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Women Who Have Had Run-Ins With 'Incels' Reveal What Went Down

It's no secret that women are often objectified by creepy men. But some of these men, specifically those known as "incels", or "involuntary celibates". The stereotypical incel is a fedora-wearing neck-bearded creature, but the incel culture can be hiding in any man's brain. And that's friggin' terrifying.

MetaphoricalProverb

asked: Women of Reddit, have you ever had a run in with an Incel? If so, what happened?



That's horrible.

"Met one in college. He seemed normal at the time although we rarely talked. Had literally one class together.

He friend requested me on Facebook and I accepted. Soon after he asked me out on Facebook and I rejected him. He started staring at me in the one class we had together and followed me around a lot.

One day I got a text from my mom telling me I should check my Facebook. I maybe looked at it once a day at the time.

He had commented on every single post I made, every picture, anything on my wall. Literally everything he could. Every comment was different too, but all some variation of how I'm a slut. How all I'm good for is to please a man and produce his offspring... if he finds me worthy.

He planned it out well I think I because the semester ended the week before. Which was good for me I guess, didn't have to see him anymore.

I blocked him then deleted my Facebook. I was rarely using it anyway. He put so much effort into those comments, hundreds of them. Just weird."

Little_Mommy

What a huge red flag.

Giphy

"I started chatting with him on Tinder, about an hour later I run into a friend of mine and we decide to grab a beer together. I tell the guy cause I was still chatting with him and he explodes.

Goes on a huge rant about how if I have a straight male friend I should just sleep with him then since the only reason a straight single man would be friends with a girl is to sleep with her. Also that if we were dating he'd never let me have male friends cause they'd just want to sleep with me. Noped out of that one pretty fast."

Einmanabanana

Big yikes.

"I met a guy online who turned out to be an incel. We chatted casually for maybe a month, nothing sexual, just friendship as we had a hobby in common we were discussing. One day he asked me to check his dating profile for him. Hoping that a woman's perspective would tell him why he wasn't getting any messages. I didn't mind as he'd been polite up until this point. But I didn't read that this was his way of flirting with me.

I just told him his bio was far too long. It was the longest profile on a dating website I'd ever seen. It would have been pages and pages of paragraphs if you printed it out. I just said it's easier to read if you shorten it and make it about the lasting impression you want a woman to have of you. And I sent him an example since I knew about his hobbies. I just wrote something like, "I like philosophy, debating and discussing psychology" and leave it at that instead of discussing every topic in detail and what you like and don't like about them.

Also, his page was filled with more negatives than positives. Paragraphs upon paragraphs about what he found unattractive in women. His standards were ridiculously high. They couldn't have had any previous relationships. No tattoos. Can't be into hobbies he doesn't like. He accused anyone who didn't like his hobbies of being stupid and he thought other people were all 'vapid and shallow for only caring about looks'. Also, he required a woman to have a very specific body and face type.

When I told him maybe he should cut this part out and stick to what traits he likes in a woman...he suddenly flipped. Out of nowhere. He'd shown no sign of craziness before he asked me about his dating profile. Suddenly he starts ranting about how women don't want him but he's a catch. And if I wasn't such a bitch, I wouldn't be single. And he could show me a good time if I learned to be more passive and not speak my mind as much.

I told him to calm down and he wouldn't. He sent me pages and pages and pages of hateful, venomous messages about hating women for not seeing how intelligent and insightful he was and how I would be single forever if I didn't take his offer to date him because he could 'improve' me by making me more alluring to other men.

I tried to give him another chance but my message was drowned out by the paragraphs he sent me over the course of a few hours. So I blocked him on Skype and his original account that we spoke on on another platform disappeared the very next day. Never heard of him since."

mauvebirdie

Nope, he was definitely an incel.

"This was over a decade ago now, I think. But, at the very least, he was pretty convinced that women were the issue.

The issue was that he was obese. And unwashed. And looked exactly the way you think an incel would. We got along very well and I tried to get past all that, but you can't force attraction.

Basically, we hung out alone once and it was pretty much a disaster. Awkward, uncomfortable. Smelly. Anwyay, after that, I tried to diplomatically let him down. He basically told me I was a slut, tried to rake my name through the mud, and cut me out of his life.

So, yeah. Pretty much a paint by numbers."

ostrich_dshfsdkjhfd

Where do these men even come from?

Giphy

"I went on a date with one about six months ago. It was so, so uncomfortable. He was asking me what I was looking for in a relationship, and the conversation went something like this. M represents me, and D will represent him.

D: So, do you know what you're looking for?

M: I'm new to the state, so I think that for now I just want to go out a bit and meet new people. I'm the commitment type, though, and I'm not at all opposed to finding something serious. What about you?

D: Well, uh, I don't really think I want a girlfriend, you know? I don't want to feel smothered. I mean, sex is nice, of course, but... I just like hooking up. I hooked up with some girls this summer and the sex was fun.

M: Ah. Yeah, I'm not really the hook-up type. I feel like healthy relationships are pretty balanced and no one needs to feel smothered. But I can see how going out with no strings attached could be a good time.

