When you're attracted to someone so intensely that you basically abandon your dignity, it's called being "down bad." It's an embarrassingly human experience, so I recently asked the BuzzFeed Community what's the worst "down bad" moment they've tried to bury away. Here's what they said:
I also pulled from these reddit threads because...well, you'll see.
1. "I grabbed my cheeks imagining they were hers."
2. "Eight years ago when I was in college, I would always be hitting on several girls at one time. Including sending nudes to usually about eight girls at a time. I would get nudes back from them and in exchange, I would have them food delivered from the place of their choice. I don’t think I will ever forget my college experience because of this."
3. "Back in high school, I emailed my teacher if he could sit me next to my crush when he changed seating arrangements the next week. I was immediately moved across the room from her. I used to cringe when thinking about that. I find it pretty hilarious now."
4. "I made a girl a bouquet of origami roses and biked two miles to her work to deliver them. In hindsight, that was a super cringe move, but what are you gonna do..."
5. "I made a card for a crush with poetry and cut out pictures describing what I admired, physically and emotionally, about her. In retrospect, it was cheesy, but at the time I imagined it was artsy! She, however, told her friends she thought I was a stalker and was afraid I would carve her up like the pictures. Oops."
6. "I picked up a whole ass foreign language for my crush (my best friend of three years). Even after I got rejected, I still continued to study Russian."
7. "I met this guy in seventh grade and I immediately became infatuated with him. He was funny, kind, intelligent, and wasn’t the kind of kid who broke every school rule just for the heck of it. I told all of my friends that it was love at first sight. In high school, we became close friends — hanging out together after school, late-night calls, all of that. My junior year, my friends convinced me to ask him to prom. I’d liked him for so long, so I knew I had to make it special. I set up candles in a heart shape with the question, 'PROM?' inside of it in the nearby gazebo. When we met up at the time I’d scheduled, he looked shocked at what I’d set up. Then, he told me that he was gay. My entire friend group was there hiding because they came to watch in secret and film the prom-posal. I was so embarrassed."
8. "I covered the entire cost of a trip for someone to go to Europe with, only to return home and get ghosted. "
—Anonymous, 40, Male
9. "Not me, but I remember hearing about a guy who beat it to her Bitmoji."
10. "I helped a friend move out and his roommate had me head over heels. He was cute, hot, endearing, sweet, and soooo dreamy. He showed me his knitting projects and I, in a bout of concupiscence, learned some basic knitting overnight so I could ask him to hang out and knit the next day. Turned out he had a girlfriend, but I kept with the knitting."
11. "I financed a car that I couldn’t even afford to impress a girl. Never even got to do anything with her and I’m still paying the car off to this day. I was 23 at the time. I’m 30 this year."
12. "I spent $200 on a first date with a girl who, despite having a beach house along a private beach and no knowledge of what FAFSA is because her dad paid her entire $70,000 tuition every year, refused to pay for any subsequent dates. She even compared me to a man when I cut my hair short. I’m a woman."
13. "When I was 16 years old, I was stood up by the same guy three times in a row. I kept giving him more and more chances, even though I was never even given an excuse for him not showing. Not my best moment."
14. "We lived in adjacent neighborhoods, so probably walking the two-mile round trip just to stand across the street from his house. In my defense, I was roughly 13 years old at the time..."
15. "When I was in sixth grade, I had long bus rides to school. My friend and I used to share her AirPods and listen to music. Back then, I was obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo, so I always asked my friend to play her songs. For some reason, I thought it was normal to sing along to the music that no one else could hear except me and my friend. I sang my heart out for about 20 minutes each day on a quiet bus ride. I’m a terrible singer. But I was 'down bad' for her. This went on for months until my friend told me some girls in the back were laughing at me. Now, I get PTSD every time Olivia's songs come on."
—Anonymous, U.S.
16. "I had a huge crush on this guy in high school and he was really smart and nerdy. I wasn’t a spectacular student or anything, but I started taking tons of honors/AP classes, joined chess club, and started getting straight A’s to try and impress him. We dated for about a month. And then he ghosted me."
17. "I convinced my parents to move across the county to attend the high school my crush (who I met at a day camp) was going to attend. The craziest part? It actually worked. We moved. But my crush rejected me."
18. "I traveled 6,000 miles to meet a girl I met online during COVID lockdowns, but genuinely had the time of my life, and we had sex pretty much every day. She's now my fiancé. I think it was wild for me to travel that far, but it worked out."
19. "I jumped off the roof of my house to get head from a girl in the parking lot of a synagogue up the road. When I landed, I tried to do like a parkour roll and ended up kneeing myself in the face. It hurt like hell, but I still got my dick sucked."
20. "I bought a girl a car while coked up because I wanted to impress her sister. It worked, but it's by far the worst financial move and most down bad thing I've ever done."
21. "I specifically bought a Panthers jersey so I could get the attention of my crush. It was his favorite team. I got his attention, I guess, but he shamed me for wearing the jersey while living in Atlanta. I threw the jersey away."
22. "My ex-girlfriend in college was smoking hot and guys would do the stupidest things to get her attention. Like one time, I took her to a barbecue with some 'friends.' Later that night, one my 'friends' showed up to our shared apartment, knowing I wasn’t home, and expressed his love for her. She told him to get lost and told me afterward. Friendship over. Another story: She worked at the GAP at the mall and told me one day that some random customer expressed his love for her during her shift. She politely told him to leave. Ten minutes later, he’s crying outside the entrance of the store while his buddies beg her to date him. Security was called. And another time, she spent the night at her girlfriend’s house and woke up to some random guy sitting at her bedside waiting to express his love for her. Turns out, he was a friend of her girlfriend’s boyfriend, found out she was spending the night, and then somehow weaseled his way to her bedside in the den."
23. "I crushed on this gay dude at my work but in my defense, he said sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was gay or not. So, I kept trying to be close to him. I'd continuously message him, lost a bunch of weight until he and his friends stopped talking to me for being a creep. Yes, I went to therapy, and I’ve left the poor man alone. No, I didn’t think I was gonna turn him straight. In fact, I wanted to turn into a man to be with him."
"This was right after quarantine."
24. "In college, I met this girl who lived in my giant apartment complex full of students. She was flirty with me. When she found out I had never been to a rodeo, she invited me to her hometown for its rodeo. It was a three-hour drive. The entire time she was driving us there, she held my hand and was super flirty. But the second we hit her city, she immediately stopped all flirting and signs of being interested. We watched the rodeo. It was fun. For the return trip, she picked up a passenger who needed a ride back to college. It was a single cab truck. Rather than be crouched and uncomfortable, I jumped in the back of the truck bed and rode there the way back."
25. "In high school, I really liked a guy, and we took the same train, but I had to get off earlier than he did. I found out that if I stayed on that train, I would get off at the same stop as him, but would have to take two extra buses home. And I did just that. I stayed on the train, prolonging my trip home by an hour."
"Dude barely even spoke to me."
26. And finally: "I jerked off to her house on Google Earth."
I don't know about y'all, but celibacy sure does sound nice right now. If you can relate to these moments, I want to hear yours too — what's your most embarrassing story of being "down bad" for a crush or ex-partner? Drop your lore in the comments or in the anonymous form below. Because the only way to overcome a "down bad" moment is to own it.
Keep putting yourself out there, king.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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