Never make these dating mistakes again

Being on a bad date can be like watching a car crash in slow motion

There are many reasons you should nip a bad date in the bud after the first coffee and run for your life. Picture: avid_creative

Being on a bad date can be like watching a car crash in slow motion.

You keep hoping you might be able to turn the wheel to avoid a collision. But sometimes it's the other idiot on the road.

I have been known to climb out a bathroom window to avoid a really disastrous date but, these days, sadly, I'm not quite as athletic.

So if you have to suffer through a bad first date, you should at least make sure you avoid a second. Sort the keepers from the duds.

Here are some signs that you never want another date.

1. He or she talks about their ex, their separation, or their divorce. Keep going out with this prospective partner and you'll be hearing a lot of this. Extra negative points if he or she refers to their ex using a four- or five-letter word.

2. Your date is too cheap to go anywhere nice, or order anything off the menu, and insists on splitting the bill for coffees, counting out the 10 cent pieces.

3. The phrase "when I was part of the cult” is mentioned.

4. He or she asks you if you like threesomes, S&M, or any other kind of sexual practice.

5. Your date spends more than 30 seconds talking on the phone, or is recognised and greeted, enthusiastically, by several members of the opposite sex.

6. He or she arrives on a motorbike, or in an expensive car, and makes a bit deal of revving it, parking it, and prancing around in the leathers, or dropping the keys on the table.

7. Your date talks about his or her childhood in terms of "my mother never loved me”.

8. He or she mentions a stint in rehab or jail. Or refers to his or her probation officer.

9. Your date refers to all the other first dates they have had in a derogatory way, insinuating a trail of destruction and littered opportunities.

10. Your date's wife or husband turns up.

You've been warned.

Originally published as Never make these dating mistakes again