D: Yeah. I really just like sex, like any other dude, yanno? I don't need a girlfriend. Of course, there are the times that I see a stupid couple holding hands and being all cute, and that makes me mad, of course. I don't like seeing it flaunted like that.

I kind of froze at that point. It's difficult to explain the tone of voice he used when he said that last thing, but it made me uneasy. I could see the anger/hatred in his eyes and he went from casually conversing to seriously mad. And he kept saying "of course," like everyone felt the same way, or like he was trying to gauge if I felt similarly.

Needless to say, I never went out with the guy again. I met my now-boyfriend two days later and we've run into D together while on campus (D and I go to college together). Every time, D glares at me and shoots my boyfriend dirty looks.

Edit: I realize that he said he was screwing girls, which would make him not an Incel, by definition. But he seemed to be lying about the sex, and the way that he spoke about his anger toward couples/women with boyfriends made it really clear that he had an Incel-like mindset."

some-kind-of-rescue

Holy crap.

"This was freshman year of high school and I swear I have about a hundred stories on this one boy. Let's call him blue (because his hair used to be blue).

So I first met blue on a bus ride to a field trip where we were visiting a local college to go through a "practice" course. He and I were both put into the computer programming course, so we spent the whole day together. He seemed like a pretty chill dude, so I invited him to come hang out with my friends at the football game that night. No big deal, right?

Well, he arrives and jokes about how he told his parents we were on a date. I cut him off right there and clarify I invited him to hang out, I did not ask him on a date. He shrugs and continues the story. His father apparently asked if he should bring condoms and his mom asked if I was spending the night. Oooookay now this feels awkward. I emphasized once again we were not in a relationship, I did not ask him out, and nothing was happening tonight. He agreed.

So a small bump in the road, but I still don't feel comfortable around him. To get away for a bit, I offer to go wait in line for snacks while everyone else watches the game. He offers to go with me to "keep me safe": yeah, no. I try to talk one of my girlfriends into helping me leave alone, but she thinks he's cute for me and tells us both to go. Yaaaaay.

So he and I are walking to the snack bar, my friends money in hand (they were paying for their own snacks, I was just going to wait for them) and he's following. As we get close to the stand, a cute girl walks by and he very obviously checks her out. I honestly don't care, but it's what he says that made me cringe.

"Damn, I'd rape that."

I immediately go off on him, that that's not funny, that he's a high schooler and should know better, that some jokes are funny but that's a bit far. He is shocked saying. "What? I do you first!" Apparently he thought I was jealous or something? I give him the money and tell him to order for our friends, I'm leaving. He keeps trying to get me to stay, but I'm just done. He then offers to drive me home, which is a BIG hell no at this point! You just made a joke about raping me I am NOT having you drive me home ALONE after that!!!

It gets worse.

For about a month, he would follow me to my gym class, wait for me to walk into the girls locker room, and then go to his class. After I realized this was a common occurrence, I talked to a mutual friend of ours, and then it stopped. Don't have confirmation, but I'm assuming our mutual friend (let's call him pink for his fav color) told blue I knew and he stopped.

Skip to sophomore year, when us three are all in a club together. Pink keeps trying to set me and blue up together, and it's making me really uncomfortable. Blue and I are in a different club together where I compete and he is taking pictures for the yearbook. Turns out almost all the pictures he took were of me. Creepy.

What was weird was he found a crappy homemade ring in the hallways apparently? With a heart charm as the charm of the ring. He snuck it in my bag with a note of "just thinking of you" and it just weirded me out.

This was when I decided "okay so we just can't be friends." So I cut myself off from him, but not from everyone else in our group. Meet black, a kind of emo chick I used to be friends with and at one point dated blue. She came over to my house to hang out, and he texted her 52 times and called 7 times in the span of the 3 hours we hung out, because apparently blue didn't "trust me". They broke up later when he came out as gay. Weird.

LITERALLY A DAY LATER he comes up to me and asks me out. I ask him I thought he was gay: nope. Apparently that was his excuse to break up with black, and he blew up her phone in hopes that I would be the one to pick up the line. DUDE.

Then I moved at the end of sophomore year. I was finally going to be away from blue, or so I thought. Though I still liked pink and black, those friendships disintegrated when I stopped hanging out with blue because they sided with blue. Whatever, like I care.

Because I moved I made it so he couldn't contact me at all: blocked his account on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, everything I could. Kept his number in my phone but named it "Don't Answer" so I'd know it was him. I thought I was rid of him.

Cut to January. At this point I haven't seen them for 8 months. The ahole hacked into my Facebook hoping I wouldn't notice. For a solid hour I was "in a relationship" with him, he was unblocked, and he had posted a picture of him on my account titled "I love my honey ♥️" LIKE WTF???

Gladly this was late at night and I was up studying, so I had gotten an email about logging into a new device on my phone. Instantly changed everything back, deleted and cleared everything, and changed my password on everything. I was not about to have this happen on another account.

