Briefly dated a guy back when I was going back and forth to the Netherlands to visit a good friend of mine (I just can't afford to do it these days since I no longer live at home and I'd rather spend that money on visiting family).
My good friend, who I'll call Dwight, is a half Dutch half Kuwaitian and he happens to be a strict Muslim (but one who grew up in Holland). I'm a British atheist and yet somehow, we became very good friends. It's thanks to him that I learned a lot about Islam actually. I simply read the Qu'ran to learn a bit more about his religion because hey, that's what friends do.
Dwight lived just outside of Amsterdam in a tiny town called Volendam so that is where I'd stay.
Over time, I got introduced to Dwight's friends. One of Dwight's friends was actually a friend of a friend, a very Dutch guy named Martin.
Now this was quite a long time ago and back then I had absolutely no clue about the whole neckbeard thing. Fedoras were not a thing to me. "M'lady" was not a thing to me. I was completely oblivious to all that. But that was Martin in a nutshell. He wore leather trench coats. He wore fedoras. He referred to me as "m'lady" in a cute Dutch accent. He was actually quite good looking as well. Clean shaven, slim. A mane of golden curls for hair.
I just thought that the trench coats, fedoras and "m'ladying" were idiosyncracies specific to Martin. So I thought it was kind of cute. I rolled with it. We hit it off and we spent a lot of time talking online. I arranged to return to the Netherlands once more, but this time instead of staying with Dwight in Volendam I'd stay with him directly in Amsterdam.
So being single and young, I thought "hell, sure, let's roll with it" and I went to visit Martin. He lived with his parents (early twenties) and had his own section of the house. A very well-kept section. His own bathroom, all that jazz. It was like having an apartment, except it was directly above his parents.
The first red flag for me was when he introduced me to his parents and they all immediately started talking about me moving to the Netherlands and getting a job in his father's shop. I'll mention that I don't know how to speak Dutch and that I was quite happy living in the country of my birth, Britain. If I was going to migrate to another country even at that young age, it would only be for a serious reason and to me, Martin was merely a ...well, not even officially a boyfriend. Just a guy I was courting, if that makes sense.
So I handled his parents as gracefully as I could and luckily they were going on vacation that week, so I didn't have to see them any more for that trip. I was also able to see Dwight a few times since he didn't live far away.
The trench coats, fedoras and "m'ladying" weren't the worst. Nay. I soon learned that Martin was a big fan of a controversial Dutch politician named Geert Wilders. He had a big Dutch flag in his room as well as a map of the Netherlands (which by itself isn't a bad thing but...). He talked about wrapping me in the Dutch flag and whisking me away to Dutchland. Then, when mentioning Geert Wilders, he did a Nazi salute.
My brain exploded with a million nopes and I was like: "This isn't going to work out."
I'm still in regular contact with Dwight of course, but Martin is out of the picture. Whether it was the fact that he immediately wanted me to move in with his parents and start working for his father after knowing me for less than 2 months or his Nazi-esque ways, I just figured it wasn't a smart idea to stick around.
He did let me play World of Warcraft on his PC on raid nights though, so that was nice of him.