I turned down a date with a unicorn.

When he looks good on paper but your intuition tells you otherwise.

“This guy is a stalkerrrr,” I whined in disgust as my phone buzzed again. “It’s 2018! You don’t just cold-call people anymore!”

It must have been the fourth call in the last 36 hours, all of which had gone unanswered. We’d spent Sunday Funday chatting and sharing drunken kisses at the Jersey Shore before exchanging numbers for a tentative date later that week. He was the first guy in years who wanted to take me on a real date… at like 8 PM … for actual dinner.

The other guys in my life couldn’t be bothered to communicate in full sentences. Drunken “u up?” or “wyd?” texts would hit my inbox late into the night. A man was finally putting in real effort to get to know me. I should have been happy about this. Why wasn’t I happy?

After a few years of soul-sucking situationships and meaningless hookups, I thought I was ready for a real relationship again. And after all, this wasn’t a marriage proposal. The poor guy was just calling me, like he said he would. What a weirdo.

An employed man in his thirties who was kind and handsome was calling me to make dinner plans. At the peak of hookup culture, it was like hitting the lottery. But I just wasn’t… feeling it. Something was off.

“This is why you can’t find a nice guy!” my mother snapped, growing tired of my single party girl antics. Maybe there was such a thing as being too honest with your parents.

But with each call, my heart raced, and my stomach did cartwheels, and not in an omg I like this guy way. More like I’m going to have to change my number and fake my own death.

As women, we’re sold this idea that all men are trash who just want one thing. So if you’re fortunate enough to meet a guy who shows interest in you beyond what was between your legs, you were supposed to pounce on him before someone else snatched him up.

But what happens if you’re lucky enough to meet one of these unicorn men and your intuition tells you something is wrong? Get this: you’re expected to go on the date anyway. I’d lost count of how many times I’d heard things like, “I didn’t like my husband right away, he grew on me,” and “Give the guy a chance. Worst-case scenario, you get a free meal out of it.”

Are we really that desperate for free meals? Maybe, in this economy. But I’d rather starve than have dinner with a man I didn’t like.

Up until this point, I hadn’t been on many first dates. All of my exes I’d met through school or mutual friends, and we’d done the Netflix-and-chill thing until eventually finding ourselves in a relationship. I’d never experienced a meet-cute at a bar or library, and to this day, I’d never been on a date with someone I’d met on a dating app.

The thought of sharing a meal with a stranger was scarier to me than sleeping with them. Dinner felt too intimate.

My late teens into early twenties were spent dating two awful guys in quick succession. The first one was a controlling and abusive psychopath who practically locked me up in his parents’ basement with him until I worked up the courage to leave. Then, a year later, I began dating a love-bombing, gaslighting manipulator who I found cheating on me by hacking his Snapchat account.

By my mid-twenties, I’d learned that being in a serious relationship meant toxic arguments, lots of tears, and abandoning myself. I decided on no more relationships for a long time. This meant no dates, no dinner, no feelings. I thought that being the cool, down-for-anything girl was easier. Little did I know that the cool girls still get their hearts broken and cry more than the girls in bad relationships.

But I was determined to change things, to take more risks with my heart, and to get out of my comfort zone. No more Netflix-and-chill. I was approaching thirty and knew I deserved more than late-night texts and lazy couch hangouts. But I was ready to find the guy, not just a guy. Going on “just because” Plan B dates with men whose calls I avoided didn’t feel like the way to go about it.

Rapid texts followed the missed phone calls. This guy wasn’t letting up, and I felt sicker with each notification. Was I self-sabotaging? Was I so used to the casual, no-strings-attached thing that someone calling me for more than a booty call was enough to make me spiral?

“Or!!!” my gut screamed at me from within, “maybe it is weird and creepy for a guy to call you repeatedly and you should stop gaslighting yourself into thinking otherwise.”

It’s attractive when a guy puts his pride aside to actively pursue you, but this was on another level. I wasn’t looking to play games, but he was incapable of playing it cool. Why was this guy acting so desperate to reach me?

I was not still at work, lol. Also, who spells it “Rickey” and not “Ricky?” Feels wrong to me.

I had to get to the bottom of it. I didn’t care that he was cute, and nice, and respectful. It didn’t matter that he was a unicorn, because something just didn’t feel right.

It took less than a 30-second Google search for me to find out he’d lied about his age. He was 37, not 32, like he’d told me. If he could lie about something so stupid, what else was he capable of? I finally texted him back, this time letting him down easy. I didn’t bother telling him what I’d found out.

Then, whoooosh, the anxiety left my body and I melted into my bed like butter. Not because I’d successfully avoided the dreaded intimate dinner date. Not because I could smugly tell my mom I was right. I was relieved because, against all the dating rules and advice out there, which never resonated with me anyway, I decided to listen to my instincts instead.

I used to think that finding love meant I had to date around and kiss lots of frogs. But maybe the key to finding the love you’re looking for is trusting yourself enough to turn down a unicorn, no matter how good he looks on paper.

I added a lil voicenote as a follow-up with some extra backstory 👇🏻

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