Dating Disasters: ‘I was completely involuntarily seated at a Ted Talk about the flashy life of Thijs’

In Dating Disasters, anonymous readers share their most embarrassing, cringeworthy, and dramatic dates. This week: Ted Talk Thijs.

I met Thijs years ago on Tinder. He looked exactly like Brody Jenner: he had dark curls, a fit body, and a strong jawline. ‘If he were to ruin my life, I would still say thank you,’ I told a friend to whom I sent the screenshots of his profile. I found him so handsome. Fortunately, he never ruined my life, but he did ruin one evening of my life that I can’t get back.

We didn’t talk for long before we made some plans. I know: rookie mistake, but at that moment I was on a mission not to be the only single left in my friend group, and relationships were raining down around me. Thijs picked me up on a Friday night in a sleek car. Don’t ask me what kind of car it was, because the only thing I can tell you about cars is their color and whether the mirror on the passenger side is good enough for quickly touching up my makeup. Luckily, Thijs was able to tell me everything about his car. He took me to a restaurant that was half an hour outside the city, and I didn’t get a word in during those thirty minutes. Terms like: ‘a billion horsepower’ and ‘four-wheel drive’ flew around me, but I was already too mentally checked out to recount this. Why did he choose a restaurant that was so far out of the way?

Once we arrived, he insisted on opening all the doors for me. He also took my coat and pulled out my chair. Okay then, I thought. Car enthusiast but also a gentleman, I can live with this. Unfortunately, that joy was short-lived, because at the moment the hostess came to welcome us, he addressed her in a way that I’m still embarrassed about. He found it ridiculous that we had been given a table in the middle of the restaurant while the (in his opinion) good tables along the side were still free. When it was explained that those tables were for four people and they were expecting a large crowd that evening, he said: ‘Where are those people then? We’re practically the only guests here, come on!’

Their exchange lasted maybe a minute, but I felt like I stared at my lap for three hours in embarrassment. Again: why did he choose a restaurant that was so far out of the way? The evening was filled with more rude comments directed at our waitress, whom he consistently referred to as ‘girl,’ and a one-sided lecture about his fitness goals, career moves, and his crypto investments. I was completely unwillingly seated at a Ted Talk about Thijs’s flashy life, and there was no escaping it. I don’t think he asked me a single question about myself, and I still doubt whether he even remembered my name.

As the icing on the cake, he waved his wallet around in a hurry (with his mouth still full) at the moment he wanted to pay and didn’t break eye contact when he slammed a tip of over 50 percent on the table. Apparently, this was my moment to finally say something that evening, but I was completely done with it. When he dropped me off at home (after another half-hour drive during which I discovered that you can apparently talk endlessly about one car), he leaned in for a kiss. I lied that I felt a cold coming on and didn’t know how quickly to leave his flashy car. I am very much against ghosting, but I didn’t reach out again; I was completely stunned by this man’s actions. He probably didn’t mind, because it was also silent on his end. We know how much he loves to talk, so if he had disagreed, this ‘girl’ would have surely heard about it long ago.

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