'Underdressed' woman praised for trusting her instincts and leaving bad date after just 2 minutes
She saw his plan unravel quickly.
Rachel Anderson and a table at a fancy restaurant.
Rachel Anderson, 35, from Oregon, is being praised on TikTok for spotting a major red flag on a first date with a 37-year-old man and immediately walking out. “You showed me who you were, you don’t have to show me twice,” she said in a viral video with nearly a million views. Anderson was looking forward to the date when the man told her to dress "like it’s a lounge day at home.”
“So, I throw on some sweatpants and NBC sweatshirt, some tennis shoes, my hair in a bun, no jewelry, no nothing,” she said in her viral TikTok video. But when she got to the fancy restaurant, she saw she was incredibly understressed while her date was wearing a “white button down, navy dress pants & dress shoes. I was shocked,” she wrote in the video's comments.
“Why does this man try to walk me into a fine dining restaurant? I immediately know. I turned around and walked out,” she said. Anderson suspected that the man was trying to embarrass her so that she’d feel beneath him. “As soon as you meet me, you want to level the playing field by humbling and or embarrassing me by bringing me out to a place where you know that I am underdressed? Absolutely not.” In the comments, she added that when she arrived, the man pretended it was a joke to turn it back on her: "Can't take a joke?"
While it’s impossible to know precisely what the man was thinking, it’s pretty clear that he intended for her to feel out of place. It’s hard to chalk that up to being a mistake or an attempt at humor. If it was a joke, it made her the subject of ridicule—that's another big red flag.
Why do men try to 'humble' women?
Manipulative men often try to "humble" women by taking them down a notch to make themselves feel more important. This is a form of “negging,” a manipulative dating tactic, in which someone offers mild insults or backhanded compliments to undermine the other's confidence, to gain power over them. “He was testing you to see if he could control you,” Kim wrote in the comments.
After leaving the restaurant, Anderson “immediately blocked him.” There was no reason to excuse his actions or give him the chance to manipulate her further. Anderson had been trying to rebuild herself after leaving her husband, and her actions were a testament to her personal growth.
She didn't give him a chance to manipulate her even further
“Sitting in the car, old me would have tried to figure out why. I would have messaged him. I would have been like, ‘How could you embarrass me like that now?’ Immediately blocked. You showed me who you were. You don't have to show me twice. You will never, ever have the opportunity to try to humble me again,” she said.
Her actions were applauded by people in the comments. “The immediate block instead of questioning/analyzing his behavior is SUCH growth!” Jess wrote. “Ladies, this is leaving at the first red flag,” Queenie added.
Anderson’s story shows that there can be a bright spot in a terrible situation. It’s awful that someone tried to manipulate her, but wonderful that she saw the signs and refused to let it happen. “We are raised to tolerate so much discomfort and disrespect, it’s taken me years, but I’ve finally arrived at the ‘ZERO ALLOWANCES for a man’ stage in my life!” Anderson wrote in the comments. Hopefully, her strength will give the next person who encounters this manipulation the insight and courage to cut and run, too.