The scenario: I had kicked it with this girl a few times, and we had sex for the first time one Sunday. It was a great time, and the next day she texted me saying she really wanted to see me and asking if I was free the coming Saturday, “Yo I really want to see you this week but I start another class on Wednesday I was wondering if you would be down to hang Saturday afternoon if your not busy.”

Seems like she’s really feeling me, right?

We keep texting back and forth all week. Nothing noteworthy except she texted me Wednesday saying she got out of class early, and I said “you can come over if you’re not tryin to wait til Saturday to kick it.” It felt right given how our rapport was going, but in hindsight maybe I was making myself too available.

Anyway, Friday after work I call her up to chat & confirm our plans for hanging out the next day. The mood is great, and when I mention hanging out the next day she says “you’re not trying to flake, are you?” I laugh and say no, and she says she’ll hit me up when her class ends in the afternoon. We chat for a little and say bye.

The next day, Saturday, I hear nothing from her all afternoon. As the hours roll by, I was debating whether to text her “hey how’s it going?” or “come over at 2” or something like that. Because we had spoken the day before about plans, I decided to leave the ball in her court. I thought it would come across as needy or eager to ping her to see what her status was.

It’s crazy. We had just talked the day before about plans, and as hours roll by, it becomes apparent that she’s flaking. My “go to” in this type of situation is to say, “Hey babe I didn’t hear from you so I went ahead and made other plans.” I didn’t do this because our plans were 100% certain, I thought, and I thought it would be really mean to do that instead of waiting.

Eventually it’s like 6pm and I texted her, “Hey babe how’s it going?” She texts me back a while later, “Im on my way to the city now I will call when I charge my phone.” I got no call from her. Damn homie.

I felt salty as hell. I felt like our relationship was at a high point and then she flaked on me hard, not even with a head’s up text to say she was changing her plans. My normal habit here is just to drop a girl – not initiate any text or phone calls, but instead let her make amends and win me back. While this is a principled approach, this typically results in the relationship just ending.

The resolution: The next day I text her: “Hey xxxx I’m not sure whose fault it is we didn’t kick it yesterday, but we should talk about it. I’m free later on if you wanna go for a walk.”

She texts me back “yes let’s do it i’m taking a nap so I will text you later.”

Later on she texts me to see if she can come over. I say no, I’m busy now, let’s hang out tomorrow. Tactically this was the right thing to do – I needed to push her away a little by saying no at this point.

The next day we hang go for a long walk. I don’t bring up her flaking because I want to see how she handles it. She was acting really nice, which seemed to me like she was compensating and trying to avoid talking about having flaked.

At one point we sit down and I ask her what happened on Saturday. She tells me things like about how she didn’t have a ride back to the city, and that she texted me later anyway, etc. She’s generally giving short answers, avoiding eye contact, and acting sheepish. One option I thought of was to keep pushing the questions and putting pressure on her, in hopes of getting an honest answer, but I didn’t want to come across as controlling and emotional. I also considered just leaving her right then and there on the basis that her flaking on me was unacceptable, and her explanation was unsatisfactory.

Instead I talked about how I treat my friends well and that’s what I expected from her. I told her how I’m busy, and that as excited as I was to see her, I had other plans I could have made. I tell her that she’s always going to get more attention from me by being good than by being bad. I try to be as positive and constructive as possible, so that we stay together and avoid this kind of thing in the future.

And then once we talked about everything we kissed and made up.

This happened a couple weeks ago, and things are going well. We’ve had some fun out and about, we’ve got our inside jokes and cute moments, and the sex is good.

I still feel myself get a pang of anxiety when she shows up late to things. I’m still not sure whether she flaked on me to fuck with me or what, and I feel myself getting distrustful and overly emotional when she says she’s coming by at 3:30 and instead comes over at 4.

Some lessons learned:

  • The afternoon when I was waiting around for her, I used the time to call up some friends & hang with roommates. Speaking with other people about other things really helped me not be so pissed off.

  • The day after the flake, I called up a hot girl in my social circle and asker her perspective. She said that what probably happened is: the girl was expecting me to text her in the morning, and she probably felt like I flaked on her because I did nothing on Saturday to actually set a firm time & place to meet. This was a revelation to me – it had not occurred to me that I had been the flaky one, and it made me feel better to hear this.

  • My other friend told me that this doesn’t really count as a “flake.” A flake is only when 2 people have cemented plans to the point of having a specific time and place to meet up. This means it was still partly my responsibility to reach out to the girl sometime on Saturday instead of waiting for her to initiate.

  • I have a habit of dumping girls as soon as things go wrong. I really hate the idea of getting played, so sometimes I act defensively and leave when I feel I’m not being treated right. I don’t think this is a mature attitude, so I’m working on being more patient and forgiving. However, I’m still trying to make sure I’m not being too nice and opening myself up to being played.

Would love to hear your thoughts seddit.