Healthcare Dating 101: Genius or Disaster?
54:56 Share

Hey guys, welcome back to Friends and Enemas. My name is Lindsay and I have my husband with me again today. Again. Yeah. You don't ask for me at all for like three months and then... Then I say, sit down, we're going to record like three episodes today. Yeah. But what's exciting about today is this is our first sponsored episode. Yeah. Wow. Today's episode is brought to you guys by Down to Eight. Down to Eight. God.

Girl. Let's go back. Sorry, guys. It's clearly my first time giving an ad on this podcast. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Down to Date, the new dating app for healthcare professionals, which is great because today we're reading dating stories within the hospital, some of the confessions, and then just stories between us two. Not about us two, just stories that we know about people in the hospital will be looking.

Yeah. And I feel like to avoid ucking in the hospital and getting caught, you should use the down-to-date app. It's like Tinder, but for healthcare workers.

It's sanctioned. But what's interesting about dating in the hospital is the controversy, the hot takes about dating other medical professionals. Oh, yeah. You're giving me a look like you didn't know what I was talking about. A lot of people are very averse to it. Very. I don't see an issue and clearly biased. I'm married to another health care professional, but

It seems like if anybody would understand what you deal with, especially if you're in intensive care, ER, stuff that deals with a lot of really heavy stuff, death...

It seems like having somebody else that can talk on that level with you would be a good thing. Right. But people are like, I would never do it. I don't know why. It's literally a yes or no. There's like, to me, I'm like, what are your no's? You know what I mean? I ask them, like, why, why not? Why are you so against it? Well, because health care workers are toxic. And I'm like, aren't you a health care worker? Yeah.

Are you saying you're toxic? The job makes you toxic? I don't know. They just say like, well, other healthcare professionals are toxic. I can't date someone who's toxic. Are you calling yourself toxic too? Because with that logic, I don't personally like to lump a whole group of people together into one thing. There's many names for that if you don't know. I don't like to do that. So I try not to do it even with that. Just because you have one bad experience...

Doesn't mean everyone's toxic. I could understand like a don't shit where you eat type thing. Sure. But that's not what's typically said. Yeah. You're painting with a pretty broad brush. Sure. And there's benefits. Right. So we could go over our own ideas of pros and cons. Pro, they understand you.

You come home from a hard shift. They understand your hard shift versus you're dating a finance bro or someone in real estate or something else, some other sector that's not health care. And they're like, OK, I have bad days, too. You don't get it. Yeah, you do have bad days. Correct. Pain is relative. But in health care to me, I want someone that gets it. Well, in the I would say the bad days.

look different like you know finance or something like that they come home they're like i had a horrible day my spreadsheet wouldn't open you know my boss yelled at me and i literally got peed on and somebody spit in my face i literally got feces thrown at me today i was called a bitch three times today like you know there's levels to this stuff there's levels to this stuff and we're we're

when it comes to complaining about her job. And I don't, don't even try to argue with me. To be honest, I could out-complain you so easily.

He's like, no, really? That's the truth. I come home like venting, like we'll leave a shift together. The moment I slam that door, going 90 miles an hour with my words until we get home, get inside. And then he has to be like, okay, you're allowed to vent, but we got to close it off at some point. You got to shut the hell up over there. Don't you agree? Doesn't that happen? No, I mean, and I've been the one venting before too. I mean, it's just...

It's a strange job. It is a strange job. This is why something like this makes sense. You know, I don't. They're going to understand where you're coming from. You might have similar days off. Well, yeah, that's the other thing. Like they're going to understand that your days off are different. Like, I mean, one of the biggest cons with health care workers dating someone who's not in health care. And I'm talking about dating at this point.

Let's say they want to plan a date with you and they want it for this weekend. Well, sorry, you're on weekends this weekend. Sorry, it can't be this weekend. This weekend's my weekend to work. My weekend weekend. My weekend weekend. And they're like, well, damn it. You know, I've been trying to pull this off with you for how long? And eventually they could get irritated or bored or like, OK, maybe they're ghosting me. No, we're not ghosting you. I just have a shift. Yeah. Or they date like a night shifter. Yeah.

they're trying to call them at like, what, 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 11 a.m.? They're like, God, this girl hates me. You got to wait till at least 2 p.m., 3 p.m. before you start calling a night shifter. Wasn't one of our first dates, I took you to the hospital cafeteria? I forgot that. I just said that. You said that and it was actually literally coming back to me. Yeah. Oh, and like, who better to give dating advice than two people who haven't

dated in a decade, right? That's true. Yeah, listen to us. That's true. Let's bring it back to the app for a moment because it's kind of like Tinder, but it's called Down to Date. It's just for healthcare workers and it's women-led, I'm pretty sure. Let's pause on that. Maybe it's not. I'm sorry if it's not. I'm pretty sure it is. But something really great about the dating apps is when those were coming out, that's when I had just met you and Tinder was, I think it was Tinder, was hot or not.

Yeah, I remember Hot or Not. It was Hot or Not. It's the same thing. Swipe left, swipe right.

And you can talk to people on there. Unsolicited dick pics galore. Thank you. Please stop. But it was hot or not. Back in the day, didn't you just upload your picture? What I remember was you upload a picture of yourself and people just vote if you're hot or not. And there was no social functions. No, there was social. Because I spoke to a guy on there. I don't remember any social functions. So maybe this was even earlier. I remember my friend uploaded a picture of me and I was like,

I think I was like a seven. They rated you like that? I don't think that's hot or not. Hot or not was a quick swipe left, swipe right. And if you both swipe right, I believe, it connects you and you can talk. So this is before that. This is something mean. This was a very simple website. You literally click yes or no. And then the percentage of yeses was like your scale, one to ten. Yeah, it was brutal. Who uploaded it? Was it Zach? Yeah. Yeah, I knew it was Zach. I'm going to have to fight him after this. No, Zach.

