When I was a teenager, I dated a guy from work for a very short time who was, let's say, not great. He was older than me - I was 17 and he was 24 - and my parents didn't have a problem with that, but they should have. Even while we were dating, I kind of got a weird vibe from him, but my frontal lobe wasn't fully developed, and I was flattered that a 24(!) year old wanted to date me, so I ignored it because again, I was 17. That alone caused me to ignore a multitude of sins.
Looking back, I'm a little horrified that I wasn't smarter about the situation. He treated me like a little kid, until he...didn't, and always acted like since he was older, he was smarter. He was condescending a lot of the time, and even though it took a while for me to "get it" the friends of his that I met didn't seem comfortable with me around. Only in hindsight did I realize it was because I was a teenager and they thought it was gross we were dating. At the time I never questioned why this 24 year old was a bag boy at a Winn-Dixie, or why he wanted to date a girl so much younger than himself. I was, let's say, a bit sheltered.
In the great scheme of things, it wasn't a long lived or an important relationship. In fact, while I was writing this it took me a minute to remember the guy's name, which is weird because I didn't date a whole lot. Maybe my brain blocked it out for sanity reasons. After he and I parted ways, I found out that he dated another girl from my school who was only 15. FIFTEEN. Gross. If I took anything away from it at all, it was the knowledge that there are predatory, gross men who like dating underage girls that they treat like children (until they don't) and I should stay away from people like that. Should I have known that before? Yes, but again, I was sheltered.
So why am I bringing this up now? Hehe...
I have a Threads account, and I've enjoyed the site for the most part. There are a lot of raging assholes on it, but let's face it, it's social media. It's more asshole than not these days. It's also probably full of bots, but occasionally, bots or not, someone will ask a question like "What is the scariest thing that's ever happened to you?" or "What is your favorite non-traditional snack?" and I'll engage, because I'm mostly anonymous there and answering fun questions is fun, and there is sometimes silly back and forth about your answers.
Ok, so yesterday, the question that caught my attention was (I'm paraphrasing) "What is the smallest thing a man has done that gave you the biggest ick." or something like that. It unlocked a whole flood of memories about that guy. Even though I couldn't remember his name, I have never forgotten the ickiest thing I ever encountered in my dating life, and it happened to be something this guy did. Actually, looking back, there were a LOT of icky things, but this one was the epitome of ick.
We went out to a movie. I was wearing a jacket and when I sat down, I took it off, and I heard him say (not enough under his breath) "Oh, there they are" while he was staring at my chest.
Bro... Look, I know I have fantastic boobs, but...ew? That really stuck with me even all these years later.
So I posted that, and at last count, 9,821 people think it was just as gross as I do. I wish I could find that gross little weasel of a man and tell him almost ten thousand people think he's disgusting, but that would be confusing and weird since we haven't spoken in over 30 years. Plus, I kind of hope he thinks I'm dead so he doesn't think of me, or my boobs, by accident ever again.
You know, this started out as a different kind of post, but I'm glad I took the funny route on it, because we all have our dating horror stories and I always hope that they are the kinds we can laugh at later.
If you have dating horror stories, I hope they aren't about me!
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