Name: Lizzy Moony
Pronouns: She/her
Age: 22
Occupation: Social Media Editor
Dating history: Nice guys who don’t have time for a relationship
Looking for: Someone who will buy me flowers and tell me I’m pretty

I live in Barcelona, which is where I matched with this guy on Hinge. He was from Canada, and was on holiday in the city for a few days. We decided to meet on a Thursday after my classes. He didn’t have WiFi outside of his hotel so we arranged to meet in front of a McDonald’s near the bar we had planned on going to.

I waited across the road until he messaged me saying he had arrived. When I looked up and finally saw him, he was not the height that he had entered on his dating profile—his Hinge info said that he was 6’3, this guy was more like 5’7. We were off to a bad start.

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He was quite rude and didn’t ask me a single question about myself. He also kept on imitating my British accent to which I asked him, “Do I have a really strong British accent?” He replied: “No, you just look and sound like every white girl I’ve ever met.” Keep in mind that he was also white.

We sat down at the bar and to get the convo flowing, I asked him if he was enjoying his time in Barcelona. He answered with something along the lines of, “The Spanish people here are not like the Spanish people in Montreal… They are all white.” Being the polite individual that I am, I asked him what the people in Montreal look like, to which he replied, “they are all Colombian and Mexican.”

Trying to keep an open mind, I decided to educate him instead of listening to the alarms going off inside my brain. I explained that he’s actually talking about Latino people—just because somebody speaks Spanish doesn’t mean they are Spanish. He then looked directly at me and, all of a sudden, said: “My parents would kill me if I ever brought a girl home who was Latina.”

Just for reference, I am half-Latina. I’m half Venezuelan and so I felt so awkward and uncomfortable when he said that. I asked him why his parents felt that way and he replied: “They think that Latino people are lazy and they steal our jobs,” which I found confusing because how can you do both…?

He then proceeded to ask me what my parents would do if I brought home somebody who was Latino, and so I dryly replied, “they wouldn’t care because I’m half Venezuelan.” It was immediately obvious that he was angry I hadn’t told him this information beforehand (as if I need to preface my ethnicity ten seconds into a date).

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I tried to move the conversation on and so we began talking about football and he mentioned the UEFA Euro 2020 final between Italy and England. I’m not massively into football but he began talking about the racism that had followed after England lost the game. He told me how horrible he thought it was, but then proceeded to say “my parents would kill my sister if she brought home a black guy.” I mean, at this point, I was just so confused and genuinely angry about his persistence to come out with these horrendous statements.

Surprise, surprise, he then asked me what my parents would do if I brought home a black guy, and so I simply replied: “My ex-boyfriend is Ugandan and it was never an issue. My parents liked him a lot when we were dating.” He became more and more frustrated and so we fell into a seriously awkward silence.

I had half of my beer left so I tried to pass the time by asking him a few final questions. Because he was Canadian, I asked him what it was like growing up in Montreal, to which he replied: “Everyone is very close, everyone knows everyone, my parents are first cousins.” I hadn’t been fully listening at this point because I’d pretty much decided that I was over the date but I did a complete double-take when I heard his last point.

Finally, I decided that enough was enough. I ran to the loo and asked the waitress if she could bring us the bill and say that the bar was closing so that we wouldn’t be able to buy any more drinks. Luckily, she also said this in Spanish and so my date was completely clueless.

To top it all off, when they handed us the bill, which came to about five euros, he looked at me and said: “Don’t worry I’ve got this, don’t feel like you have to do anything sexually with me.” From the moment I left my house to the moment I got home, 58 minutes passed by. That’s 58 minutes I will never get back.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. There’s definitely no way she’s ever seeing this guy again, right? Well, that’s what I thought at the time too. Our first date happened over two years ago, and very recently, he reached out to me again.

I have to say, I wasn’t expecting it, and I really wasn’t looking forward to speaking to him again. But he surprised me, and now I’m unsure of what to do. Long story short, he apologised for the way he behaved at the time, as well as for the highly problematic things he had said.

He explained that he recently moved to Barcelona and would love to take me out on a “second chance date, if I let him.” I’m currently single and seriously considering it. What should I do?

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