I think we were still in high school. So I was 17 or 18 or something. I love how our stories go because I'm clearly talking about when we were in college right before we met. And you're like, yeah, the same app. And then you said it was a website. And then you said it was when you were in high school. It's not the same at all. But maybe the same developers who are like, let's trial this and see if people are interested. So, yeah, I guess...

I guess Tinder was a, I had no idea about Tinder until we were like well into dating. I just completely missed that boat. You had no idea about Tinder? No, I never had it.

I guess that's green flags for me. But like, you're correct. For the rest of the dating world, dating online is very normal. I mean, essentially, we dated online. Not really. Not really, because that's not the purpose. If you guys don't know, quick backstory with us. We met via Craigslist. You can date on there, too. I would not suggest it. That's how you get

But we I'm kidding. I didn't I didn't I didn't put out an ad for a female seeking man and he didn't put out an ad for male seeking woman. But we met because there was a roommate out on there. I responded to it and the rest is history. This is the normal way to find a

A roommate. Yeah. Back in the day. Especially in our small college town, Ghost of Water, Oklahoma. It's just funny because like when people, I have a friend right now that's dating and she'll ask me for advice. I'm like, bitch, I haven't been dating. I haven't dated in over 12 years. Yeah. Have you tried taking him to the drive-in movie?

Have you tried taking him to your local hospital cafeteria? Go back to that. Tell them about that date. Yeah, clearly I'm not the one to be asking. What? It was so cute, especially at the time. We were... Sorry, I just took over your story. Go for it. We were extremely poor and I got like a ridiculous discount because I was working. I think I was cleaning colon scopes at the time. Yeah. Started from the bottom. Now you're here. Literally. Literally the bottom. Yeah. And...

I got a huge discount. I think it was like 60% off of food there. So I think we both ate for like $9. I think it was less than that. It was literally a full plate of food, you know, hospital cafeteria with a drink, a bed and a dessert. I do remember they had awesome biscuits and gravy. Stillwater Medical Center. Yeah. We had B for D. That's why we went. We had breakfast for dinner. Honestly. Yeah. So date your fellow...

Date your fellow healthcare workers. You never know what could happen. Cheap dates. Okay, so getting into this episode, though, you guys should help me with title ideas. We're thinking something like, dating me is a full code. I don't like that. That's so stupid. Nurse by day, ghost by text.

That's so stupid. That's Wayne. Catchy Mini sucks at helping me make titles. It could be. Wait, this one's good. You up? I'm on call. Oh. That's a cute one. Yeah, that's not bad. Oh. By the way, we're filming at our house. No, no.

I was going to do a quick life update, but I feel like we just took enough of your time. The life update is we're moved to California out of Arizona. We're in a house. We're renting a house. My dogs are here. That's why you might hear them in the background. Okay, this is family friendly. Not really. I cuss a lot. I just meant my dogs are here. Absolutely not. All right. I like you up. I'm on call. That's pretty cute.

But let's see. Have you met anyone at work that's like dating somebody else and like it goes down? You know, like something wrong happens or drama. Drama happens because of them dating. The only one I recall, and I don't want to steal your story, was on your unit. Whenever we were techs and we were on the same floor but separate wings. I don't remember this. There was two employees who...

uh one was married right yep and and they were hooking up it's crazy how it goes between that and your your like uh sunday confessions you would do people are crazy people be fucking yeah pbf no doubt people be fucking but it's more so people be having affairs yeah i'm like what is wrong with you people be cheating people be cheating and honestly it it

It irritates me so bad because let me put it, let me put this out there. How many times, so Jared and I were techs, like he just had at the same hospital, but same unit, but separate wings. Okay. So we didn't really get to work together together because we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Okay. Fast forward to when we're nurses, we got hired on the same unit. We must like each other. We got hired on the same unit, but they would always put us on separate floors. So this unit was four and five East. One of us would be on the other. Okay.

Because we're husband and wife. And I'm thinking to myself the whole time, if I want to fuck this man, I can do that at my house. Why would I? I always thought it was like they think we're going to have sexual relations here. Yeah, I assumed it was because that yeah, that wouldn't make sense. Well, it made sense to me. Other people would be much more likely to do that. I think it was more for narcotics. As you can see, we do have a logical one in the group. Yeah.

My mind goes to they think we're going to they think we're going to Grey's Anatomy it up in here. And he's like, I think it's more so we can't witness for each other and steal narcotics. And I'm like, shut up. Shut up. Just let you have your fun. Let me have my fun. What was my story? You said I don't want to steal yours. Oh, the travel nurse. Which one?

No, I was just talking about the Nine, whatever, Nine West story that we just told. That's all I could really think of. I mean, and that's not even really dating. Unfortunately, a lot of these stories are going to be about affairs. But that's why you should just use the app if you're wanting to date another medical professional. Because a lot of these stories end up in, I didn't know the other one was married. And they were. And a lot of swingers. A lot of swingers. No, hey, do your thing. Just as we...

As we've, for the last 10, 15 years, it's crazy how many couples we meet are swingers. Yeah. I don't care. I really don't. I'm not interested. I am too much of a crazy bitch. I'm a crazy bitch. I am. That's mine. He's mine. I don't want anyone else to share with personally, but I know other people are different. And honestly, it's a compliment.