Is this an incel? Or just a stalker? Or a creep? Whatever he's categorized as, it's f**king creepy. He never did the classic break down at being rejected, he just... Never took rejection."

Dare2bflat

Logic.

"He said sexism in the workplace wasn't real. Then proceeded to give an example of a person being denied a role because of their gender.

"Women aren't discriminated against in the workforce. We had a lady put in her resume at our construction company and the workers wanted to hire her but the boss didn't end up hiring her because his wife would be jealous".

Yeah the cognitive dissonance hurt my head."

followthedarkrabbit

Trust no incel.

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"It happened more frequently in my younger years say late teens/early twenties. Almost, exclusively online. I used to be one of those "super nice-but-actually pushover-y" girls and gave everyone the time of day to at least chat and small talk, now I do not 100% because of incel run-ins.

Worst run-in I've had was a boy, after agreeing to exchange phone numbers (I don't know why I did) would call/text sometimes as early as 7 am...I never answered and eventually got pissed off and told him to stop calling me. He was WAY too obsessive and I barely knew the guy. He later threatened to post my social media pictures and phone number on craigslist and back-page on the casual sex ads. No idea if he ever did but for weeks, almost months would text just "$" and say nothing else.

So men, if you approach a lady and she seems short & snotty with you like she has her guard up she's probably actually a really cool girl but has had one or two really disturbing run-ins with an incel so she's protecting herself from the trouble. We all watch too many episodes of Dateline to play around with that. Incels seem to make life a little more shitty for everybody even other men, sadly.

I can't tell you if I ever ran into one in real life but I know I have. I'm 100% sure I did but it was completely non-memorable and I can't say I even notice them in passing. Maybe that's why they get so upset with people. It seems like a sad life but they make it impossible to feel sorry for them. Poor."

dublthnk

RUN.

"I dated a guy who became an incel after we had been dating for 7 months. It was my first time dating anyone so I was ~nervous to do any thing major ya know~ He was a virgin as well and made me very clear of this fact anytime things were a little bit romantic.

One night we got in an argument about the definition of consent and how I wasn't sure if I wanted to have kids one day.

He said, "Hypothetically, if a man and a woman were to get married, and the husband wanted kids and the wife didn't, isn't it the wife's duty to provide the husband with a child even if she doesn't want one?"

I told him no it would be rape to make a woman forcefully have a child she does not want. This made him extremely angry and he stormed off. He then texted me later that night around 9pm asking if he could call me. I had work the next morning and knew this would be a long call so I asked if it could wait until the next day. He said it couldn't wait and that he needed to say something tonight. I asked him if he could text it to me, thinking it would be a paragraph or something. I could not have been more wrong.

I woke up at 4am to a text from him. It was so long that it couldn't be read in messages and had to be opened in notes. It turns out this "text" was a 9 page long essay describing how my thoughts were completely wrong and how I needed to allow him to screw me whenever he asked and how it was my duty as a woman to bear him children.

I broke up with him the next day I was so appalled. He was obviously very mad at me for deciding I didn't want to have sex with a guy who viewed me as just a 'baby maker'."

ecummings2

NOPE.

"I've had a few, but the worst interaction I've ever had, personally, was with a dude named Brandon. He was friends with some of my friends, I don't think anyone actually liked him but they felt bad for him so they let him hang around.

He developed an obsession with me and would message me on every platform of social media he could, wrote "fanfic" about us (which was VERY inappropriate and made me 10/10 uncomfortable) and eventually started messaging me about all the ways he wanted to assault me. I blocked him but he always found a way to keep harassing me.

I ended up moving out of state for other reasons, but after that it died down, thankfully."

aVeryTinySmallSnake

Terrifying.

"This is before they started calling themselves incels -- or maybe before we knew they did -- but this dude hit all the markers.

High school. I made the mistake of being polite to him. Not flirty, not overly friendly -- just basic kindness. "Hi, how are you today, sorry to hear that" kindness. He spewed their typical hateful, self-pitying nonsense at me before I knew better than to sympathize with him.

When I told him I wasn't interested in a romantic relationship, he terrorized and stalked me for years, showing up at my work and extra curriculars and threatening to do me bodily harm. He made up truly insane stories about a made-up "childhood romance," harassed my friends, tried to isolate me from them. He made my high school experience a living hell. It didn't stop until I got a restraining order, and he still tried to indirectly contact me for a while. I was afraid for years after graduation that he'd show up and kill me at work.

A decade later, he found my professional e-mail and apologized. It was short, to-the-point, polite, and sounded like a therapist had helped him write it. (I doubt I was the only woman he did this to over the years.)

I agonized over replying because part of me was afraid it would just reignite his obsession. Ultimately, I sent him a similarly short "thank you for saying that, I wish you well" note and never replied to his follow-up message.

He hasn't contacted me again, so I do believe he's changed, or is trying to change. But I never made the mistake of giving too much kindness to an abuser and/or psychopath of that particular strain again."

rednightmare18

"Nice guys" are almost as bad.

