It’s been a while since my last recent Dates with Demi series, but it’s mostly because 1) I haven’t really gone on dates worth mentioning 2) I feel mean writing about these since most of them, I did not have a pleasant experience with. Nonetheless, here is my third-ish edition to Dates with Demi. Technically, I didn’t really have an official date with this guy, but I was casually seeing him for a bit. Then everything went to a shit show. Let me tell you why.

Dates with Demi: The Manipulative One

We all know about my love for going to coffee shops. Well, I met this fellow at the coffee shop and it was right after my break up back in April of 2018. Obviously and desperately, I missed the feeling of having a championship. I might have pretty much jumped into the first opportunity I saw regardless of the person. Yikes. While the beginning of our ‘relationship’ was… okay, there quite some pink flags that I brushed off that eventually became major red flags.

From Pink to Major Red Flags

This guy seemed nice, then flip-flop. Flashing red lights were flickering at me and that’s when I knew I fell in too deep. We would go to the gym, get food together, etc, but I ended up being the one that paid for the majority everything. #SugarMamaDemi. Call me old fashion, but I strongly believe that the guy should pay for the first couple of dates whenever going out (or forever – that’s cool with me too). With that being said, I have no problem paying for myself but I wouldn’t want to pay for the guy too.

Meeting the Guy

Anyway, if you want to meet people, coffee shops are the best to go. You have your regulars (like me), your baristas, and then your other people (I made up these titles, haha). This guy was a barista at the coffee shop. He introduced me like any other baristas would since I was a regular – super regular. I go to this coffee shop pretty much 6 times a week at exactly the same time. We eventually followed each other on Instagram. Not sure how it came out to be, but you get the memo.

Like any relationship, we started talking to each other on social media. He would invite me out to go bowling or getting drinks with his friends. I don’t know what happened, but I was not interested in meeting his friends. I thought it was weird and uncomfortable. After a while of me saying that I didn’t want to go, he asked if I wasn’t interested in going because I didn’t want to meet his friends.

Now, a year and a half later, as I’m reflecting back on this, I think I might have sent the wrong signal. I’m not sure what I was looking for. Serious relationship? Friends with benefits? Who knows. What I’m sure of is that it was too soon for me to jump into a relationship without any repercussion. Maybe I should have hung out with his friends first so that he didn’t get the idea that I wanted to be friends with benefits.

What are your thoughts? Would you have hung out with his friends?

We Were Merely Just Friends

After a while of knowing each other, he introduced me to his friends and a couple of my friends have met him as well. Most of my friends said he was nice and ‘free-spirited’. It was weird to me because we never really ‘define the relationship’. From the beginning, he had made it clear that it was too soon for him since he had recently gone through a divorce – which was more than fine with me as I didn’t think I was mentally and emotionally ready to be more than merely friends.

Things started slowing going down south. He would always invite me to come over to his place, which was kind of boring if you ask me. There was no TV or anything fun we can go over at his place. He lived in a 3-bedroom house that was shared with 2 other roommates. There was only a FUTON BED in his room. Slowly, he started pressuring me into doing things. I’m a very competitive person, so when I first told him that, he would say “oh, well no one has ever (insert sexual things)”. Cue my eyes rolling.

Ugh, no thanks.

Note: At this point, he has left the coffee shop – so he was no longer a barista there.

A little bit about me, I’m a very talkative person. I mean, HELLO! Guess who won most talkative in high school? I love telling stories. One time, he interrupted me and asked how come I never want to “do sexual things” with him. Which was a bit contradicting considering he expressed that he wanted to “get to know me better”. Sorry, but how are you going to get to know me if you’re always interrupting my storytelling by reeling back to the topic of how come I don’t perform sexual activity with you? LOL.

Along with constant invites over to his place, he was not very respectful at all whenever I told him I did not want to engage in any sexual activities. There was one incident where he kicked me out of his place. I was sitting in his room, and he aggressively tosses my sunglasses and car keys in front of me and said: “do whatever you want, I don’t care” lol.

When Distancing Yourself Made Him Become More Demanding

I started distancing myself from him and that’s when he got a bit more and more demanding. From asking me to do x, y, and z to questioning my friends and their intentions with me. Whenever I went out with my friends, he would always ask me where am I going, who am I going with, etc. It was to the point of where I felt like all I was doing was essentially reporting to him. One time, I slept over at my friend Mia’s and he would interrogate me with things like, “Where is her husband? This doesn’t make sense. Why would you sleepover at her place when you have your own?” – woah there, big boy. Whenever I would post photos of me and my friends, he would always message me saying, ‘TFTI’ (AKA thanks for the invite). It got to the point where it was annoying.

He made it seem like I was not allowed to have any friends.

I had expressed to him that he was being a little dramatic and unrealistic. He then started saying that I have been lying to him and start accusing me of cheating on him with all of these other people. This confused me. We weren’t in an ‘exclusive relationship’ and on top of that, the people who he had accused me of cheating were friends that I’ve known since I was in middle school. He was being manipulative!

Essentially at this point, I could have blocked him on all form of communication but I guess I felt bad. Although we did not have any mutual friends, we did oftentimes run into each other at the coffee shop even though he had no longer worked there. I completely stopped responding to him and it was nonsense to me how he would constantly invite me to go to the gym or hang out, especially when I have not yet responded to his previous 4 invites. How long does it take for one to stop?

It took him roughly 7 months of me not responding to a single message of his, to finally get the hint.

He messaged me saying “Why did you unfollow me? Dang, what did I do?”

Boy, bye. Moral of the story: if there were pink flags in the beginning of the relationship, don’t just simply ignore it. It will get worse and worse over time.

Read my other Dates with Demi!