We've been invited to swing many times and I'm like, thank you. But no. Back off my man, bitch. I'll fight you. Just kidding. Let's see. If you guys do have your own stories about either dating in your hospital or crazy hookups, please send them to frenemas at scrumpax.com. There will be a

That will be in the description for you to send. But let's go ahead and start. I'm just going to start with one of these Reddit stories. Let me get it pulled up.

Nurses dating nurses. I used to prefer partners who were fellow nurses because we could communicate about work life so easily. We all know it's like speaking a different language sometimes. For me, those relationships inevitably failed and I wondered if it's related to the mutual stress, compassion fatigue, and the tendency to bring work home more often. That's a good point.

Being in a relationship with someone in a completely different field, a machinist for military labs who literally cannot talk about their work with me has forced us to discuss other subjects. At first, I expected this to be frustrating. I wouldn't have someone to decompress with at home, but I found myself feeling increased happiness and peace away from work.

When I have an exceptionally difficult day, hospice, I still have colleagues I can call to help me process that stress. When I'm with my significant other, I'll give an abridged version of events if I need the support. Maybe it's the significant other making the difference, but I feel the empathy afforded to me is much greater than it was with my significant others in the past who were also nurses. This fills my cup, so to speak, and gives me more mental and emotional energy to return to my significant other.

And then at the end, they're just curious, has anyone else noticed a general difference in dating fellow nurses versus those in alternative occupations? First commenter says, I married my girlfriend from nursing school. Now we role play. Throughout the night, she has to turn me Q2. If she misses one turn, I write an incident report. I think she'd prefer a husband in a different occupation. Sounds hot. Yeah.

Your alarm goes off every two hours and it's time to turn you. Nothing says kinky like demerits. Someone said, don't forget to yell nurse when she's passing by in the hallway. Keeping that spark alive. And that showed the other side of what we were saying. It seems like it'd be a great thing. You have a bunch in common, blah, blah, blah. But then also you're like bathed in energy.

healthcare 24-7 and you never get away from it. You want to hear about something else at work, but if you're both in healthcare, everything's filtered through that. So I could see that

Getting old after a while. Yeah. It's never happened with us, though. I will say, like, I've never felt so drained that I'm like, just shut up already. Because for me, venting about my day, I need someone to relate. Which she said here, she still has colleagues to call and vent with. But when specifically travel nursing, I didn't have a lot of people to call and vent or call in. And, you know, how many times have I I did meet Amanda and Tim. You guys might know them. Clocked out dinks.

I met them at my first assignment and me and Amanda got really close and I had someone to call, especially if someone was mean to me, I would call her and be like, did I do this wrong? Is this how you, because I would talk to you and you'd be like, no, you're right. And I'm like, shut up. I need to hear it from someone else. So there's that aspect too. But I feel like

And this is just one I wanted to read so that you know you don't have to date a health care worker. But if you're going to, there's an app for it. And we're going to go through other stories, too, that just show the benefits. And we've had plenty of car rides home in dead silence. Radio's not on. We're just like both.

Like what just happened in the last 12 hours. Yeah. Which is also very necessary. I mean, our shifts can be super overwhelming, super overstimulating, especially for people like me. I get very overstimulated. Yeah. And I think that's one thing that whenever like a nurse comes home, like quote unquote cranky and just wants to be away from everything. It's because you can still hear call bells and code blue alarms and vent alarms in your head. Like,

After a really long shift, whenever I lay down to sleep, I still hear the stuff. And it's like, you know, it just imprints on you after a while. For those that don't know, that's called phantom alarms. And they're so real. It's weird. I've even like dozed off into sleep and an alarm in my head woke me up. And then I realized I was in my room and I was like,

okay. It's like waiter dreams, waiter nightmares. Like if you've been a waiter, you definitely had a dream that you missed something at a table or forgot to bring someone something, or you're in a rush of drowning weeds, whatever. You're like, Oh, okay. That's not real. Yeah. Cause you kind of, I think at least in the ICU, you, you compartmentalize it or you get used to it in a, in a weird way. But like there's throughout, throughout the day, there's

50, 60 choices you make that that could kill somebody. Yeah. You know, so it's you kind of settle in and it doesn't feel like it whenever you're working there. But whenever you look back on it all and you wonder why you're so mentally tired and why you're like on high alert, even going to bed and you're waking up to fake alarms and stuff, I think it.

sinks in a little more than we all realize. Yeah. And that's kind of why I'm glad that you're here to talk about it too, because there are non-healthcare workers that listen to this and maybe their spouse is a healthcare worker. And it just kind of gives you a little bit of a view of what we go through. It's a lot. On that same thread, the comments kind of got crazy. Someone was like, as long as Foley's aren't part of foreplay, I'm all for this. Yeah.

And then someone said, we don't kink shame in this house. Do you guys keep a whiteboard in the bedroom? No, I'm sounding. We kink shame a little bit. If you're into sounding, I mean, that's fine for you, I guess. But like, I just can't wrap my mind around. If you guys don't know what sounding is, I brought this up on a previous podcast and people are losing their minds. Yeah. Just don't bring me into it. Don't self-admit to the hospital just to get a Foley placed. Please.

As if they bring you into it. It's usually girls. I mean, I'm not saying it can't be the other way around. It defaults to me because they're acting, they're being inappropriate with the women. So they're like, we need a guy. And then I get this like weird, you know, overly sexual guy.