"Are incels the same as niceguys? I think maybe they are different... somehow. Anyway, I was once tricked into a helping a niceguy.

Backstory. Am a girl, and in college I had a crush on this guy, and because of this I offered to tutor him in one of his classes that I had already taken. It was... a short lived crush. Because after tutoring him I discovered that he was dumber than a box of rocks. Like... so, SO dumb. But I had committed and I was kind of in his same friend group, so I also learned that he was highly religious (another way we were totally incompatible), and he was totally into another girl in this friend group. So I gave up my crush.

We graduated. Or, well, I did. Some time later he messages me on Facebook, all heartbroken and shit. Apparently he had managed to get together with this girl, and had even slept with her (despite being, you know, MEGA Christian) but she had broken up with him. And he was so upset, why didn't she like a nice guy like him, he had a dream sent from God where he saw them getting married, it was meant to be. And would I please reach out to her for him? This was a little before everyone was woke about this shit, so my dumb ass did it. It's one of the things I regret having done in my life.

So I reach out to her and ask her how she is and then bring the conversation around to him. She tells me that he's basically fucking stalking her. Like this dude's been creepily driving by her house to see if she's home. I was like oh damn, ok, btw he asked me to talk to you for him, sorry.

I forget what I told him after that, but I was washing my hands of it. I wish there was a better ending, but I was mortified that I had acted as his agent and bothered this poor girl.

Bonus: I didn't defriend him on Facebook until he got pissy that he got a ticket for parking in the fire lane. It was "just for a few minutes" and didn't give a single shit that, you know, people could have DIED IN A FIRE because his dumb ass was in the way.

Also he had IBS and I eat way too much chili, so that's another way this was never gonna work."

faoltiama

At least he grew up.

"I'm a male, but I used to be an incel.

In high school I would ask out a bunch of girls (one I asked on Facebook) and each time I got rejected I would yell at them for not giving me a chance. I would stalk them and message them constantly, even using Words with Friends to message them. I would threaten to kill myself because of how angered and depressed I was, but also using it as a way to get someone to reply back to me.

I'm horrified by what I used to be, I hate reliving my past. I really want to apologize to the women I tormented, but also feel like it's best I leave them alone. This is one skeleton I have in my closet that I want to be burned and buried."

15jackets

Ugh.

Giphy

"A guy I met on tinder before I started dating my boyfriend.

He knew a creepy amount about me, or guessed a lot of stuff correctly (height, bra size to a T, etc.) that a random stranger wouldn't know. And one of his pick up lines were "I hope you don't mind I have a huge cock."

But I was young, inexperienced and so I disregarded his creepiness.

We were supposed to meet up, but it was the same day I was supposed to go on a date with my now boyfriend, so I had to tell him that I wasn't able to meet him.

The guy lost his shit on me, the usual "fucking shallow bitch" and "all women are the same" and how he was so sick and tired of women doing this to him. It got really intense, and I was wigged out. It was the first, and last, time I experienced something like that."

fallincas

We hope he gave them their money.

"I was friends with one in college. He thought he was the coolest, hottest guy ever, and would resort to pathetic tactics to picking up chicks, including getting a puppy and walking it around campus solely so girls might come up and talk to him.

A friend of ours took him to a bar and the guy started crying because no girls were coming up and talking to him. Before that time, he had bet us $300 that he could "go to any bar in this town and pick up a chick". Our friend set him up on a date with a friend of his, and the dude was creepy and rude the entire time."

jonahvsthewhale

Big yikes.

He didn't seem like an incel while we were talking a few days before our date, but he also used fake/heavily altered pictures so that says a lot. Arranged to go to a bar and maybe get something to eat if I was feeling happy to after a long day of work.

That didn't happen...met at the bar and he said he wanted to take me somewhere better which I was happy to do, turns out we were headed to his place. I objected and said "oh I'm really hungry could we just go somewhere to eat instead" and turned out he had a plan for us to make food and smoke together. I wasn't getting super weird vibes from him so I thought he probably had good intentions and it was a fairly easily place to get away from need be.

Went in, and I felt very uncomfortable (bear in mind he looked NOTHING like his pictures and was acting like I was his girlfriend, we matched on tinder like a week before), so uncomfortable in fact that I didn't look him in the eye even once the whole night. Strange note: his entire place was like a Doctor Who museum...bed sheets, pillows, posters, figurines, dolls, and costume pieces. That gave me some vibes.

Anyways, he made a pie while I awkwardly stood in the kitchen corner and watched him trying to impress me and saying "we should do this together a few times a week, you will really love this" and awkwardly laughing in response. Had we been in a relationship and he looked/acted any way he had online I'd have loved it, but he was a stranger...also I have coeliac disease and refrain from animal products for my health so couldn't eat it..smelt like soap but he tried.

