Man waits 10 days in a Chinese airport for his online date.

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There have been a news article going around. It's about a Dutch man who flew to China to meet a woman he was talking to online. She stood him up, and he ended up waiting 10 days for her in the airport terminal when he couldn't reach her by phone. He'd have probably waited longer, but was carried off by an ambulance due to exhaustion. I'm guessing he was lured by the promise of love and/or a relationship. And once the promise became somewhat real, that man's better judgment went out the window. So he decided it'd be a good idea to fly 5000 miles, along with putting himself in harm's way with nasty airport food (ramen noodles, according to the articles), insufficient water, poor sleep, and inadequate hygiene. All for one banal date! A 20-year-old college kid might have survived this ordeal unharmed, but this man is 41, and not as equipped to handle it.

So what are your thoughts on this? Romantic or stupid? Is it something you can imagine yourself doing? And do you think he's an aspie?

My sympathy for him is very limited, despite having gotten stood up myself once. It was by a casual sex date, in my own city, after driving for maybe half hour. Given that man's looks, it's unrealistic for him to expect for a beautiful woman halfway around the world to magically run into his arms. Plus, nothing stopped him from seeking an online date in his own native Netherlands, where she'd be just a few hours away, given the country's size, plus she'd speak Dutch. (My guess says he communicated with his lady friend in English, since it's a language they'd both know.) Either way, it's still 10 days of his life that he'll never get back, not to mention getting hospitalized for his silly mistake.

US source: http://ktla.com/2016/08/03/man-spends-10-days-in-airport-waiting-for-internet-girlfriend/
UK source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-3719762/Love-struck-Dutchman-flew-5-000-miles-meet-Chinese-woman-met-online-hospitalised-waiting-10-days-airport-no-never-did-turn-up.html

Last edited by Aspie1 on 05 Aug 2016, 11:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

It would have been nice had the girl shown up.

I don't believe I would have done this; but the guy probably thought he was going on an adventure in a foreign land. Too bad he couldn't get beyond the airport and explore the area.

The only reasons I don't see myself doing the same are 1) I don't think I'll ever be able to afford the flight, and 2) I'm not physically tough enough to last ten days there with no food or water and possibly no sleep. Other than that, I'd do anything for a chance to find a partner, since I don't expect ever to have it. And yeah, I know this makes me even more pathetic and disgusting than I'd otherwise be.

He was legally permitted to. He had a visa to enter China. Even if his lady friend actually planned on showing up, nothing stopped him from at least going outside for an hour, for fresh air and better food. Why he chose not to is beyond me.

He had food, just not the kind needed to stay healthy (ramen noodles, with no vitamins, and tons of empty calories and sodium). Water was a bigger issue, I'd say. He probably didn't have enough money to keep buying bottled water (people need 1/2 gal. or 2 L per day), and I'm not sure if tap water in China is safe to drink.

^ waiting for Turkish Airlines.

From what I understand of the article, the "girlfriend" thought that it was all a big joke, right down to the photographs she received of the plane tickets he had bought.

[opinion=mine]

The man imagined more about the "relationship" than was actually involved, and would have been better off to have been more explicit in expressing his plans to her.

[/opinion]

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T minus 74 and counting.

[opinion] Never travel for a date [/opinion]

Oh. I thought they were on location filming a zombie movie.

Yeah, he definitely misread the situation and "fell in love" prematurely. Not to mention immaturely. While it's not my business to judge what people do for "love"---heck, I don't recognize the existence of romantic love---it's ironic that he did this while living in a country with legal prostitution. Plus legal drugs to calm his frustrated mind.

That said, his actions aren't too dissimilar from something I came close to doing when I was 17, in 1999 or so. I started chatting with a girl online, who lived about 200 miles from me. We got along very well, to the point where I wanted to go meet her. I knew her town had an Amtrak station. So I started researching train schedules and tickets. I even came up with lies to tell my parents about what I'm doing. But my fear of getting caught was so strong, that I quickly dropped the idea. I continued looking for dates online, but only in my city, near bus routes, so I could lie that I'm going to a history museum or something. Better yet, have my date meet me at the museum, so I can still have fun exploring if/when she stands me up, rather than sit at a grungy, unsafe train station.

Looking back, the Amtrak idea was really stupid! When Google mapped her town some years later, I learned how unsafe it looked. And the train station where I was going have her meet me was a graffiti-covered shack among industrial warehouses, miles from any substantial date places. There's only one train a day, running at odd schedules. Can you imagine what could have been if I actually tried to take Amtrak to meet my date? So perhaps that's why I'm reacting to this news article more strongly than most people my age would.

In an ironic turn of events, I now use my city's train stations for traveling to a certain other type of "dates".

If he had no way to contact her, he probably didn’t want to take the chance that she’d show up and go away angrily when she didn’t find him.

Poor guy. Probably extremely lonely and was in denial that the date wasn't going to happen. Ten days though, that's some serious denial there.

They exchanged phone numbers, and talked via messaging apps. However, she turned off her phone because she was "in the hospital in another city, getting plastic surgery". I call BS on that. If a city is big enough to have an international airport, it has to be big enough to have a plastic surgery clinic. Maybe the woman had a specific doctor she wanted to see, but she sounds pretty shady at this point. And even if she actually came to the airport, nothing stops her from waiting for him, considering that it'd be for an hour or so.

Quoted for truth! But even then, he lives in a country with legal prostitution. He should have visited a Red Light District instead. Because when I started sexing escorts, I became more rational about how much effort I was willing to put in for a date. Consider my own example: at age 17, I was willing to ride a train for 200 miles to a sketchy small town for one banal date, where I might not even get to kiss her. All without properly checking Amtrak schedules and her town's local maps. But now, this idea seems downright ridiculous.

Oh, but just because he was willing to spend a fortune flying to her country and wait ten days for her doesn't mean she'd put up with waiting five minutes for him. He probably had already come to accept this. You do when you feel the other person is doing you an extraordinary favor just by granting you the dear privilege of meeting them. Any semblance of equality is long gone at that point.

She probably didn't believe he was at the airport waiting that whole time. I didn't read the article, and it scares me too much to read it. You guys' exchange is more than enough, and it makes me wish I could reach out to every guy like this and show them how they don't have to travel this far at all, especially not with online dating. It's a huge risk, very expensive, and tends to pile unneeded stress onto an already stressful situation. All that, when a simple localized search on okcupid.com can answer a whole lot of these problems. And it is only years of experience that forces me to say that.

Bingo!

He put that woman on a pedestal so high, that when he tried to look at her face, he fell over on his back. He forgot that she gets up and takes a dump in the morning just like he does. In other words, she's a regular human being like anyone else. But I think he got overcome by the scarcity mentality. Heck, I was no different at one point. Similar to when I "knew" that no girl in my school will ever like me, I felt compelled to make a 200-mile trip to a town I knew nothing about. All for for one date. Still, while I understand that man's mindset, my sympathy for him is limited. He's not an aspie teenager, he's a full-grown man (with possible with neurodiverse traits of his own), and should have known better.