I’m quite literally the queen and lord of terrible story concepts. Terrible in the sense that they usually involve me throwing myself under the bus for the sake of the amusement of you, our readers.
Today, it’s asking all the guys who have ghosted or fizzled relationships (or hook ups, or dates) on me.
Like anyone who has felt a spark with someone only to be met with radio silence after said spark-moment, I have spent hours and days and weeks wondering what on Earth went wrong.
The general, hard-and-fast rule is “do not ask, because you do not need to know”. Why take a blow to your self-esteem like that? What someone thinks of you means shit.
But then the other, tiny part of your brain just wants information at any cost, and loves the idea of finding out the secrets behind a ghost or a fizzle-out. LOVES IT. Needs it like drugs.
Because I never learn, I’ve taken that terrible decision and run with it with extreme and misguided confidence.
I did save my soul slightly by not contacting my most recent ex (do not need to know k thanks) or the dude who ghosted me a few weeks ago (die in a hole), but I absolutely stalked down people I remembered by first name and occupation only, so there’s still juicy stuff to be had here, mates.
To preface – all of these guys are wrong. I am amazing and they should be so lucky. This is me:
GREG
I dated Greg for 2 months in 2015. He was this cute and extreeemely tall American guy I met on Tinder, and he was hilarious in the weird way that I love – as in, he made Christmas cards every year where he superimposed his own head onto a stock photo family and sent that to everyone. Just excellent.
Anyway, our dates mainly consisted of watching Walking Dead episodes at his house, and I felt like at first he was suuuper into me and then slowly, the dates became more and more soulless. Eventually, I stopped contacting him to initiate, and he never contacted again.
A year later we reconnected as mates and he now lives in San Fran and is super successful so fuck my life, right?
So, to start, I always liked you. You’re attractive, fun and generally effervescent. But I fizzled it cos after we hooked up I thought maybe I took advantage of the situation, and thus things were aiming to get serious. And given I’d only moved to Australia 4 months earlier, getting into something serious seemed scary.
Honestly? In this case – fair point, well made. If you’re new to a country and you’re having a good time, I can totally understand not necessarily wanting to get serious. Also, he didn’t say my boobs were weird so bonus points for not being an asshole.
JOHN
Oh, my god. I was literally obsessed with John. I worked with him in my retail job way back in 2013, and I think it was one of those workplace crushes where you just blow the entire thing out into the universe, and really you were just two people who probably never would have worked in real life, anyway.
I told him I liked him. I bought him a cupcake (!!!) for his birthday or something.
We once drunkenly hooked up and then he told me he didn’t want anything with me.
I didn’t want anything serious back then.. the world revolved around me and couldn’t revolve around anyone else back then. I liked hanging out with you, it was nice when you told me you liked me before you went on holidays, got me thinking. But I think I was scared to hurt your feelings.. if I remember correctly, you were kinda new to the boyfriend-world, and I was scared to hurt your feelings by not being willing to pursue anything serious.
I mean, he is not wrong. I was definitely hell-bent on making this guy my boyfriend and he was sending all the signals that he just wanted something casual. Let’s chalk that one up to being young and inexperienced in reading dudes.
DAN
I used to work with Dan and we went on a handful of dates early last year. He’s super cute in a sort of All Aussie Adventures kind of way, like someone I imagine plays cricket and wears zinc on his nose at the beach. I can’t remember if he actually plays cricket. I do remember once he had a burnt nose so he should probably take my zinc advice.
Anyway, he made me laugh a LOT. He was insanely funny. With excellent Simpsons knowledge too, always important.
He was pretty honest with me at the time – no ghosting, just “I’m not ready for a relationship”, but that is the stock excuse to get out of something so I still wanted to see if there was more to it.
I didn’t feel an instant connection/butterflies in my stomach and think we essentially have very little in common (I Am Pilgrim?).
FYI he’s talking about me giving him shit for thinking I Am Pilgrim was a good book. I was reading it at the time of our first date (it’s terrible) for my book club. This one was so weird to me because I felt like we had such a connection – the bants (I hate that word but here we are) were spicy and he gave me shit as good as I gave it.
But that is what is interesting about dating, no? You can feel a connection but that doesn’t mean the other person is on the same level as you are. Life’s a bitch.
HARRY
I’m sure you’ve worked out by now that these names are fake, bc even though I have zero idea how anyone reading this could connect these guys to me on first names alone, everyone was scared and made me change their names.
Harry and I dated for 2 months in 2014. I had just come out of a very tumultuous and dramatic relationship and was probably on the rebound. But he was lovely, cute and we had excellent chemistry.
