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I've stopped using Hinge and can't bring myself to try again because every time I do, the same thing happens; I get a reasonable number of matches and likes, frankly more Likes than make sense. I'll have a short conversation, ask for a date, get a yes. Then the day of the date, she bails, sometimes with apologies, always without suggesting an alternate date. If I ask for another date, she says yes, next week rolls around and she bails the day of. This cycle continues until I take the hint and stop asking. I do not know how to get this to stop happening. I also don't get why I don't hear this complaint from other people; typically they complain about getting no matches or not hearing back after the first date.
I've considered completely cutting people off after the first flake. I've considered very tepidly expressing my disappointment at being flaked on. I've considered talking beforehand about how often I get flaked on and asking please please please if they don't want to turn up for a date, then just say that instead of saying yes and then flaking, because I find it way more painful than a "no." None of these strike me as good ideas.
And I live in fucking Chicago of all places.
Take a break from online dating whenever you need to.
Yes, if they don't suggest a new date, say ok and unmatch after a day or so.
In real life events are a much better way to meet people to date anyway. I say that as someone that is a veteran of online dating.
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It's interesting to me that you seem to have better luck than me at first (likes/matches/conversations), but worse after that. I get some likes/matches/conversations (certainly not more than makes sense), but once we agree on a time and place, I can't remember the last time it didn't work out.
Wildly speculative theory: you're more attractive than I am (hence, more matches) but doing something offputting after that. Rather than do the confrontational thing and say no to you, or even unmatch, rather than be decent enough to be decisive at all, they just flake etc. Typical female behavior, and understandable enough, given the fear of anger from anything more direct.
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Dealing with female passivity, flakiness, and fickleness, the female inability and indifference to uphold their word, is a common source of frustration for men that transcends time and space when it comes to dating.
Even after carpet-bombing messages on social media and/or OLD, cold-approach grinding, or the stars aligning such that your social circle gifts you with a prospect, you still need to perform the scheduling battleship and text-message jiu-jitsu to get a given girl to agree to a date. And even after she agrees, in the hours leading up to a date, it’s very possible she’ll cancel, ghost, or request to reschedule. Of course, if you call her out for her lack of accountability and trustworthiness, you’d be the weird anti-social asshole questioning her Wonderfulness, Lived Experience, and Emotional Truth.
There are no magic words, no "one weird trick"s. Check-in too little prior to a date and she might bail under the excuse that she didn’t hear from you, supposedly presuming you lost interest or that the date was off. Check-in too much and it might give her the ick, that you’re too insecure, obsessed, or pressuring.
As the time of the date approaches, aside from being late and/or flaking, a lot of girls will also exploit the fact that you’re basically a hostage waiting for them. At the last minute, a lot of them will try to re-plan the date such that you have to spend maximal time and money, and with minimal chances of her putting out. “Actually, can we meet at [expensive restaurant] instead?”
A lot of them will claim to run late with minimal communication and then cancel while you’re continuing to wait for them. Unfortunately or fortunately, a lot of them will also claim to run late with minimal communication before showing up. This is why I angle for the first date to occur at my place: Logistics to get the bang, more cost-effective, I can wait at my place instead of having gone somewhere if she’s running late, “running late,” cancels and/or ghosts.
The only real defense for a man is playing the numbers game and having enough prospects to diversify. It’s less devastating if your Tuesday night flakes when you still have Wednesday and Thursday night dates scheduled with other girls. Easier to drop your Saturday night if she plays hardball and insists on meeting at a restaurant, when you have a Sunday afternoon. Eventually one will come through.
Furthermore, one can schedule two dates the same day (e.g., 1PM and 7PM), such that if the earlier cancels you at least have the latter one. If the latter one cancels later on, at least you had the earlier one. If things go poorly with the 1PM, you still have the 7PM. If things go well with the 1PM at a slow pace, you can cancel on the 7PM. If things go really well with the 1PM at a fast pace, you can escort her out and go forth with the 7PM date.
Staggering dates is also an option. For example, scheduling an early afternoon date with one girl at 1PM, and the other at 3PM. If the 1PM girl shows up, great, and you cancel on the 3PM. If the 1PM flakes you might still have the 3PM.
One can also double book (or more), scheduling two dates at the same time with different girls. This way it helps increase the chances that one of them shows up. Once you have a fair degree of confidence that one will show-up, you can cancel on the other. Although, meanwhile, the one who you think will show-up might just flake on you at the last moment. The more GigaChad maneuver would be to have both show-up, where they can fight over you and/or you go for the threesome.
Canceling and/or floating reschedules on girls is risky, as they’ll act like you violated the Geneva Convention in offending their Princess Complex (even though they wouldn’t have given the slightest of fucks to flake on you), which could lead to you losing a hard-earned prospect.
There’s no reason to go easy and Be A Decent Person and/or Be a Gentleman. Young women are more than okay with wasting your time, money, energy. Not only are they largely indifferent to your time, a lot of them put a negative value on it. Wasting your time, money, energy, feeds their vanity and sense of validation. Many women will brag about it: “Only here to be spoiled," “Buy me food and tell me I’m pretty," “Just here to waste your time,” reads many a female online dating profile.
Young women are basically bratty children when it comes to scheduling and flaking. It’s essentially a survival tactic if you want to see a girl again, to bang her ASAP. This way she at least has skin in the game and will be more of a teammate in scheduling and coordinating.
There, fixed that for you.
Consider time and space transcended; this message has reached you from the land of married men.
