes for 5 hours. I knew jumping into an 8 hour date (seriously he had that much planned) with someone I wasn't into would be a bad idea so i cancelled it but in the end it didn't matter because my flight was cancelled because of Snowpocalypse so I flew into a different non-Chicago airport to go home. Wedding Boy was VERY upset I couldn't see him and started using words like "we" and "us" which is the fastest way to send me running if I don't actually like you. I flew back to DC through Chicago though and we had our first and last official date.

I stayed at Bride and Groom's house for a week. I let Bride know Wedding Boy and I were dunzo but we were going out first. The date itself would have been fine...with someone else. He made reservations to a nice restaurant -even though I'd told him I'd been there before and really didn't like it. ...its ok I drank a couple margaritas and he paid for it. Then we went to a play. He was a lighting director so he was WAY into the lights. I mean WAY into the lights. 5 minutes into it I crossed my arms. He assumed that meant I was cold and wanted to hold me and warm me up for the next 3 hours. 3 hours. It was both emotionally and physically uncomfortable. I had to literally pry his hands off me and tell him I was uncomfortable from sitting in the exact same position so long. He also felt the need to pluck stray hairs off my shirt while making weird faces and noises.

Then he wanted to go out to a bar even though I had already said I wasn't feeling well. Instead we went back to Bride and Groom's place where they were watching Funny People (spoiler alert the people are not funny). For 2 full hours the four of us sat uncomfortably close on the couch. He kept putting his arm around me, I kept giving it back to him and scooting away. Eventually I was literally sitting on top of Bride's lap-even Groom was picking up on the fact that I wasn't into this in any way shape or form. But not Wedding Boy. Nope despite my not very subtle attempts to push him away he was not picking up on it. at all. Bride eventually convinced Groom to turn the movie off. I said I was heading to bed, shook Wedding Boys hand, and ran into the bed room....mature? maybe not but there was no way I was giving this dude a chance to kiss me good night. no sir.

The next day he called raving about the great time he had and I was all "about that......."

Moral of the story: someone who seems cool at a 25 minute wedding is not necessarily the one....now if I had stayed for the reception maybe i would've picked up on that.....