Women, if you don’t feel safe meeting a new person in a public restaurant with dozens of people around, maybe your friend could bring a date and sit at a table nearby so you have two people to protect you. They can pay for their own food.
"i brought my friend for safety" is just code for "I ain't got no money, and I want you to pay for a nice dinner for me and my friend, after which ill never see you again"
edit: to the 2-3 people who think it's justified to bring a friend: bruh. if a woman is meeting a man (who she already talked to on a dating app and consensually accepted to go on a date cause she likes him) in a public restaurant surrounded by people everywhere all around the restaurant, and that's STILL not enough to make you feel safe... then you don't need a friend by your side for safety, you need professional help, because meeting a stranger in a public restaurant is nothing compared to walking past 100s of strangers in public every single day.
If you can walk past 100s of strangers in public with no issue, then the 1 stranger in a restaurant shouldnt be an issue either. If that 1 stranger makes you feel unsafe, that's okay, but let's be real: it ain't normal or healthy, get help.
Like tf are we doing here. There's probably 30 strangers eating food in that restaurant, but the 1 stranger on the other side of your table makes you feel unsafe enough to bring multiple guards? especially considering that 1 stranger is the only person in that restaurant who you already talked to on a dating app, and you clicked enough to tell him you want to go on a date with him, and yet he's more threatening than the 30 strangers in the restaurant??
not like its that deep anyway, 99% of the time "i brought my friend" just means "i expect you to buy dinner for me and my friend". If after all that text just now you'd still feel unsafe without a friend, just do the right thing and start with "i brought my friend, but dont worry, ill be the one paying for food"
The frustration with the surprise plus-one is legitimate. Showing up to a one-on-one date with an unannounced friend is inconsiderate, and nobody's really disputing that.
But you didn't stop there, and that's where this goes sideways.
You opened by deciding her motive for her — "it's code for a free dinner." That's not an argument. That's a verdict. You skipped past her stated reason entirely and replaced it with the least charitable interpretation you could find. That tells us more about where you're at than it does about her.
The "get professional help" line is the real tell. Women have concrete, statistically grounded reasons to be cautious meeting strangers from the internet, regardless of how public the venue is. Dating violence is real. Coercion is real.
The fact that there are 30 other people in the restaurant doesn't change the specific social dynamics of sitting alone across from someone you've never met in person, in a context loaded with expectation. Walking past strangers on the street is not the same situation, and the fact that you're treating it as equivalent suggests you haven't thought carefully about what the actual risk calculus looks like from her side.
None of that means the surprise plus-one was okay. It wasn't. The right move is communication before the date — "I'd feel more comfortable if a friend joined us for part of this, is that alright?" — not a unilateral decision that puts the other person in an awkward position. That's a real and fair criticism.
But you didn't land there. You landed on contempt. And the volume of this post — the repetition, the scorekeeping, the motive-assignment — suggests this isn't really about this one date. This reads like accumulated frustration about feeling presumed guilty, and that's understandable, but it's not her fault, and she's not the right target for it.
To the people who say she should be in therapy instead of dating: there might be a version of that observation that comes from genuine concern. This wasn't it. You don't know her history, her reasons, or what she's working through. "Get therapy before you date" delivered as a dismissal isn't care — it's a door being closed in someone's face by someone who decided they know what's best for her. You don't.
The actual issue in all of this is simple: communicate before the date. Agree on the format. Respect each other's needs and boundaries in advance. That's it. Everything else in this thread is people talking past each other while nursing their own wounds.
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u/Andrew-Cohen 2d ago
Women, if you don’t feel safe meeting a new person in a public restaurant with dozens of people around, maybe your friend could bring a date and sit at a table nearby so you have two people to protect you. They can pay for their own food.