He is my favourite ever dumping story bc his reasoning for not pursuing things with me was that he had to focus on friends, work and running. Running.
Luckily he has a sense of humour and when I contacted him (cold contacted him, mind you – we weren’t Facebook friends, thank god he didn’t issue an AVO on me) he was equally as amused about that as I am.
My memories of dating you are all positive. Especially one at Dendy Cinema, the other in the park at Erskineville. You were always cracking stellar jokes and I remember feeling exceptionally comfortable around you. You were open and accepting and not judgemental which is an excellent trait. But here’s why it fizzled: I couldn’t see myself being with you long-term. This was gut instinct more than a logical decision. Racking my brain, here are some more tangible reasons that might be what you were looking for – the conversation was 75/25, dominated by you – you were easily rocked, little issues turned big – I believe we are similarly aged, but I always felt older and closer to the “settle down” phase than you were Within weeks of ending it with you, I met my now wife (our wedding was two months ago).
OWWWWCH HARRY JUST STAB ME IN THE GUTS AND GET IT OVER WITH, WOULD YOU?
This was probably the most painful response, but props to him for being blunt since I asked for bluntness. Really, the issue here is compatibility, and if I’m offended I shouldn’t be – sure, Harry might not have been into my chattiness and my dramatic flair, but that doesn’t mean those are problems with my personality. Just means we weren’t suited. So I need to get over it.
Also I had a stalk and he and his wife are v v cute so congrats and good for you Harry, being all good at life and shit. But also in a very real way fuck you for being happy. BE SAD. ALL EXES SHOULD HAVE A TERRIBLE LIFE AFTER ME.
FRED
I went on one single date with Fred in 2015, but it was such a good date. To be fair, I had been in a dating wasteland for like a year so maybe – MAYBE – it wasn’t as amazing as I thought it was? But we definitely had good chats and it wasn’t full of awkward dead silences or anything.
We went to a cool bar that had just started doing cheese boards, and you could win one, we won it, they forced us to take a photo with the cheese board (mortifying).
Anyway I was keen for him to set up date two, heard nothing, sent out a “feeler” text where you pretend you saw something that reminded you of them like “Haha, just saw a rock that looked like your face” (no) and heard nothing back. The end.
I had just came out of a long relationship and then stared dating someone else a week or so after our cheese date.
I remember the long relationship part – he mentioned it mid-date so I kind of had a back-of-my-mind feeling it was gonna be a one date deal off the back of him bringing it up.
Like, you don’t really drop “I just broke up with my girlfriend” when you’re having a spectacular date, do you?
Again we have the “you might have been feeling it but I wasn’t” business that just shookeths me. I always thought if I felt the spark, then the spark existed mutually. I can see how completely self-absorbed that concept is, but I think we all have that in our heads to a degree.
MATTHEW
I dated Matthew for a few months last year. It was all pretty chill, but we had some excellent times, like night fishing and me finally watching Reservoir Dogs (great now I have the ear scene in my head, good).
To be blunt, we hooked up and then I never heard from him after that. I sent out a “feeler” text, zero back.
My fascination with Mel initially when we met was a very large one. After the first couple of connecting days/dates, it was profoundly clear to me that I needed to deal my own emotional issues in order to be open enough to see her regularly … that took a long time. In hindsight she never gave me a reason to run or hide. We shared similar interest in film, music and general culture – and she was always so very polite. I suppose when men are in pain they will isolate on their own account – not of another’s.
All of the above doesn’t surprise me – Matthew was a muso and had in passing told me working on his album was stressing me out, and I had a feeling he had some shit going on in his personal life and that meant he wasn’t looking to get serious, so while I was disappointed when he blanked me, I wasn’t shocked. Timing defffinitely felt off.
SAM
Ah, Sam. I had a very drunk one night stand with this guy last year, and whether this was the 5 million beers talking or not, we just had an excellent time. Much chats, much chemistry etc. So I kind of really though he’d text me? And he didn’t? COOL.
I think it was honestly just a fun thing to do at the time, and I wasn’t keen to do the whole dating- after-hooking-up-at-a-party thing. Some drunken hook ups are best left as just that.
Look, fair enough. I mean can you even be ghosted or fizzled on after a one night stand? I would say no. You can obviously want the person to be like “hey, you’re cool, let’s go have a beer sometime” after it all, but 9/10 that will not be the case.
I still hope Sam is alone forever and one day remembers the moment he decided not to text me while he’s crying into a bowl of cold porridge.
So there you go. Did we learn anything from this? Probably not. Maybe just that sometimes you feel a spark and the other person doesn’t?
Was it worth me going through the gauntlet of soul crushing honesty? Absolutely fucking not.