We sat and watched Doctor Who (what a surprise) for 5 hours while smoking, which would be fine with me but whenever I got a message he would ask who it was and would move progressively closer to me and look at my phone. He also got a little carried away (?) with smoking. Now I can hold myself pretty well with weed, and I don't think he expected that at all. A few joints in and he was a mess. The pie he was trying to eat was just crumbling and falling on the floor which he sort of mushed in the carpet trying to pick up, and he was saying shit like "why aren't you high yet" "you need to smoke more you should have passed out by now" at that point I was freaked out. Called a taxi and left, he had passed out when I had left.

I said the next day thank you for the evening but I didn't want to see him again, tried to guilt trip me with how much money he put towards smoke and food and drinks (I never actually agreed previous to that evening to what happened that night, I thought we were gonna get chips) and how he deserved compensation (you can guess what he meant). I turned him down as gently as I could. He got my Tinder account banned, showed a screenshot of me pissing around saying something t along the lines that I'm 13 as evidence (I'm not and my pictures made that pretty obvious) but yeah, said if I was on Tinder going in dates I should follow though with the arrangement (there was literally no dirty talk) and that I shouldn't be on tinder if I was just going to use people for freebies and take away what they deserved. I never responded to him.

Every couple weeks for MONTHS I got a message from him, usually responding to something I post or just a picture of a random thing (no dick pics thank GOD), which I ghost and are usually met with some very threatening angry emojis and a "what did I do to deserve this". Blocked him, problem solved. Still pissed about my Tinder account though."

PeachesandPride

People Describe The Weirdest Thing That's Ever Happened To Them

Reddit user Key_Nectarine_1969 asked: 'What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done that you could only tell people anonymously?'

Man standing behind large flowers
Quinn Buffing on Unsplash

We've all done things, or in some cases, regularly do things that others might consider weird.

Even so, we often feel no shame or embarrassment and embrace how unusual these habits are, and take our friends teasing or laughing at us for doing so in stride.

Sometimes, however, we might not like to advertise some of our unusual habits or actions and make every effort to keep them a well-guarded secret.

As raised eyebrows are much easier to take than blatant judgment from friends and peers.

Redditor Key_Nectarine_1969 was curious to hear all the weird things people have done which they still keep under lock and key, leading them to ask:

"What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done that you could only tell people anonymously?"

The Devil [Dogs] Is In The Detail...

"All throughout middle school, there was someone who tucked unwrapped Hostess Devil Dogs into the toilet paper dispensers in the bathrooms, so that when you pulled some toilet paper out, the devil dog would fall out into your hand."

"We had to have an assembly about it."

"That person... Was me."- bejeweled_sky

Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

"Was drunk at an escape room with coworkers."

"It was an extreme one where you are handcuffed the entire time."

"I decided in my drunken state that it would be bada** to dislocated my thumb and slip off the cuffs like the movies."

"It wasn't."

"We got kicked out, my coworkers were weirded out and I had to go to the hospital."

"I quit a few weeks later."

"White collar wasn't for me."- Grotesque-penguin

The Bread Of Heaven

"Stole over 1,000 wafers from church because I really liked the communion wafers & didn’t know where else to get them."

"I felt really blessed & cursed for a long time."- hALLIEcinate

catholic the exorcist GIFGiphy

Retracing Steps...

"Once I got off the subway in NYC and I was super early for an appointment."

"So I picked a random guy and just followed him on foot for like 30 minutes, pretending I was like a private detective or something."

"Always kept about a half block behind."

"He turned this way and that, and eventually went into a building I had lived in 9 years earlier."

"It was weird, and so was I."- OKsurewhynotyep

Hygeine Be Damned...

"I found a dead rat in a field when i was younger and kissed it bc I wanted to say goodbye."- qeleia

exercise push up GIFGiphy

Bad Decisions Have A Way Of Getting Back To You...

"We got super drunk and ate a ton of spicy food in New Orleans."

"Back at the B&B, the food started to come out the back side."

"I was sitting on the toilet sh*tting bricks of fire."

"At that moment, the booze decided to hang a u-turn."

"The trash can was out of reach and I couldn't risk standing up from the toilet for even 5 seconds."

"The closest receptacle was the bathtub."

"I managed to turn in such a way that I could keep shi*ting in the toilet while projectile vomiting into the tub."

"Both ended up clogged, and there was no plunger."

"I had to call the owner to explain that I had destroyed both their toilet and their tub simultaneously."- HoopOnPoop

Things Best Left To Professionals...

"My partner is weirdly prone to cysts."

"I had to drain a 3 inch cyst on her back (thankfully she had a dr's appt the next week), then multiple other little cysts on her legs and chest."

"I never told her to her face but that first giant cyst literally haunted me, the amount of pus and blood I saw....good heavens."- SleepyBiologist

uruguay spot GIF by sargentoPezGiphy

At Least A Lesson Was Learned...

"When I was walking to school one morning, I saw a kid (7-8 yo?) kicking a dog."

"I ran over & kicked the kid and asked him how it felt."

"He ran off and no one saw."

"Still not sorry."- sneezyailurophile

All Creatures Deserve Love

"I was extremely socially isolated as a child and tried to make friends with the coyotes who lived in the woods by our home."

