Dear Liz,
I recently went on a date with a guy I thought was pretty cute on Tinder. His profile was full of green flags, and we had good banter over text. When I got to the date (time and location picked by him), something immediately felt off. He was surprised by facts about me that I’d already shared, and he was continuously checking his phone. Right as we left the cafe, we ran into a friend of his. She seemed weirdly excited to meet me, and after we exchanged a bit of small talk, she said they had something to confess. They told me she had set up his Tinder profile and she had been the one messaging me. So, for my date, he’d gone into this completely blind. I felt immediately confused, annoyed, and a bit used. He assured me he had a good time and would like to see me again, but I don’t know… I have a weird feeling about the whole thing. Should I see him again, despite our weird introduction? Can I even trust him, after our first date was all a lie?
Signed,
Fooled and Afraid
Dear Fooled and Afraid,
Wow. This story took me on a journey, and I was just reading it—I can’t imagine how you must have felt living through it!
Let’s call it what it is: you were catfished. Maybe not in the most dramatic way, but someone was pretending to be your date, and that’s a big red flag. Trust me, I get it, he might’ve thought this setup was a quirky, harmless way to get help with online dating, but that doesn’t make it any less deceptive.
Here’s the thing. This “friend” of his was running the show and didn’t even bother to clue him in on details you’d already shared. And you two “running” into her… doesn’t sound like a coincidence to me. She didn’t even wear a mustache or hide behind a menu—talk about a bad wingwoman! Maybe she wanted it to fail, or maybe they were both just too immature to see the problem in all this. Either way, it’s not a good sign that neither of them thought about how you’d feel, and that’s not a great start.
Now, let’s focus on you. You were left feeling confused, annoyed, and used. Those are all valid emotions. Even if he’s now genuinely interested and wants to make things right, you have to ask yourself: can you actually trust someone who started things off by lying, even by omission? You deserve someone who respects your time and is honest from the get-go. And although you may see it as innocent— that he just wasn’t confident enough to handle the messaging himself—to me, that’s a guy who needs to do a little more growing and maturing before hitting the dating scene.
If you feel like giving him another chance, have an honest chat about how all of this rubbed you the wrong way. But if you’re already getting those gut feelings that something’s off, trust yourself. To quote Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Your instincts are usually spot on, and it’s totally okay to walk away if this doesn’t sit right. We should all be grateful it was only one date.
At the end of the day, you deserve a date who’s actually been paying attention and is ready to meet you as himself. No middleman needed.
With love,
Liz
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