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There are a lot of people that haven't experienced the online dating market recently and don't understand the bad behaviour from all corners. People seem to be aware of what guys are doing (because it's socially acceptable to signal boost that type of behaviour), but there isn't an understanding of how that behaviour evolved, and how some women are quite happy to match with 50+ men and try to connect with the most attractive one even though they have no way of ever giving any of those men the attention required to develop something meaningful. Even girls new to the platform will match with many well meaning, reasonably attractive and social men, only to dump them (flake/ghost) once a handsome lothario enters their queue.
Everyone needs to stay away from apps unless they are in the top 10-20% of physical attractiveness. Even then...
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If you are looking for commiseration, you have it. That sucks dude. Getting stood up is the fucking worst. That said, if you're looking for advice, here's my $.02
What you're seeing is the real-time adaptation of women against common dating advice for men. This is constantly going on, any standard advice faces adaptations against it. The standard issue advice given to men for online dating for years now has been text as little as possible before setting up an in-person date, because texting without getting a date is degrading and demoralizing and wastes your effort. If she says no to a date, you stop texting her.
The adaptation on the part of women has been to accept the date immediately, and repent at leisure. Because men have stopped chatting before a date, but women want to get to know you more before agreeing to a date, the strategy is to say yes to the date and just cancel it if she isn't feeling it. Which gets us back to where things were before men adopted the strategy of asking for a date immediately.
So if you want to avoid getting stood up, you have to up your texting game. You have to try for more engagement prior to meeting in person. Wait longer before asking her out. Have more interesting conversations before meeting. Have her really wanting to meet you.
Exchanging text messages is not a way to get to know anyone, and for people who apparently want to be texted, women are singularly bad at contributing to a text conversation. I do not know what being "interesting" means in this context. The only thing I can imagine is generic faux-deep prompt questions about if you can ever can't literally really. Whenever I see examples of successful online dating text conversations, it looks like two animals grunting at each other.
Strong disagree. The last few girlfriends I've had we're all from dating apps and having good text game with them prior to the first date was essential. Chat with them, tell them good morning, tell them good night (optional kissy emoji), ask them what they're up, exchange pics of pets or hikes you've done recently, send pictures of whatever you made for dinner (if it looks appetizing), and--critically--send them memes. Send them memes, make them laugh. And yes, you absolutely can get to know someone a bit before you meet in person and if they feel like they know you a bit, you've made them laugh, and given them a peak into your life, they'll be way less likely to flake.
You two have very different ideas of 'getting to know someone'. In one sense, it's understanding a somewhat complicated intellectual character, one's motives, the way one approaches one's life. In another, it's one's hobbies, the kind of simple jokes you like, little personal quirks, and which of the 10 big classes of twitter or instagram user you are.
But most people aren't primarily looking for an intellectual peer in a partner, different strokes.
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Agreed to all of that, but you still have to do it to signal that you're interested in her.
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Maybe send a brief message on the day-of saying "looking forward to meeting you tonight" or something?
I do this. It apparently serves as a reminder to them that they should cancel the date, since it's typically immediately after this that they cancel.
Beat them to the punch and send them a brief message on the day-of to cancel.
I'm joking of course but psychology and dating is so counterintuitive it would probably work.
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Bummer.
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Something along those lines is common, in my experience. It's a bit discouraging, but the subset of people will get progressively interested in you gets progresively smaller.
Total people on the app > people who will see your profile > people who will like you > people who will actually respond > people who agree to a date > dates that actually happen
For a lot of people, online dating is nerve-wracking, leading to flakiness. And most people will prioritize other events or commitments above a first date with someone they've never met, leading to further flakiness.
Just stick with it. You're going to have to talk to a lot of people before you click with someone.
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Can you post screenshots of the convos?
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Have you tried pushing for a short date the same day? No movies, no dinners, just a lunch or a coffee "to see if we click". If the girl vacillates, tell her you're not interested in window shoppers. This way it's them who get to hear a "no".
These are the typical dates that get bailed on, and no one is ever available that same day. The only thing I don't do is add in a cliché, since "seeing if we click" is the entire point of a date. That's like saying I need to "get rolling" because I am not currently where you are.
...am I supposed to add excessive clichés to my conversations?
No, no clichés, just treat it as another filter: if she's not willing to make time for you the same day, she's not interested, no need to plan a date.
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I'd assume it's common for dating app women, when they do set up dates, to set up several and last minute cancel all but one.
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Another one I've heard is the matches are of a poor quality in the sense that people don't like the people they're meeting up with even if they look good/decent which leads to cycling through a massive amount of people, which is exhausting and dispiriting.
I've not heard of your complaint as a recurring issue. I wonder if is a Chicago thing or a you thing.
That's a woman problem on dating apps. A man getting that many dates with women he doesn't want to date long-term but look good/decent is a successful dater.
It's an issue for moderately attractive (composite) men as well.
Believe it or not but men get tired of meeting new women as well. Not in the sense that they're uninterested in the sex but all the other shit. Then it turns into a grind of going through tons of people and the sinking realisation that your market value might not be as high as you would like, despite managing to score regularly.
People say that men are more ready to date down than women but that is a truth with modifications. For example, I strongly doubt that any of my friends would seriously date a woman without at least a bachelor in a decent field, or they'd have to be spectacularly attractive and even then I'm not so sure.
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I've heard of men who swipe right on everything then report disappointment at dating many women less attractive than they'd like, but they don't want to risk possible ego damage by swiping only on attractive women and seeing few or no matches.
Shrug. I see matches with attractive women, they just never say anything. Or agree to dates then flake, as I said above. Once more, dates actually happening would be a huge achievement for me.
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