Submitted by expertinselfsabotage t3_yyjwro in tifu
Throwaway bc this is very much a true story and it’s embarrassing.
Two weeks ago, I matched with this really cute girl on Hinge. Our timelines and dating goals aligned and we also lived in adjacent neighborhoods. On top of that, she was the first to start joking and teasing in our texts, which is always awesome.
It didn’t take long for me to ask her out on a date that Friday to grab dinner in her neighborhood and maybe go to a bar after. I usually don’t do dinner first dates but food is something we bonded over and I wanted to show her my favorite Thai spot.
Come Friday morning, she tells me that she’s been feeling sick since Thursday. I tell her “No worries, it’s actually really nice this weekend, let’s do a picnic on Sunday instead.” She wholeheartedly agreed because everyone loves a good picnic. For reference, my last four dates have been picnics along the river in my city, and they’ve all been a good time.
Come Saturday afternoon, she tells me SHE HAS PINK EYE. This girl is all over the place but it’s alright because she still offered to come out to the date if I didn’t want to reschedule again. That was nice of her but I told her “Let’s plan for next week instead. I want you to feel better and be comfortable with me on the first date.”
I was disappointed though because next weekend was too cold for a picnic, so I had to come up with a different date idea, and I didn’t play it safe this time. I wanted to do something different and memorable. So, I suggested we do an escape room next Sunday afternoon, then get pastries in Chinatown after. She thought this was a super fun idea and agreed. In hindsight, this is obviously a second or third date idea, but we’d been chatting for a bit and had a really fun FaceTime to get the initial getting-to-know-you talk over with, so I felt comfortable being ambitious for the first date. We were both excited.
The date itself I thought went well. The escape room was fun, and she loved all the bakeries I took her to. When we took the train home afterwards, I got off at my stop first and I told her that I had fun and to let me know when she got home safe. She forgot to text me until the morning after, which was fine, but then she ghosted me.
Usually when I get ghosted, I know the reason why. But with her, I was dumbfounded. I thought we had a lot of momentum rolling into this first date and that it went well. I needed some closure, so I finally texted her on Wednesday and asked her what went wrong.
She said, “Hey! Ngl would have loved a heads up that the escape room was going to be BDSM themed… I had a really nice time chatting with you and hitting the bakeries but I just don’t really see this going anywhere!”
Yeah so I left out an important detail. I thought it would be funny if I didn’t tell her that the premise of the escape room was that you had to break into the back of a café, enter a BDSM sex dungeon, find a sex tape, and delete it. At the time, I thought this was hysterical and was doing something by surprising her with it.
In the moment when we entered the sex dungeon portion of the escape room, I didn’t even address it and share a laugh about it because yeah, I’m a dumbass and I tried to play it off when it got awkward. We just kinda powered through it and beat the escape room. Afterwards, I thought it went well because when we got our picture taken at the photo booth, she made sure she looked good by retaking the photo a few times. I thought, “Oh, this is cute. She wants to look good in our first photo together, she must have had a good time.” No, she did not have a good time.
I can’t help but think what things would be like had I taken her on either of the two normal first dates. I just made a stupidly tone-deaf decision that was insensitive, poorly executed, made her uncomfortable, and was completely inappropriate for the first date. I’m not even into BDSM for the record… Oh yeah and she hosted a Friendsgiving at her place after the date, so my ass definitely got chewed out by all her friends.
I’ve been beating myself up over this and having my friends roast me so I can at least share a laugh and heal. Please do the same to me in the threads below.
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TL; DR
I thought it would be funny to take a girl to an escape room on the first date and not tell her it was BDSM themed. My dumbass was surprised when she ghosted me.
​ IMPORTANT EDIT AND CONCLUSION: the range of responses on this are crazy: from “this is borderline sexual harassment” to “she just doesn’t have a sense of humor”. main takeaway is that I’m an idiot and crossing a sexual boundary doesn’t necessarily have to be physical. I needed to let her know what we were getting into in this scenario and ask for her permission, or better yet, not do a BDSM escape room on the first date. I’ve learned my lesson and I’ve apologized to her. Life goes on.