Talking About Your Ex On A Date: How Much Is Too Much?
Lauren was running late for the date. She was feeling cynical and guarded. "I had a sneaking suspicion he might be a bad choice — there were one too many late-night calls beforehand and he was just ever so slightly too cocky," the 26-year-old tells me. Nonetheless, she was pretty happy to be meeting someone related to her socially (a friend of a friend) rather than another anonymous face from Hinge. She hadn’t been single long but already had dating app fatigue.
Despite Lauren's reservations, the date got off to a good start. But an hour or two in, things started to nosedive when, without invitation, Max* started to describe cheating on his ex in painful detail, in a tone that Lauren says "almost sounded like pride".
"It was a big red flag," she says. "I felt embarrassed I was there and extremely disrespected. Clearly, this guy did not value me or see me as any viable serious dating option or he wouldn't have done that."
As far as Lauren was concerned, that was it: the date was over. They never saw each other again. One of the most galling things for her was Max's lack of regret. "The juxtaposition couldn't have been more obvious," she explains. "He didn't seem to have a shred of remorse or awareness that perhaps this was shooting himself in the foot."
“You don't want to miss something beautiful in the here and now because you're stuck in the past.”
– Michaela Thomas