'I caught one in a snare and fed and kept her."

"I wanted a friend."- letthetreeburn

That's What Friends Are For...

"My wife and her best friend pick me up from a frat party black out drunk."

"Then they helped me take a sh*t on the toilet, wiped my a** and then gave me a shower and put me to bed naked."

"Don’t remember any of it."- nc3100

Party Love GIF by Chris CiminoGiphy

Not The Right Kind Of Manure...

"One time I went outside at like 2AM and put the garden hose nozzle into my butthole and sprayed some water into it, then farted it out onto the lawn."

"Basically gave myself an enema with a garden hose."

"I did this because I was bored."

"My neighbour saw me and told my dad (lived at home at the time)."- WaspsInMyGoatse

A Little Fantasy Now And Then...

"When I was younger I joined an international dating site that I figured was a scam."

"Put a black square as my picture and gave myself a fake name, and then looked through their users."

"And after about 10 minutes I had like a 100 messages."

"Most of them were messages telling me how handsome I was or how these women fell in love with me at first site."

"Now I knew it was a scam but when ever I felt down or got rejected for a while I would pop back on the site and read a few messages."

'Yeah it’s kinda cringy and probably pathetic but it made me feel better."

"I would just turn off that logical part of my brain that knew it was a scam for awhile and just pretend I was this popular and desirable guy."

"And it honestly got me through the day sometimes."- Demonking3343

dating app GIFGiphy

If anyone says they've never done anything they're ashamed, or at the very least less-than-proud of, in all likelihood, they are lying.

Or, more likely, they understandably want to pretend that it never happened.

Which might be a little easier than harboring a secret.



A shocked young man cups his face with his hands
Nachristos/Unsplash

Who doesn't love a first date?

The anticipation. The hopes and dreams. The romance.

Even those first-date butterflies are fun.

You're hoping this could be the one.

Or maybe this will just be a lot of fun.

Then you sit down with one another and they open their mouth and BOOM... dating disaster.

Life is ruined. Or maybe you were saved.

Redditor MiloMilkOnDrugs wanted to hear about the conversations that can ruin a romantic time, so they asked:

"What's the worst thing someone can say on a first date?"

Having worked as a waiter as long as I did, I can't tell the things I've overheard without fainting.

I'll just say... sometimes it's okay to stay single.

Promises

Players Association Sport GIF by NBPAGiphy

“'I need you to promise not to tell my wife.'"

FriendNegative6013

Honk Off

"My cousin (F) went on a first date where in the middle of the conversation, her date reached over and squeezed her breast and said 'Honk.'"

"She said 'What on earth do you think you're doing?'"

He said 'I've had quite a lot of success with that move.'"

"There was no second date. My cousin was the girl. I realized from a comment it was ambiguous."

blu3teeth

Circa 2005

"My mother was freshly divorced and we signed her up on a dating website (circa 2005) Helped her take pictures etc..."

"She met this guy online real smart, seems to have his sh*t together, independent, etc..."

"They set a date at a local restaurant they park side by side."

"The moment she greets him he says: WOW I love those big boobs I can't wait to taste them!"

"She 180° stepped back in her Mazda 3 and f**ked the right off this parking lot lol."

mageakeem

Safety First

"Does anyone know you're here?"

Baby-hazell

"It's a safety thing. Sometimes, people let others know where they'll be before meeting a stranger for a date. However for him to ask can be seen as a little creepy like he would be planning to do something to them and would need to know that info so he can figure out how long she'll be gone before the police are called. If that makes sense."

Hachiko75

Previously...

canadian what GIF by CBCGiphy

"I was on a date once, the woman apologized before looking a bit rough because she had just had sex before coming."

REDDIT​

What happened to putting your best foot forward?

My goodness, it's not that hard to at least run a brush through your hair.

Mirror Mirror

"'My ex looks way better than you.'"

Academic_Ingenuity84

"What a coincidence. My ex looks way better than you."

"Maybe they can get together and leave us ugly fools to mope about it together."

LurkerOrHydralisk

Oh Baby

"After pulling her chair out for her, you pet her head then rub her belly saying 'I’m gonna put a baby in here.'"

BuffaloInCahoots

"Ha, can you imagine, being a proper gentleman and then ending with a head pat and belly rub?"

phillmybuttons

"I once had a guy tell me on the first date he wanted to have at least six children. I heard later from his sister he married a woman who was already pregnant with someone else's kid, and he had her pregnant again within the year."

ashoka_akira

Family Dynamics

"'You remind me of my mom.' Bonus points if there is this weird attraction component to it."

Kiunan5

"My partner went on a date with a young woman shortly before we met, he said she repeatedly compared him to her father ('my dad drinks scotch', 'my dad is also bald,' etc). He said no amount of attraction could save the date after that."

Digital_Punk

"Oh God, I'm guilty of this one. It wasn't a date. but I told that to a woman I tried bedding later on. Honestly, she didn't look like my mom i was just shooting my shots at trying to keep her around."

