Hi everyone. I feel like I’m in a sticky situation with this guy I’m interested in.

We were supposed to go on our fourth date yesterday when he cancelled abruptly. Might I mention our previous dates have been extremely high effort, with multiple locations, lasting a long time and him paying. This kind of behavior isn’t super unusual for him (he takes long periods of time to text back and just can do things that make me think he doesn’t care about my time).

For the last couple of instances I have just been passive aggressive in response to (what feels like) his carelessness, however that strategy is obviously ineffective considering the behaviors continue to be repeated. I am worried it’s a “He knows what he’s doing to you/how he’s making you feel, he just doesn’t care” situation. I’ll tack onto that by saying although he can be careless he still continues to reach out to me and tries to make plans. I also mentioned that it feels like he’s careless but he swears he’s just busy with work, which may be totally true but doesn’t mean I can’t feel like I’m getting disrespected either.

Here’s where I’m conflicted on what to do. I know high value women have standards and boundaries that they adhere to and don’t put up with if they’re violated. In these types of situations is there a way to effectively communicate these standards/boundaries to men and let them know that their behaviors are not ok and to keep them in check early? Or is it pointless to try to get a man to see these boundaries and is it better if to just drop them? Should I text him and say something along the lines of “Hey I don’t really appreciate getting cancelled on last minute and the lack of communication” or will this just go in one ear and out the other.

Like I said I haven’t really explicitly laid my boundaries out in the past and instead have just become passive aggressive and I feel like I need to set some things straight on this behavior not being ok but am not sure if it’s even worth it and if I will just end up looking like a fool.

Also I haven’t responded to the cancellation text he sent me because I don’t want to just excuse his behavior and say it’s ok when it’s not. I considered not responding at all but figured I’d check in on the sub to see if it’s worth trying to lay out the ground rules at this point. Also the cancellation text included rescheduling for next week.