When my date’s mum started grinding on him, I knew it was time to leave

I then grabbed my phone to begin relaying the events of the evening to my housemates.

Safe to say, my night had been a disaster.

The further I got from the bar, the more the ick began to ebb away. Still, I made a mental note to myself: ‘Next time, make sure you really get to know someone before agreeing to a date.’

Back in the early 2010s, I was a fresh-faced student trying to navigate the ‘real world’ for the first time.

Naturally, that meant I wound up in a dark basement bar for a drink, one Thursday night. And that’s where my path crossed with Jake’s*.

He was smartly dressed in a suit – so I knew he wasn’t a student – yet had a mop of curls. After some rom-com-esque fleeting eye contact as we sipped our drinks, he said a brief hello as I passed him without getting into a conversation.

We didn’t chat; but before we parted ways, he slipped a scrap of paper with his number on it into my hand (swiping right was something we could only dream of then).

The dearth of social media back then meant I wasn’t able to track him down and find out more about him before sending him a message. But our initial meet-cute had been fun enough to assure me that this was definitely someone I wanted to pursue.

Unfortunately, the chemistry we’d had at the bar was severely lacking over text. It was so long ago that I barely remember our messages – but I do recall single-word responses to my questions and a lack of witty repartee.

However, we still decided to meet the following weekend.

What happened next certainly wasn’t on my dating bingo card.

Naïve and optimistic, I expected that he might arrange something special for our first official date, and that dinner and drinks could be on the cards.

But when Friday evening came, and I hadn’t heard from him, I began to fear that Jake might be a no-show.

Eventually, I swallowed my pride and texted him to ask if he still wanted to meet. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

His reply was what I’d been afraid of: ‘I forgot and I’m in the pub with my friends.’

While I felt an initial pang of disappointment, he quickly followed up asking me if I wanted to join them. It seemed like fun so I agreed.

I had expected to see Jake with a stag-do-like gaggle of lads, so I was more than a little confused to see that he was with two middle-aged women.

Had we not made eye contact I probably would have turned on my heel and made a swift exit. Instead, I felt myself walking towards them.

‘This is my mum and auntie,’ Jake told me and I just about stopped my jaw from making contact with the floor. They were very welcoming and Jake proceeded like this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

Against my better judgement I decided to stay at the pub, in what I considered an attempt to be open-minded.

What followed, however, was the discovery that Jake and I had even less in common than I thought.

We didn’t stay in the pub long – just long enough for me to politely buy drinks for all four of us despite my student-loan budget. Per his aunt’s request, we were soon on the move, heading for a bar and I was pleased for a change of scenery.

It was during this staggered, if short, journey that Jake informed me just how drunk they all were.

I wasn’t hugely thrilled when he attempted several times to hold my hand but stayed out of curiosity to see where this night was going.

When we finally reached the bar in question I was pleased that it looked a little more lively, to distract from the uncomfortable situation.

His well-refreshed mother’s entry was (rightly) questioned by the bouncer. Unfortunately for me, however, he eventually waved us all in.

In the bar, things went from bad to downright creepy.

While I sipped a watered-down vodka and orange, his aunt silently put her hand on my thigh several times in a move that I considered a little over-friendly and that I tried repeatedly to squirm away from.

Then Jake’s mum began grinding so aggressively on him and dropping-it-like-it-was-hot on a nearby pole and the ick firmly set in.

Mercifully, after a few too many stumbles and a spilt rum and Coke, the bouncer did a 180 on his previous decision and asked her to leave the bar and we followed.

It was only 9pm and we were all back outside.

I took this as my chance to make a quick excuse about an early start and hurry towards the taxi queue after a mumbled ‘goodbye’.

That’s when Jake made his move.

As I slid into the back seat of a taxi, Jake leant down for a kiss.

I quickly swerved and pushed him firmly out of the cab before telling the driver to go go, go in dramatic, movie style.

I hoped that Jake had got the message but to my surprise, at 7am the next morning I had a text from him.

At first I assumed it was an apology, but when I flipped my phone open, I genuinely laughed out loud.

‘Morning beautiful, we should do that again!’ he wrote. He thought that the date had gone well!

Ghosting wasn’t really a thing back then, but that’s exactly what I did – and you won’t be surprised to hear that I never saw or heard from him again either.

The next date I went on, I made sure that I knew at least the basics about the other person beforehand – and luckily that time there were no drunk mums or aunties in sight.

*Names have been changed.