Bobtheguardian22

Be Serious

Shouting The Goldbergs GIF by ABC NetworkGiphy

"I went to a nice French bistro in the Bay Area, there was a table right behind me and the friend dining. The guy literally said to the girl 'I am the alpha of this relationship.' (in a serious manner). Me and buddy sort of looked at each other while the girl literally burst out laughing, grabbed her bag, and then walked out of the restaurant."

295DVRKSS

It feels like some men have no one to bounce conversation ideas off of.

Or do they really believe what they say?

person walking while carrying shopping bags
Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Happiness is relative.

The idea that money can't buy happiness sounds good, but the reality is money can buy many things that contribute to our overall well-being.

And isn't comfort happiness?

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We've all heard that love and work do not mix, and we've definitely heard that we shouldn't take relationships or friendships with coworkers to the next level.

Between having our work, our jobs, our income, and maybe even our reputations on the line, there's simply too much at risk.

But maybe sometimes, the affair won't turn out quite the way we expected.

Redditor Nuff-Do asked:

"People who had sex with coworkers, how did that turn out?"

Rewarded with a Trip to Italy

"I was a young Airman at my first base in California and I worked with a girl (let's call her Sarah) who was way more attractive than anyone my small-town Missouri a** had ever hooked up with before."

"For some reason, she was into me. She was into a few other dudes too, but at the time it didn't matter because I was 19 and stupid and she was a few years older and far more sexually experienced than I was. We had sex a few times and sort of 'dated,' but it didn't really go anywhere and I was heartbroken but cool with it."

"This was right after 9/11, so U.S. military operations were starting to ramp up and Sarah got deployment orders. They didn't tell her where she was going, but she was on the hook."

"Her reaction to the news was to tell our Chief that she was pregnant with my kid so she didn't have to go. I knew she wasn't pregnant and just using it as an excuse not to deploy."

"The Chief came to me and asked if I'd go in her place. As I said, I was 19 and even though I was a little scared, I signed the dotted line and told him of course I'd take the deployment."

"It turns out, the 'deployment' was to a NATO base in Naples Italy where I'd be paid about 80 dollars per day per diem on top of my normal paycheck."

"As soon as Sarah found out where I was headed, she called the Chief and told him she wasn't pregnant anymore and would like to take the deployment."

"The Chief denied her request and I spent an amazing eight months in Italy, being paid more money than I knew how to spend and having the time of my life."

- NewPac

Watching Them Move On

"We met thru work and dated for one and a half years. She cheated with another coworker who is married. We broke up. She started to date a different coworker. Not the married one. She paraded that relationship in my face."

"Everything was great until it wasn't. It really f**ked over my self-esteem and self-worth for years. It sucked that I had front row seat to her moving on."

- bluevacuum

"I feel that last part. When my ex moved out, she did it slowly over the course of like a month. She came over every day and packed up slowly until she finally got everything."

"The worst day was when she finally came and took her cat. I still remember sitting in front of the door and crying for hours after she left that day."

"There's a band called Pedro the Lion that has this lyric, 'My old man always swore that hell would have no flame. Just a front-row seat to watch your true love pack her things and drive away.'"

- FTG_Vader

"When I kicked my ex out this summer for having cheated on me, I gave her an arguably unfair timeline to leave before all of her possessions just went outside, and packed and moved everything for her to the garage overnight, since I couldn't sleep anyways."

"This is why. I simply couldn't handle those constant reminders and wanted it done and gone as fast as possible."

- DeceiverX

A Messy Breakup

"I had resigned and was leaving the company anyway but it was one of those classic hookups at a company party. We had fun for a while but then she decided to stop seeing me."

"I'm glad I had left the company by then; otherwise, things would have been messy."

- love_boobs_in_dm

A Huge Theft Ring

"I got fired and she got fired and all 20 guys she f**ked while we were dating were fired."

"I got fired under false allegations because she was my girlfriend and she was stealing from the store."

"She got fired for stealing from the store."

"The other 20 were fired because it was brought up that she was stealing and sleeping with managers and other coworkers while in a relationship with me. They thought that me and her were the center of a theft ring."

"Like, no... I don't steal so."

- butahoomach

A Promotion for Everyone

"So my wife of over 10 years, who had cheated in the past and I forgave her, got a huge promotion at work which caused us to relocate."

"I guess she got tired of me because she kicked me out and we were getting a divorce."

"Four months later, I found out that a co-worker had a thing for me, so I took my shot. The sex was amazing. It could be that it’s been a long time for me since sex with the wife was basically non-existent for the last few years of marriage."

"Me and the co-worker have now been dating for over a year and I haven’t been happier. So for me, it worked out for the best. And the sex is still great!"

- Unrealevil360

Too Many Options

"I worked at a casino as the only male cocktail waiter/bartender (roughly eight cocktail waitresses and four female bartenders). The floor was mostly women between the bar, servers, restaurant, and dealers."

"I slept with one of the cocktail waitresses for a couple of months even though I knew I had a bigger crush on her than she did on me. I also knew I didn't really want a relationship with her for a couple of reasons."