One of our jobs we worked, we had a frequent flyer that would come in and nobody recognized at first that this was someone who was into sounding. If you don't know what sounding is, it is someone, I might butcher this a little bit, but it's someone who enjoys sticking things up their urethra for pleasure. So they would come in either with something there, some type of

Something up there for a blockage or would come in with some type of retention and we would have to place a Foley. I thought he was just holding their urine. Something was so that they could be. Yeah.

Straight cath. Straight cath. Yeah, yeah. And they liked the women nurses coming in, holding their shminas and placing a catheter of some kind or straight cath. And we realized he was doing this on purpose. And it was like, what? The moment we sent in a male nurse, what do you know? He stopped. It wasn't sexy anymore. It wasn't sexy anymore. So I'm not into that because you brought me into it and I did not. I did not consent to this. Yeah.

The next comment says, I'm married to a nurse. It's nice that we can understand each other, but we rarely talk about work. The freedom of having four days off a week allows us to do so much in life. We love it. Literally why we both. That's not the only reason we both chose nursing. We chose nursing later in life after Jared had a bachelor's degree in another subject. And I had taken a break from college because I was just very lost. His sister was a nurse.

And she told us, you know, I should go be a nurse. I feel like both our families had been saying that for a while. Like, we're both interested in health care. We're both we both like helping people. But we were just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shut up. Like, I'll figure it out. But finally, we both decided to apply for nursing school. Jared got in a year before me and we both went. But that's our favorite aspect of it. Like people ask all the time, how do you guys work together? And then you live together. Like, well, yeah.

this guy's my best friend. I actually like my husband. No, a lot of you don't. You can't relate. That's really unfortunate. I actually really like my husband besides loving him. I always thought that was such a weird reaction when people would be like, oh, I'd kill mine. I couldn't. Like, they're supposed to. Aren't you guys supposed to be friends? Yeah. You guys might be missing something, which is, you know, whatever. But for us, it's fun to go to work together. And not to mention, people act like we're working right alongside each other. We're not. Right.

We don't get to work with each other like that. Yeah, I mean, in the course of a 12-hour shift, I'll see you twice, three times. It's not uncommon for us to not see each other. And then we get our days off together. And that's my favorite part because we get to have life together. Yeah, and that's one good thing about, you know, we liked recession-proof career. You know, it's a really good job security. But you can...

It's the only job I know of that you could stack your three days from one week going into the three days the next week. You work six in a row and you have eight days off and you haven't taken any PTO. Yeah. You can take a solid vacation without using any PTO. And so it's... If you're like...

like your adventure and you want to be able to travel and you want to go see friends, you want to do this and that. I think it's a great career. I do too. I think it's a great way to date people. What would your bio be in a dating app? Hmm. If you were single. I think the only way you could get your hands on me is if you could

name all eight Pokemon badges from the original Pokemon on Game Boy? The badges, specifically? Can you give me an example? Or the three starting Pokemon. The badges are a little tough. I don't want to get too sweaty about it. Oh, no. I already messed up. You're doing fine. Charmander? Bulbasaur? Squirtle? Very nice. Yeah, I guess. That's not a big deal, but... What would your bio be? Mine would be something like...

Damn, I don't know. I asked you the question, but I didn't think of my answer. Your profile picture would be you with your little noise-canceling headphones at a party in the corner. I'd be like, please save me. I don't know. I don't know, but you guys should let us know what your dating bios would be. I was hoping it'd be more healthcare-related. Like, TrachyPT fed me, available weekends only, unless I'm not.

For real. I just thought that was funny. Yeah. I'm curious some of the because I assume the culture from Tinder will probably imprint itself on this health care app. Absolutely. So I think there would be some hilarious stuff. Oh, yeah. That's what I'm like. I kind of want to download the app. But then I'm like, I don't want anyone to see me on there and assume I'm cheating on my husband. I just want to see what are you guys talking about on there? Because I want to see it from my point of view.

This is interesting, though. Healthcare workers report higher relationship strain with 44% citing work schedule as the main issue. ER and ICU staff have the highest burnout and lowest relationship satisfaction amongst hospital departments, which makes sense. I would love to know of those. Are they dating within healthcare?

Because I think the burnout and low relationship satisfaction, I mean, they're high stake jobs. All of nursing is. But ER and ICU, it just hits different. I don't know how else to explain it. It seems so emotionally taxing. Yeah. Whether it be, you know, a patient screaming and hitting at you or the family or someone that feels like they're your boss and they're not yelling at you. And they're also the two units that witness the most death. Yeah. It's it's.

Well, beyond a hospice unit, obviously. But I would say maybe unexpected death is the best. More tragic. Yeah. Which makes sense. If you go home, because I'm assuming these people are not dating someone else in health care. Or they are, and they're both so stressed, they can't get out of that stressful, like, intuition, like that, I don't know what I'm trying to say, like environment, but in their head. Yeah. Yeah, I can see it being a deal where they just can't.

They can't understand you. It's hard to have empathy if you just really don't understand their world. And so that might be part of it. Or if it's like a double healthcare type thing, it's just like you're both the job sucks all your empathy out and you're tired and you're overstimulated. And that is not a good recipe for hanging out that night. No, that's really not.

Down to Date Plus is a medically themed dating app created exclusively for healthcare professionals by healthcare professionals. They just launched on Valentine's Day and are offering six months free to all users while they continue to grow.

All users are verified before permitting access to ensure it is a safe and authentic platform without fake profiles. No one understands the emotional, financial, and physical toll of a career in medicine quite like a fellow colleague. We train, laugh, and cry together. Why not love? If you have a friend come to you and be like, hey, I'm about to go on a date with a nurse, what are some things they can look forward to or not look forward to?

