My date bragged about his clinginess – before making me an outrageous offer

It’s not like I would’ve been able to meet the people I matched with anyway, so I decided I might as well give it a go – just to make life a little more interesting.

This is how I connected with Scott*, and after just a few messages and half an hour, he asked to have a FaceTime call.

I hadn’t spent long enough chatting to him over messages to really figure out his personality, or whether we’d actually have anything in common, so I was hesitant. 

I was also wary; uncomfortable about showing more of myself to this absolute stranger – but with nothing to lose, I gave in. 

During the call, Scott’s behaviour went from mildly weird to straight up creepy. He looked mostly like his pictures and seemed alright at first glance. 

But then things started to get weird.

From the start, it was clear our political views didn’t align – but I figured I’d be able to let him down gently after the call ended. If only it went that way.

What followed after was probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced on a ‘date’. Technically, this wasn’t even a date – we never met, and had literally only briefly spoken via messages. 

He began to talk about how clingy he was with his ex – revealing he was constantly calling and texting her, and how often he was asked to tone it down. 

The eerie thing is, Scott never saw that as a problem. In fact, he couldn’t even understand why his ex would break up with him over that. 

I received near constant texts from him and if I didn’t respond almost immediately, I would get unsolicited phone calls

It almost seemed like he saw his extreme clinginess as a good thing. 

To be honest it wasn’t a shock – throughout the call, I could clearly see signs of his obsessive behaviour given how intense he was being with me, too.

He immediately started thinking long term, overwhelming me with conversations about the future – planning to meet my parents and asking intrusive questions about my sex life.  

Scott also made the most inappropriate sexual comment about me – telling me in detail what he wanted to do to me in bed. 

The entire almost hour-long call, I spent the time thinking about how I could hang up politely. I brushed off his crudeness and admissions about his ex, unwilling to challenge this man whose behaviour I found worrying. 

Soon after, I managed to end the call – giving my university assignments as an excuse – but as soon as I hung up, I was in a state of shock and sat there just trying to process what had just happened.

I’m firmly against ghosting, so I always try to let people know I’m not interested. 

But university coursework took over and I had to delay messaging him for a couple of hours. 

During this time, I received near constant texts from him and if I didn’t respond almost immediately, I would get unsolicited phone calls – it was incredibly intrusive. 

When I tried to tell him I wasn’t interested, he became even clingier and tried to come up with every possible scenario under the sun to keep me within his grasp, including a friends with benefits situation.

I didn’t want to risk a dangerous situation by being too firm with him, so I gave him a barrage of excuses to try and deter him –  including the fact that I might have to fly home to India after university ends. 

All of this has happened in a single night after just one FaceTime call

It’s at this moment that he made the most bizarre declaration of affection: He’d fly all the way there with me. 

I had never met this guy – I couldn’t believe it. 

All of this has happened in a single night after just one FaceTime call. But by this point, I’d run out of patience. 

I stated very plainly that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. He finally backed off. He still didn’t really get it and tried to keep me from ending it. But he finally apologised and left me alone.

But just 24 hours later, he sent me a text saying, ‘I miss you’. Yes, really. 

I promptly blocked him and deleted all traces of dating apps from my phone after that.

It was a mentally and emotionally draining experience. By the end of it, I was completely exhausted. What started as a simple exercise to distract me from coursework turned into the stuff of nightmares. 

I think it put me off online dating for a very long time. I keep thinking about how all of this happened completely online and how that was a saving grace. If this had happened after a face to face date, things probably would have gone very differently.

It made me realise that for all their faults, dating apps are actually a good way to filter out creepy people without actually ever meeting them. You could potentially avoid some pretty harrowing situations by initially screening someone from behind a phone.

But I’ll never jump on a FaceTime call that quickly again.