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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.
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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