Dating Disasters: ‘I seriously wondered if he was dating me or the waitress’

In Dating Disasters vertellen anonieme lezers over hun gênantste, meest tenenkrommende en dramatische dates. Deze week: the third wheel.

The evening started promisingly. I had arranged to meet someone whom I thought we had a great connection. Our conversations were lively and our interests seemed to align, so we decided to meet at a cozy restaurant.

However, I soon noticed that my date, let’s call him Alex, was good at flirting. That could have been fun if he had actually done it with me. Unfortunately, he seemed to have more eyes for the waitress. From the moment she appeared at our table, his attention shifted completely. While I was enthusiastically trying to keep a conversation going in the hope that he would be my ticket out of that miserable dating jungle, I noticed his gaze wandering to her time and again.

It felt like a bad movie in which my date and the waitress played unintended leading roles. Suddenly, I felt like I was crashing their date. I had never seen someone from the staff walk to a table so often, and each time they got caught up in deep conversations while I was ignored like an insignificant afterthought. I could have cried.

The evening quickly turned into an absurd scene of discomfort. I desperately tried to hold on to my self-esteem while my date and the waitress talked about everything from dishes on the menu to their shared love for cheesy movies. As I stared at their animated conversations, I felt myself getting smaller and smaller.

You might think: why don’t you just leave? But I felt like I was nailed to my chair. And besides, I decided that if this wasn’t the love of my life, I might as well make the best of it. I ordered cocktail after cocktail without anyone noticing. Our waitress obviously had no problem with it: any reason to come to our table was a good one.

Eventually, I decided that enough was enough. I knew I didn’t have to torture myself any longer in this awkward situation. With a forced smile, I asked for the bill, which I immediately pushed towards him. No way was I going to pay for this joke of an evening. Alex walked out with me, disappointed, where we said our goodbyes.

As I walked away, I decided to look back one more time and you guessed it: he had turned around straight away to walk back inside. We never spoke again. Maybe he’s still sitting at that table drooling, I really have no idea. However, I do have a wonderful story from this that I can still laugh about years later, and I am very grateful to him for that.

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