Here are King’s students’ worst dating horror stories

The streets are even more treacherous than we thought

2 months ago

Dating whilst in university is truly a one of a kind experience, you can go out whenever you’d like with whoever you’d like and no one has to know about. Good dates are fun and all, but bad ones always make the best anecdotes. We asked King’s students for their most traumatic date experiences. You might not get that tube fare back but delighting in other people’s misery is priceless.

Finance Fiend

Starting off strong with the unsurprising but necessary mention of the usual suspect of ghastly dates, the infamous finance bro:

“So on our date I turned up all nice and we were talking just randomly and it was going really well, then he randomly blurted out how glad he was I came because the other girl cancelled and he didn’t want to lose his money he put on the reservation. Then also proceeded to say that he’s never been out with a Desi girl before so it’s pretty exciting, I was actually gagging.”

He may not be doing Finance students any favours, but at least he fits perfectly into the excel spreadsheet of stereotypes, right on brand!

The untalented Mr Slippery

If this one doesn’t make you wince, we really don’t know what will:

“He kept dropping a playing card, and scrambling on the floor to catch it WHILE holding my hand.”

Ouch, seems like he took ‘attached at the hip’ literally? Talk about attachment issues.

Beastiality Bro

The next offence sounds nothing short of an urban legend passed down among generations of Freshers.

The victim this time is a first year English student who told The Tab: “It was within the first twenty minutes of the date while its still fairly awkward and you’re trying to find common ground. So I made the grave mistake of suggesting we played ‘would you rather’ to hopefully get some laughs in.

“The first words that came out of this dude’s mouth were- ‘Would you rather have intercourse with an elephant or stay celibate for the rest of your life?’ with a straight face followed by a casual swing from his pint. I tried to laugh it off because surely there was no way he ways being serious. I asked him the same question and he literally just shrugged and said-

‘I’d take the elephant, couldn’t survive otherwise’, I spent the rest of the date staring into space like a character from the office.”

Borat Bae

Humour IS subjective, but nothing is more awkward than the infinite silence after the date doesn’t land, but this one honestly and truly takes the cake:

“I went on a date with a girl from Kazakhstan and I started speaking like Borat, apparently that’s offensive.”

This is most definitely one of those dates in which you walk home in silence, sitting in the tube without Deftones to cushion the blow. Maybe keep the controversial accents to a minimum and keep the jokes within ‘Knock, knock’ territory next time?

Rancid Richard

The name, unfortunately, speaks for itself… get your Febreeze cans and scented candles ready, this one’s a doozy:

“Well first of all I was freshly 18 just wanting some dating experience, and he was 24 just finishing his history Master’s looking for love in a bassinet apparently. I smelt the stench of BO before I even saw him walking up. It all went downhill when he asked me to pay for his £18 cocktail because he was ‘flat broke’ on the date that HE had asked me on, insisting that we’d do rounds.

“Came to find out his definition of ’rounds’ was getting me a 90p can of seltzer at Wetherspoons. I didn’t even drink it because he had chugged like four in half an hour and he kept burping in my face, I could smell the BBQ Chicken 11-inch pizza he’d just devoured. The next four hours consisted of me trying to hint that I needed to go, and him trying to mansplain how Brexit is the best thing that has ever happened to England.

“I’m an immigrant by the way.”

Alleged Alejandro

If there’s one thing you don’t want to lie to a King’s student about, it’s being a student at one of our biggest rivals:

“A guy told me he did medicine at LSE to impress me… there is no medicine at LSE”

Talk about awkward…

Read the room, Ron

‘Fetish Fred’ is what you get when you give the Redditor who hasn’t felt the embrace of a woman other than his mother in eons a chance.

This student says:”He insisted that I couldn’t have mummy issues because my mum isn’t Asian, followed by him asking if I had ‘daddy issues’ because he was older than me.”

You’ll be most shocked to find that ‘Fred’ was allegedly only three years older than her, and was doing his masters at Kings. So much for ‘older and wiser’.

Backup Brandon

Forget about being for the streets, this fiend is apparently for the flats:

“He flirted with my flatmate in front of me, and when I called it off (he) asked for her number.”

I guess what they say is true, don’t let your potential girlfriend stop you from finding your wife.

Hiperfixation Hayley

Now this one may hit close to home, especially for the ‘lover girls’:

“Two weeks and three dates in, she told me that I was her current hyper fixation.”

Whilst this does give borderline Joe Goldberg vibes, maybe she just wanted you to match her freak?

Mr Worldwide

This may be a sign to start considering hitting the books again, your plan to ‘accidentally’ bump into the heir of a millionaire and spill your overpriced matcha on their Balenciaga trainers may result in blue ticks instead of a diamond ring:

“There was an international student in one of my classes. He had that air about him that made him appear as though he’d just flown to Strand campus, landing with a latte in hand. We sat near each other in seminars and each week I was stunned by his variation of turtleneck jumpers. I soon found out he was French.

“To my surprise in that record time, we had swapped numbers. I messaged him the following day and asked if he was around Friday to grab a drink. His response was iconic: ‘Hi darling, sorry I’m not around, I’m on the train back to Paris tonight after debating society. Will be here until further notice.’ I asked if it was an emergency, or a clothing crisis perhaps, but got no reply.”

Long story short, although you might aspire to a life of travelling and pain au chocolats, you get stuck with an endless string of blue ticks on your WhatsApp.

Boring Betty

Now, whilst being ‘boring’ is subjective, having to convince your date to actually engage with the activity you both chose sounds like nothing short of torture. This student told The Tab :

“We were walking around London to solve a mystery, but she was completely incapable of solving any of the clues. I ended up having to do all the work and gave up halfway through since there was no point in doing it without her.

“I figured that maybe she was just super nervous so we tried to go to a Spoons to loosen up with some drinks. Turns out she was ‘too scared to go into the pub’ so we settled at a pizza place, ordered us a pepperoni pizza just for her to let me know (after it had already arrived) that she was a vegetarian.”