Um, you'll never get to complain about being sick because they'll just be like, dude, shut up. Yeah. Man flu. Oh, I don't want to hear about it. I don't care. Yeah. I'd say that. And, um, when they come home, offer a tranquil environment. Yeah. Because it's all a lot. Uh, and I can't even imagine like 12 hours taking care of people, caregiving, and then coming home to kids. Yeah.

And if your husband is another kid, you know what I mean? Like a lot of have a man child. Yeah. There's a lot of these relationships where there's three kids and the husband is like a fourth kid or the wife. Yeah. It could be either way, but most of the time it's not. Sorry, that was long. I think that the more understanding you have about your spouse, if you are not, if you're dating someone and you're not in health care and your spouse is in health care,

honestly asking them, communicating with them, what do you need from me? When you come home, what would you like? That's a huge thing. Just acknowledging that they need something from you. Is it taking the kids? Is it bathing the kids? Is it running a hot bath, having it ready for her when she gets home? Is it dinner being made? And it doesn't mean every single shift because you work too. Yeah, and it's

It's three days a week and it's just the, you're not getting home. This is for day shift. You're not getting home until, you know, somewhere from seven to eight 30. You're going to go to bed within an hour and a half or two hours. Like it, just that little window, try to make it as tranquil and peaceful and relaxing as possible for them. Yeah. Just be there for them. I think something I would warn someone about is like, beware for the talks at dinner talks over food. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't even cross my mind. Of course it doesn't. Because what we talk about, you know, we talk about blood, guts, poop. I don't care. Tell me a wound, a smelly wound, breath. I want to know all of it. And I actually can't. That would that would be a downfall for me. Like, I want to talk TMI. No restrictions. You can't do that with someone who's not health care. If they have like a weak stomach. How many times like.

with family have we told stories and they're like, you know, and I'm like, my bad, you're eating. I've got like a bite of food in my mouth while I'm staying. Yeah. I'm like chowing down. I'm like, yeah, next. Yeah. I forget that, uh, you know, not everybody has seen all that the human body has to offer. Right. It's crazy. Um, something here though is, is

It's not just nurse to nurse. It could be nurse to doctor, you know, or RT or OT. I mean, how many really what I'm hearing, though, is like it's doctor nurse. If you're not dating within the same specialty, like our same field, it's doctor nurse. It's PT, OT that they date each other, which is kind of cute because I'm like, wait, I see them together all the time. That's actually I love it. And then there's the ER nurse.

First responder connection, police and fire. ER first responder trope, 100%. I've actually, we've talked to some people that said like, you know, if your spouse is an ER nurse, there's way more like random hooking up with first responders because, you know, they're coming in and out all day and you're seeing these hot firemen and all that. What is it, the four P's?

Oh, what's the four P's? Police, paramedic, fire with a P, security with a P. I think they just put P's in front of it to say the four P's. Oh, physician. Physician, paramedic. I said one earlier, a different P. Police and security with a P in front. This is supposed to help you remember it? This is a horrible mnemonic. It's just saying that ER nurses date the four P's. They're saying stay away from the four P's.

He's older, guys. It's not a big deal. Date older, but if you're in TikTok lingo, don't expect them to understand whatever you're saying. Yeah, for real. For real. He's like, please shut up. Okay, hold on. I'm going to pull up another Reddit story. Wildest hospital dating stories.

Coworker nurse dated a locum doctor who said he was in a relationship. They continued dating once he went back to his home site. She would routinely take the five-plus-hour journey to go see him and hook up in a spare apartment that supposedly he and his girlfriend would use for their hookups. Spoilers. Two weeks before his girlfriend gave birth to their child, everyone learned that he was not, in fact, in an open relationship and was actually just cheating with my coworker. And four other women.

Two who were at his new hospital in different positions. The dude's a straight up hoe. Coworker is a bit crazy and continued to see him off and on. They hooked up a bit again when he had another locum 90 minutes away and she went and got a job there but was eventually fired because his girlfriend made him take a restraining order out on the coworker. Or so the story goes.

Yikes. Yikes. Big yikes. First of all, anytime a guy or anybody says it's OK, it's an open relationship. I want to verify. Yeah. Verify with the spouse or the significant other. If it is, if it is, I want to see them say it. Yes. With their mouth. Yeah, exactly. I don't believe you because that seems to be kind of the.

thing that we hear. We worked with a travel nurse. Well, there's quite many stories I could pull out of my ass right now about travel nurses. I knew we're hooking up with other people when they had a spouse at home, which makes me want to scream. I hate cheaters. I hate cheating. Just be honest. If you don't want to be with them, be honest. Like, I don't understand. Oh, it makes me mad. There was a travel nurse who was hooking up with several different nurses on the unit

While he has a baby at home with his baby mama who they were in a relationship. I don't know if they're still in a relationship because she probably doesn't even know. That's the worst part is like the person that's at home waiting for the locum or the travel blank to come home. Fuck you.

Yeah. Yeah. And we saw that quite a bit in travel, travel nursing or travel. Anything lends itself to cheating. Unfortunately, you know, it's the same with the traveling businessman, you know, any of that type of stuff. Yeah. But that's again, like where I bring back, like if you just date within your field and not leave whoever you're with high and dry with the kid at home, come on people. Yeah. Um,

Then there was another contract we worked out where kind of same scenario, had a baby mama at home, several kids with her, and then was hooking up with someone on the unit that was also married. I was like, what is happening? Yeah, I don't like, I guess I just never got the bug. But man, people. If you did, you'd be kicked to the curb. People would be cheating. People would be cheating. And like, there's a whole nother episode for this. But like, let's talk about your self-worth for a moment. Stop being with these people. Yeah.

