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People on here have been commenting a lot about women not showing up for dates, which does sound frustrating, but apparently they're not showing up for each other either. I was reminded of this phenomenon by this Substack post, about women preparing home cooked meals for each other in their homes, then having people not show up last second. So my initial theory that maybe young women are scared of men from outside their social circle is not the main thing going on.
What's going on?
I tried going to a local ACX meetup, and it was fine, but after six people initially wanted to do it, only two besides myself ended up coming. Meanwhile, my daughter's pre-K teacher has invited herself to my house. She called today, and went on about a "mandatory home visit", next week, with highly inflexible weekday hours. I did not like it. She said she was going to drop off paperwork and meet my daughter. I said that I would rather bring my daughter to pick up the paperwork. We fought about it. I was perhaps more prickly than is altogether advisable when speaking to a child's teacher. I tried researching how this could be considered an appropriate thing to, not offer, not ask, but mandate. Something, something, building trust, Head Start, maybe the norms of black Americans? Clearly, they have the wrong order of things. If I trust you, I will invite you over. If I don't trust you, I will want to meet at your office. Even social workers know this. Is this related to parents not actually coming to their appointments somehow? It's juxtaposed in literature withattendance, more than understanding.
Also, meanwhile, my older daughter hasn't been invited to anyone's house. We haven't managed to invite anyone to our house. It seems terribly fraught somehow. I mostly do things with one or occasionally two other families with a stay at home mom and a mom who works two mornings a week, respectively.
Also, just because I found it odd, here's Keturah complaining about a situation where someone invited her into the hostess's home, and Keturah came, and then they judged each other for their stance on shoes, that Keturah wanted to keep them on, and the hostess wanted her to take them off.
I liked the culture of Georgians (Kartveli) and Albanians that homes are sacred, guests are from God, and that guests and hosts have important mutual roles and responsibilities.
What's the sociology here? Why are Americans like this, despite seeming deeply unhappy about it?
I'll just say that I have never once had a woman not show up for a date after agreeing to a time and a place. Every other popular complaint seems valid, but this one is fake as far as I can tell.
If you are saying you've never been out and out stood up, my experience tracks with yours. But are you including late cancellations?
There's a gradient that goes from
2 and 4 are the most common variations. 0 (the date actually happening) happens slightly more often than 5, but less than 1-4. 1 sometimes later results in 0, but more often leads to 2 or 3.
At this point, I am forced to assume that 2, 3, and 4 are her double-booking and going on a date with a hotter guy, or having met a hotter guy in the interim. 5a is anxiety, 5b is, I can only assume, some kind of vindictive game.
Regarding 5, one of my stranger dating experiences was the sole time I was truly stood up. She confirmed an hour beforehand, I arrived at the bar, and she failed to show. No excuses or apologies or claims of a medical crisis, just silence. No response to a "are you on your way" text. I had my beer and left.
Later that day, I texted something along the lines of "wtf happened? Did you die in a car wreck?" She actually responded and said that meeting me at the bar felt too high pressure and she felt uncomfortable. I (flippantly) asked if meeting me the next night at a house I was housesitting would be more comfortable, and she responded yes. As planned, the next night she showed up at a total stranger's house to meet a second total stranger who didn't even own the house.
Baffling.
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Can confirm I’ve experienced all of these multiple times as well, although I don’t think I’ve ever been left hanging at an outside venue like a bar or restaurant, since my strategy for most my adult life has been having chicks meet me outside my building or in its lobby (or me picking her up for something like a pool date).
Given increased tiresomeness with female flakiness overtime, I’ve only gotten more ardent about sticking to the strategy. If I’m going to get left sitting there like a jackass, it at least better be in the comfort of my home/hotel/AirBnB.
5a and 5b may be more similar than you think. Girls keep hospital selfies in their photo roll in case they need to bust them out for an alibi such as flaking/ghosting. The outcome of both is the same, wasting as much of your time as possible and leaving you twisting in the wind, making it maximally difficult for you to make other plans at the last minute. It’s a form of merriment for them. Some of them will even brag about it in their profiles: “just here to waste your time.”
Most “amusing” version of this is when it’s near the time of your date or already past it, a girl tells you she’s getting ready and for you to keep an eye out for when she is so you can call her a rideshare. She gives you status updates throughout before finally disappearing. Like an NFL team trying to chew up the clock in the 4th quarter to protect a lead, or a soccer team faking injuries and moving as slowly as possible during stoppage time:
You: let me know when you’re ready so I can send you that Uber at [agreed upon time for date]
*delay*
Girl: hey im getting ready i’ll lyk when I am ☺️
You: cool
*an hour passes*
You: how’s it coming along
*twenty minutes pass*
Girl: great! just had to do my hair, almost ready!
You: sounds good
*thirty minutes pass*
You: almost done?
*twenty minutes pass*
Her: yes! just putting the final touches on my makeup 😘
You: great
*fifteen minutes pass*
You: ready for that uber?
*SHE GONE*
However, sometimes after lengthy delays girls do still follow-through and show-up, so it can be hard to tell ex-ante with certainty if you have a 5b on your hands or not. Gotta play it cool the whole time, lest she gets the ick.
You send ubers to women? I'll offer to pick someone up, I'll split food and drinks but cover the whole tip, or cover the first round or two myself, or some combination of paying for 55 to 80% of costs incurred. Sending cars for them seems like playing into a gross fantasy.
Also, odd that women are so willing to give out their addresses on a first date when 9 out of 7 of them will be date-raped at a frat party while make 70¢ on the dollar.
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My wife's sister flakes on dating app guys a lot, which I see as a spectator since I'm living next door to her. Generally more out of pure flakiness, hypochondria and being loathe to leave her K-Dramas than due to swapping to chads or whatever. From what I've seen she's a chronic #2er, but I feel that the more time I've spent with female friends and/or involved tangentially in my Wife's social circle talking about online dating there's just a ton of genuine flakiness and people massively overrate the whole double-booking thing. Maybe I'm overindexing for Asian, non-promiscuous girls who trend a lot more KHHV than serial daters but I know a lot of very timid, passive girls towards dating who'll psych themselves for essentially no reason.
A few times women have been honest and said it was because there was another guy they were more interested in, "sorry, I don't know how online dating works."
I told them it works exactly how they're doing it, just typically with less honesty.
Ah, the selective disappearance of women’s supposedly superior communication and social skills, and ability to read the room.
They know how online dating works, all right. It’s just that a lot of how it works is women jerking men around and wasting men’s time and energy.
"A real man doesn't complain."
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I swear almost all Zoomer women have debilitating anxiety. When my department used to go out to lunch every week, I had multiple female Zoomer coworkers ask me to order for them, because they had too much anxiety to order from a stranger. They eventually began to complain if we went anywhere that wouldn’t let you order from a kiosk or iPad, since I and my other older coworkers refused to coddle them in that way. Even the ones who could handle ordering their own food couldn’t handle phone calls. They’d all, without exception, rather cancel an event than spend five minutes trying to work out the details over the phone. And this is even with their friends and coworkers, not people they don’t know. If they can’t figure everything out via text and email, they’d rather skip and stay home. It’s insane.
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