Guy Drives 16 Hours for the First Date, Only to Get His Soul Crushed

I have a confession to make. A long while back, I, too, was guilty of driving a 16-hour round-trip for a first date.

Well, maybe not 16 hours, it was more like 10.

And it wasn’t 10 hours of driving; rather, I took a 5-hour train to and from a nearby city. But if you factor in all the preparation, the Uber, and waiting around the train station, it can easily add up to close to 16 in total.

I didn’t do that once, but twice — to the same godforsaken city no less. Both to meet girls I had matched with on Tinder.

Suffice to say, neither date turned out the way I expected.

The first girl was not only late by an hour to our meetup spot, but an hour into it; without as much as an explanation, she dropped the “something came up and I gotta leave” bomb.

Like what! After all the effort I put in, you are just going to leave? So I thought.

But, being the gentleman that I was, I told her I understood. Still, I knew from then on this was never gonna work.

The second girl was even worse, if you can even believe that.

It wasn’t because she left abruptly; the issue was her demeanor.

When we chatted online, she came off friendly and curious, a complete one-eighty to the standoffish, tense demeanor she displayed in person. Granted, it could have been nerves, but then again, I have been on dates with nervous women before, and none of them acted this way.

Plus, she wouldn’t put her damn phone away, which is a big no-no for me.

But since I had already traveled so far, cutting the date short and heading back home wasn’t an option, even though I already had a flexible return ticket. It would be too exhausting.

Lucky for me, I had already booked a hotel in advance.

So I figured I might as well make the best of a bad situation and at least enjoy the city, even if the company was less than ideal. I can always leave the first thing in the morning after a good night’s rest.

Not once did I blame any of these women, unlike this poor sod, who is, unfortunately for him, the subject matter for our piece today:

You have no one but yourself to blame

Taking a day off work to drive 8 hours back and forth to meet someone who doesn’t even like you all that much is crazy work.

To then make a TikTok that goes viral, venting about them to the world, is crazier still.

At least with me, I had the sense to know that whenever I go for a date, near or far, the responsibility lies entirely on me.

I’m the one deciding to travel hundreds of miles, and once there, I’m the one in control of my reaction to their behavior and the kind of treatment I accept. I cannot force a stranger to be punctual, polite, prepared, or even invested in me.

Traveling far for a date is risky

Since my power lies in my ability to self-manage, I have since then made it policy never to travel that far to meet someone for the first time. The risk-to-reward ratio is terrible. They could do the following:

1. Not show up.
2. Change plans.
3. End up not being what you expected: insert negative personality trait of your choice here.
4. Set you up for a mugging, leaving you stranded far from home.

Therefore, I cannot in good conscience recommend traveling that far just for a date.

Unless you already had plans that are non-date related, such as traveling to that city for business, holiday, or study. Should things go south, you would not have wasted your time, energy, and money.

The only other exception I can think of that would justify the long travel time is if this were someone with whom you had an intense, frictionless, deeply profound “get to know you” phase leading up to the first date.

I can see how that level of intimacy can translate into real life far more easily than, say, waiting to develop it only after meeting the person. By then, the connection is already there. But even with that, meeting halfway is still superior.