So 2004, I'm a student nurse, male, wait.

So 2004, I'm a student nurse, tech, male, 24-year-old. I don't like how they presented that at all. Just out of the Army at the VA hospital, I'm kind of crushing hard on my charge nurse. After a bunch of seeming and hawing, we went out a few times. 20 years later, still married, last kid, a senior in high school, stepkid, about to make me a grandpa. It can work. Wow. Congrats. Yeah. Yeah, those are the stories we like to hear. And there's been plenty that...

Just viewing people at the hospital, you get to see like,

who's interested in who. Oh, yeah. Who's interested, but the other one doesn't know it. Who's interested and the other one's not interested. Yeah. You get to, I like, you know, watching and trying to spot the trends and see, see what's going on. Oh, yeah. Or make one up myself. Who knows? I'm just trying to entertain myself. It's a long show. Like, if I had to put anyone together, it'd be these two. Yeah. There you go. We worked with someone who wasn't health. Well, they were, worked in healthcare, but they weren't like the clinical staff. And they,

Their significant other also worked at the hospital, a different unit. They worked nights and they confessed to us that they bang in the supply closet when they both work. It just makes me laugh because I'm like, like more power to you. I mean, I wouldn't do that again. I can bang him.

At my house. But like, what? The hospital's gross. Are you doing it the second you get there? Because it's, you're touching patients, like, at least in the ICU, there are some nasty beetles in there. Yeah. You know, it's, there's some, you don't want to be passing that around, especially around your genitals. Good Lord. Can you imagine the types of UTIs you could get? Yeah.

There's a new, new crazy UTI and they like link it back to some type of hospital germ. And so you had to have had sex in the hospital or something crazy like a super bug. So no. When he told me that, I was like, what? Yeah, I have. I personally have never walked in on anyone having sex like anywhere. But it happens. I have patients.

Well, patients. I meant my coworkers. No, no, no. Not coworkers. I have also walked in on a patient and I was like, what the fuck?

Please stop. Yeah. And mine was, I couldn't even, I wasn't even upset because it was a chronic in the hospital all the time. And like your whole life's in there. So of course you still have a sex life. And so honestly, give them a do not disturb sign. Let them have some privacy. Your vitals are fine. Go at it. Mine was, I think I've said this on here before as well. The only one I had was I was a tech watching a

patient that had a lot of issues, psych issues, and their significant other came in with a condom filled with sperm and tried to artificially inseminate them. And just poor me, like 20 years old, I was like texting my charge nurse on the ASCOM. And please help me. I couldn't find a protocol. I don't know what to say. Terrifying.

Here's another one. The nurse who was sleeping with Dr. A moved on to Dr. B and got him to pay for her trip to Mexico. Go girl.

Now, every time Dr. B works a night shift, so does this nurse, and they disappear on break together doing God knows what. Dr. A was in Mexico during the same time as the above-mentioned nurse, but he went with a unit secretary and has also just announced that he's divorcing his wife. A crisis worker was also getting married recently, called off her engagement, and announced that she is allegedly pregnant with Dr. A's child.

Oh my God. Funny since she used to complain about how much she hated Dr. A. That's how it always goes, isn't it? The moment you start talking mad shit, I'm like, wait a moment. Tell me more.

A pair of nurses were seeing each other casually and had a bit of a situationship, but unfortunately it ended badly. Anyway, they had a fight in the locker room. Then she got a bit crazy, slapped him across the face at the nurse's station and emptied his backpack on the floor. They broke up and she was fired.

Sounds about right. That sounds about right. Well, and this is where people say, like, don't date within health care. I'm not saying to date within your unit necessarily. Yeah, it's we're talking the profession of health care. You know, if you're in a big city, there should be several hospitals. Right. But yeah, at your in your unit or with a doctor that you work with and like with doctors, it's a whole different ballgame because there's like call rooms and all this different trouble you can get into. Yeah.

But I'm sorry. But yeah, the if you date at a hospital, you have to deal with the fallout of a breakup at the same hospital. Like I'm fine if you do it because I'm sitting in the back drinking my tea with my pinky up. But I mean, it's obviously going to get a little a little hairy, you know, like that's it can be.

And also, you know, going to the lengths of slapping someone that you work with. Now you just violated policies as well, I'm sure. You assaulted someone. You assaulted somebody at work. Like, you're going to get in trouble. So let's not mix that much emotion into it. But then at the same time, it's like we're telling people, yeah, I think you could date coworkers essentially, but everything is fine.

It very much depends and also depends on how you handle anger. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Or disappointment.

Let's see this one. This one is r slash residency. How is it dating a nurse? I've been single for a couple of years, slowly getting back into the dating scene. I happen to know a few doctor nurse relationships, but also know a handful of residents that are absolutely against dating nurses. I'm pretty indifferent. For those against it, why? And for those of you dating a nurse, what's it like? Does their profession have any interference with your relationship?

Top comment says, an older friend gave me this advice in turn year. Quote, don't date a nurse unless you're serious about her because they're always serious about doctors. End quote. What? I don't know how I feel about that. That's silly. I feel like that's

A bit misogynistic, too. Like as if we just we just go seek in the big, big gold digger. I don't know what I don't know what that means. Yeah, most. Don't know if I like that. I'd say ninety nine percent of nurses I've talked to whenever the prospect of dating a physician comes up, they roll their eyes. Yeah. They like vomit in their mouth. They're not interested at all. And sometimes I think that's not all doctors. So don't come for me. But like if the doctor has an ego, that's where that comes from.