"Evidently, she told some people and gave me good reviews. After she quit and moved away, I had more interest than I really knew what to do with and kinda just went for it with anyone who showed interest that I was attracted to as I knew I had no more than a year left there no matter what happened. I ended up with four more of them over the course of a couple of months."

"One time on a shift, I looked around and all four were on the floor somewhere. All knew each other but I'm not sure any knew about the whole situation, and none were any false impressions of a relationship as far as I know so nothing bad came of it."

- CallMeLargeFather

A Family Man

"Not me, but she was working in payroll and he was a security guard. One day, a coworker saw the security guard walking her to her car. Immediately, she was transferred to another branch. However, they continued to see each other."

"Soon after, they got married after finding out she got pregnant. In the next five years, they had three daughters, with me being the youngest. My dad ended up passing away from brain cancer when I was just a toddler."

- Swimming-Site-7682

The Downfall of a Friendship

"I had one good experience one bad. The first one we ended up dating for a year and a half. We had a ton of fun sneaking around at work, and even though in the end he totally broke my heart, it wasn't a bad experience."

"The second one was very bad. Do not recommend."

"I thought he would be safer because we were friends, so I figured communication and rules would be no problem. Instead, we didn't communicate at all because we were both so worried about hurting each other's feelings."

"It ended badly with major assumptions on both ends and now it's very awkward and uncomfortable."

"It makes me sad because honestly, I just miss my friend. While the experience can be fun, I don't recommend it."

- laylalove89

A Suspicious Relocation

"Pretty fine. We worked at different locations in the company the first time we slept together, but we knew each other as she had trained at my location."

"One night we ran into each other at the bar and one thing led to another. A couple of months later, I ended up getting transferred to the location she was at and we just acted like it never happened."

"After a month or two of working together, we ran into each other again at the same bar, and history repeated itself."

"There was a slightly awkward moment a couple of days later when I had to find a way to give her back the necklace she'd left at my place without anybody noticing, but other than that, our working relationship didn't change at all."

- Nervous_Chipmunk7002

Messy Feelings Everywhere

"First time: super fun but I got more attached than she did."

"Second time: kinda fun but she got more attached than I did."

"Moral of the story: don’t f**k coworkers unless you’re SUPER SURE."

- Arch021

A Heartbreaker

"We dated for over a year and then one day she randomly decided to break my heart. Thankfully, we had stopped working together by that point. It still makes me tear up thinking about her, though."

- Electronic-Mud1634

Best Decision Ever

"We had an instant connection the moment she joined the foundation I had been working at for a year. We worked at the front desk together and we got to know each other very quickly."

"Neither of us enjoyed small talk and we would get angry emails from our unbelievably incompetent manager about the amount of laughter coming from the front desk. We got all of our work done, and then some, our manager just felt like she was getting left out. Which our manager was, but it was because she sucked."

"I worked from home four days a week before my new coworker started and a few weeks later she asked me why I was coming in every day. I told her something about training her how to answer the phones, which she instantly knew was bullsh*t (we got four calls a day, max)."

"The first time we hung out outside of work we told each other it would be a terrible idea to date. That lasted for about 10 days. The next time we hung out we slept together."

"That was a year and a half ago."

"We left the foundation after she told our manager that her 'management style' was untenable in an email. The two of us then called a meeting with her and we laid out a very well-planned strategy for departmental growth and change."

"Our manager nodded her head the whole meeting and told us how proud of us she was for taking ownership of our careers and how excited she was to implement our new plan."

"Three weeks later, they fired my coworker. They pushed me out, telling me that they no longer had a place for me (at my review the previous year, the CEO told me herself that she believed I had CEO potential)."

"We both have new jobs, she is a high school English teacher at one of the best high schools in the country and I became a private investigator."

"Her dad and I go to college football games together and our moms get lunch and do spa dates."

"We have been showing each other how to heal and grow as individuals and as partners."

"Right now, she's sleeping in my bedroom while I type this in the living room. I don't know what the future holds for us but I do know that she's the love of my life."

"Sleeping with my coworker is the best thing I've ever done."

- frankenfine305

"Marry this girl already."

- Long-Regular-1023

Redefining the Coworker

"Pretty good. We have a kid together. Granted we'd been married for seven years before we became coworkers."

"She always wanted to teach at the same school as me. The school grew enough that it needed a dedicated English teacher. She has a master's in it so it worked out."

- i_have_seen_ur_death

A Slow Transition

"We worked together for a couple of years and became close friends before we crossed the romance line one night after a lot of drinks. Honestly, it was and still is amazing. Happily married now over 15 years with two kids."

- theshannons

A Bartender's Love Story

"She's sleeping next to me, cuddling our cat."

"Turns out our chemistry working behind the bar together was also amazing outside of work."

- Eb_Ab_Db_Gb_Bb_Eb

We've all heard that love and work don't mix, and that we absolutely shouldn't get close to our coworkers, but from these Redditors, it seems that while things could get messy, sometimes it's worth the risk.