Pretty much anyone who’s ever dipped a toe into the dating scene has walked away from at least one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad date. The range of things that can go wrong on a date range from a bad attitude to food malfunctions, a failure in communication, and even outright disaster, but it is often the little things that go wrong in these key romantic scenarios. That’s certainly what happened to a pair of would-be romantics glimpsed by TikToker Amelia (@amelialevs), who laid witness to the series of cascading failures that threw a massive wrench in what looked to be a first date.
Sometimes the worst dates are also the most memorable, and people see a bright future for these luckless lovebirds after their first date became one for the history books. The poor paramours were just trying to enjoy a romantic paddle around a scenic lake when disaster struck, then struck again. They ended up stuck under a gorgeous but unyielding fountain, which proceeded to completely soak the pair, and for good measure trapped them under its unrelenting stream of water.
What’s worse, they then lost their paddle — AKA their only avenue of escape from the fountain working to waterboard them — leaving the heroic gentleman to hurl himself from the boat in an effort to retrieve it.
There’s no doubt the date went utterly sideways, but viewers are convinced it’s far better than if things had gone off without a hitch. At least this experience was truly unforgettable, and if the duo can endure a fountain attack so early in their relationship, they can survive anything. That led people to predict wedding bells in the future, and joke about how “Bridget Jones coded” the entire situation was.
We never plan for things to go awry, but when they do they often make for far better stories. And there’s a major difference between a date that goes bad due to unforeseen circumstances, and one that goes wrong due to a social or romantic faux pas. When it’s the latter, it tends to color our view of dating for the future as well, something psychologists Martin Seligman and Gregory McClell Buchanan have actually spent years studying.
When a date goes wrong, its often the way we talk about it that really exposes our mindset, and how we’ll approach future dates. A few dominating explanatory styles typically outline whether or not there’ll be another date, and whether or not we’re permanently turned off by some new ick. Things like permanence — whether or not all our dates go bad, rather than one or two — pervasiveness — are those little issues you have constants, or just occasional annoyances? — and personalization all contribute to our perception of a date, but I think it’s the latter that will matter most to our hapless honeys.
Personalization has a lot to do with things going wrong. If you’ve had a terrible date, you can internalize everything that went wrong, or you can change your perception. If you instead look on the things that went wrong through a cheerful lens, you’re far less likely to pine after what could have been.
There’s no arguing that this poor couple’s date went entirely off plan, but it was certainly memorable. And if they have the right mindset about it, it has all the makings of a spectacular story. It could even make an appearance at an eventual wedding, should our lovebirds persevere past the moisture and ill fortune and give their romance a shot.