I don't know if a nurse is saying that. Yeah, nurses are always serious about doctor. What do you mean? First of all, sit down. Ew. Funny story. Long time ago in residency during one of my inpatient rotations, one of the nurses was flirty, friendly with me. So I went out on a date or two with her and we were texting, etc. Come to find out she's one of the hospitalist attending's girlfriend.

Well, the funny part is the attending was a young, fresh attending. He would have beers at a bar, sometimes bumping into each other, and he was quite friendly with me. When he found out, he was pissed with me as expected. It was hilarious when I gently reminded him that during our beer-fueled bar buddy brag sessions, he would regale me about the glory days ahead. What's regale?

I'm like impressed. Oh. Minting money as an attending and having so much better dating options since now you're making good money. And he would brag about dating so many of the nurses that I lost track. I told him apologizing that I had no idea that she was his girlfriend and assumed she was just one flower in your garden of plenty. That sounds like an older person. Like, I don't know who speaks like that. Yeah. But I get what they're saying. Emily Dickinson over there. I said, what? Yeah.

Yeah, that happens a lot. I mean, it's there's a lot of people that become physicians because they love medicine and all those. And there's some people that like the power that it affords because you're you're a high status member of society. If you're a doctor, it's always been that way. Yeah. And a lot of people will use that status to get the things that maybe they missed out on high school or missed out in college or whatever. Yeah.

But it sounded like he had many people he was dating. And when it came to one specific person, he's like, actually, I'm mad about that. Yeah. Let's see.

what would you say some red flags versus green flags are if you could come up with any for um health care health care specifically like for instance maybe a red flag is they don't understand it's more like cons versus pros like they don't understand why i might need to sleep in or or like the famous thing i hear is well you only work three shifts a week i work five shifts a week yeah i'd

I thought you were going to go to the meme of the boyfriend who's jealous or upset because the nurse sees penises all week. I've seen them. You're good. Yeah, I promise she's not enjoying herself. Also, it just comes back to it's a body. We all have bodies. And when you are a healthcare professional, that is what you see is a body. I am not judging anyone's

private parts anyone's that's not what we do so when you have someone who's insecure like an insecure relationship and they're worried about how many penises or boobies you're gonna see get real and once you've seen 15 or 16 of them you've seen them all you've seen them all yeah they all look the same even though they all look different not a ton of variation there yeah it's it's

It's hilarious. Or people who think they're being too emotional after a shift. Huge red flag, in my opinion. If you're dating health care worker or non-health care worker, these are just red flags. Someone who's not allowing you to express your emotion after something that you deem drainful, drainful, draining. Sorry, my words are crazy today.

Yeah, it's not worth your time. I mean, come on. We need to have some emotional intelligence here. Is it in the room with us? Let someone be vulnerable with you like that.

Yeah. Yeah. You would just need somebody who has some patience and understanding. And if you haven't, you can't just expect your significant other to just have that by default. You need to express to them and say exactly what you need from them. You know, they can't read your mind. Right. Communication. If they refuse to give you that after you've expressly stated it, yeah, then it becomes an issue. Agreed.

I think like green flags though with this would be like packing you snacks for work or like you come home and there's like a little goodie basket, whatever you like, either candy, snacks, like a book, you know, bath scents and things like that. Like showing you that they're going out of their way. It doesn't have to be expensive, but showing you like they're thinking about you. They know you just had a hard shift and here's something to take your mind off of it. Right. And you can usually tell...

If you want an insider secret, how much they text you at work. If they text you a lot, it was probably a pretty good day. If you hear from them like once, just have the wine ready. Yeah. Have the whatever ready. Yeah. Because they probably got their ass kicked. Oh, yeah. That's a great way to put it. What does Tim say? Pimp? Yeah. Was it a plug in my phone day or no? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just on their way home, ask what the percentage on their phone is and act accordingly. Yeah.

There's like some funny stories that were written in and this one was quite long, so I'm just going to break it down for you. But it said, my boyfriend fainted when I described a wound back.

And what I was what we had to do with it. And like to me, I'm like a wound vac out of everything that we do. That's what made you faint. Yeah. Like, I mean, I'm judging you just a little bit. It is like the biggest open wound you'll see in the hospital. But there's no by the time you get it on there and you're just changing it, there's no like real gore or anything. There's hardly any bleeding.

No, I love wound vacs. Yeah. And usually they can get, you know, the infected ones are bad, but that's more of a smell thing than anything. But like her explaining to him what a wound vac was is what made him pass out. Yeah. So it's just interesting. Like, I'm like, you didn't even, you weren't even in there to smell it. Yeah. Like you didn't even get to see it. And you're like, oh, like that would be, that would be kind of a bummer when you can't like, if you like talking about the gross stuff, which I do, I'm like, I'm a pimple popper. I love pimples.

poppin zits and shit i love wounds if i wasn't an icu bedside i would go maybe wound care i love that shit so i want to talk about it so imagine like you're passing out every time i'm like yeah it beats up if you had a weak stomach or or constitution um dating a healthcare professional says um

Oh, where'd it go? Here it is. I dated a surgeon who diagnosed me during sex.

Can you get work off your brain just for one second, please? What was the diagnosis? It didn't say. It was like a jugular vein issue. Yeah, like some JVD. JVD. Or like, I don't know. Was it something as small as halitosis? Oh, no. It didn't say. That'd be a nightmare. I have heard like just a little funny like memes and stuff on the internet, like dating doctors and you go on one date, you end up, you come home with a diagnosis and not with them. It's like, um.

How do I feel about that? But yeah, I mean, there's always drama that could happen, which we already talked about a little bit. But yeah.

Here, let me find this other story real quick. All right. This next story is from r slash nursing. It says dating within the medical field. Listen, judge me all you'd like, but please be kind. I want to date someone else in the medical field. I have struggled to fully connect with partners who do not work in a hospital and understand what we experience. My longest relationship was with a med student several years back, and I enjoyed having someone to talk to.

medicine with. I know better than to shit where I eat and eat where I shit. So I'm not flirting with a coworker or a covering or covering or anyone. I don't know what a covering is. So my question is, where can I organically meet somebody who works in healthcare? All of my friends outside of work are in arts or academics. I've never met another healthcare worker in the wild. You

Even though I live fairly close to multiple major hospitals in a larger city. Again, please be kind. This is my first ever Reddit post. Well, now we know where you can meet. Well, let me tell you. Down to date. But it's true. I mean, I wanted to use this as an ad space because I believe in it. I think that's really cool that we now have something even more niched down for fellow health care workers. I can tell you. You'll go right around 730 in the morning.

Go to the nearest hospital. Find the nearest place that serves breakfast and alcohol. Brunch. And catch Night Shift coming off their shift and you'll meet somebody. You will meet somebody. And maybe a good way to catch their attention is buy them a pitcher of mimosas. There you go. Night Shift loves mimosas.

This one says, I met my wife while I was sitting in the cath lab break room watching Jerry Springer. I'm an ex-Ray Tech, and she's now a retired RN. Six months later, we had our first date. A year later, we got married. 23rd anniversary is September. I joined her in retirement in 12 months, 16 days. Cute. I love it. Yeah. That's so cute. Yeah. And I like the...

Cross department. Yeah. Cross discipline. Yeah. Because again, you're going to get people who understand what you're going through, but it doesn't have to be the same unit in case it goes south. Yeah. Because I think a lot of people assume that we met in nursing school and we didn't. We met before nursing school, but we went to nursing school together. Yeah. Going to nursing school was a conscious decision we made.

After meeting, which was one of the best decisions we've ever made. Yeah. I met my therapist boyfriend on Tinder. I only date health care workers and artsy people. Like if you haven't seen a body bag or guided someone away from their gun, we ain't going to click. Can't be talking about spreadsheets and office parties at dinner with me. LOL. And that's kind of what I was getting to earlier. Yeah.

You know, for me, I personally need someone to relate to me. So I would have to date someone within the health care field. I would also extend this to animal nurses, animal doctors. They still understand patients. But what they really understand is family. Yeah, they really do, because that's who their patients can't talk. Well, and I was going to say on the on the last one in it applies to this as well. We we don't.

identify super hard with being nurses. We love being nurses. We love taking care of people. But there are some nurses that just it is their identity that's in their DNA. And they're going to be much more likely to want to be with somebody else who understands them. So I think you see a lot of that where they're like, no, I want to I'm seeking out a health care professional because, you know, if that's part of your identity, it'd be nice to have somebody that understands who you are as a person. Very true. That's a really good point.

So this one says, this is 50-50 for me. My husband and I have been together for 20 years and I've been in the healthcare field for 16 of those and he's been in hospitality for all of it. Some days, I won't lie, I would love to come home and just be able to talk to him about some of the shit I've seen and dealt with.

and just have someone there who gets it. Most of the time, though, it's nice having other things to talk about and hearing about his day. I have my work friends and a therapist for the worst of things. I don't know, to each their own. Whatever works for you, I totally get it, which I completely agree with as well. Yeah, I think this is a little off subject. I think what would be impossible to date as if I was a therapist, counselor, psychiatrist, therapist,

Like anything behavioral, because I feel like you can't help but just diagnose the whole time. You know what I mean? I don't know how you would shut that part of your brain off. But anything behavioral is human. So how do you, you know what I mean? You probably, anyone you could come up with a behavioral psych evaluation for. Yeah. I mean, if anybody had a laundry list of behaviors.

characteristics or like a constellation of personality traits that they require, it would be them. Yeah. And yeah, that'd be hard. That would be really hard. I personally can't imagine. But one thing I would want to say is like dating health care workers will never be boring. No. Like we always have a story to talk to each other about. Always. And yeah, yeah, it has to do with work a lot of times.

Some people would say that's bringing work home. I personally don't agree with that. I mean, it is bringing work home, but in general,

It's healing for me personally. Yeah. You know, I like having you to chat with about all of our stuff. And again, it's never boring. Yeah. Both of us are very much not people that can sit still for long. Like a podcast kind of kills us because we're sitting for so long. But like we both wanted a job where we could be like walking around doing all these things and then we get to see all these things too. So it's just never boring. Yeah, absolutely. A little bit of built in adrenaline as well.

Well, that's all I have for you guys today. I just wanted to introduce you to down to date the app and it is for healthcare workers. I believe they started it with just women physicians looking for other people in healthcare, but now it has expanded to all healthcare workers. So definitely go check them out. The link to their app will be in the description. Make sure to give them a follow and please send us your funny stories, whether it be, I like

reading listener write-ins. So whether it be a dating story, a crazy drama story, confessions, or even an embarrassing Newgrounds story, make sure you're sending them to Frenemas, AskGroudPacks.com. Again, the email will be in the description. But that's all I got for you. Cool. Enjoy. Be safe. No dick pics. We don't want unsolicited dick pics here. Bye, guys. See ya.

you