What to Do When a Girl Flakes On Your Date

Ah! The dreaded flakes. Nobody likes when a girl flakes on you. Especially when you ran good text game, had a solid vibe, and qualified that she was up to your standards. Maybe she even promised to show up on the day of the date (and you made sure to set up a solid date).

You’re starting to get ready for the date. Getting your bottle of wine and some glasses handy. Picking out what you’re going to wear. Then she hits you with something like “Hey. I got called in for work. Can we please reschedule?” Or even worse, she just ghosts when you try to confirm on the day of.

First, it’s important to know that flakes are just a part of online dating. They happen to even the best of us.

With that said… What should be your mindset around flakes? How should you tackle a flakey girl? How should you prepare for flakes? How to prevent getting flaked on in the first place? This article is going to tackle all of these important topics.

3 Tips to Preventing a Girl From Flaking

To start off with, how would you prevent a flake? It’s important to note that no matter what you do, you can’t prevent all flakes. Girls have a life, and contrary to some other bad advice that’s out there, the majority of flakes are actually at least semi-legitimate. Truth be told, you’re just some random guy, and until she’s met you (and probably had sex with you), you’re not a high priority in her life.

That said, if you want to do everything you can to reduce the chances of a girl flaking, these are the 3 factors matter the most:

1. Investment: In layman terms, investment translates to how much energy she is willing to put into your interaction, meeting up with you, and jumping through hoops (either in your texting or when dealing with complexities of meeting up). The simplest indicator for this would basically be how easy it is to make plans with her. If she jumps at the idea of the date, she’s pretty invested, and vice versa.
2. Time: The investment needs to happen over time. If she is extremely willing to come over that night, by all means, DO IT! But, more often than not, she may be invested on one day and be a bit closed off the next. This can happen entirely because of external factors, since girls are much more emotional than men.

The way investment gets solidified is over time. If you text back and forth for only a short period of time one night and make plans after that, she may agree enthusiastically. But, this leaves a higher risk of her flaking, since she isn’t really thinking about you after you’ve hard-closed for the meet (I will explain more in detail how to avoid this later).

 

 

3. Type of investment: The investment needs to be a combination of logical, emotional, and sexual. Think of it as setting frames. You can set frames on the date itself if your game is decent, but the best way to do this over text before the date itself is to have good frame control and use the we-frame.

What to Do When She Flakes

Let’s assume that these 3 steps were followed to the T, and the girl still flakes on the day of. Again, no matter how good you are, this WILL happen. What should you do? These following mindsets and tactics have helped me drastically in dealing with flakes.

1. Remember, she doesn’t owe you: She doesn’t owe you a meet up. No matter how much you think she may have been into you and that she may have been “The ONE” and you’d have had a great time if you met… She. Doesn’t. Owe. You. Again, due to female psychology, women’s emotions can change drastically in a matter of seconds. Never take it personally until she has met you at least THREE times.
2. External factors: There are literally unlimited reasons why she may have flaked/ghosted. Remember, these are external factors – they are NOT in your control. Maybe something truly urgent came up. Maybe she found a better date proposal from a guy who wants to have a relationship frame with her from the beginning and is willing to buy her a super expensive meal. Maybe a previous “fuck boi” hit her up, and she wants to chase his validation since that’s “The ONE” in her mind. Maybe she may have just had a drunk hookup last night, regretted it and may have just taken a temporary hiatus from men in general. The one consistent theme here: there’s nothing you could do about any of these. Do not get butthurt and do not get upset with her.
3. Backup plans: Whenever you can, have a backup plan. Again, as a guy she’s neer met, you are not her main priority. So, she shouldn’t be your number one priority, either. One great approach is to double book, with the expectation that one of them will flake. If they both end up following through, then make an emergency excuse and politely offer to reschedule. Don’t feel bad about flaking on one of them, because women reschedule all the time.
4. Have hobbies/passion: If you can’t set up backup plans, have good hobbies you can tend to if you get a flake. Go do a second work out. Watch a movie. Go over to a guy friend’s place and split a 6 pack. It’s easier said than done to NOT take it personally but if you put yourself down too much, you’re going to unnecessarily overanalyze yourself and your text game.
5. Be better, NOT bitter: Getting upset, angry, or otherwise reactive serves no purpose but to crash your mental state. You may want to curse at the girl and call her a bitch, but it just starts a dangerous feedback loop where you may expect a flake from any lead you ever gather online. Not to mention, if you talk to girls, one of the major reasons they ghost is because they’ve had bad experiences with guys who get unnecessarily emotional after the girl cancels, flakes, or rejects them. Don’t perpetuate this cycle – be better, not bitter.

Rescheduling

The fifth point above is key. A really high percentage of the time, if a girl flakes and you respond nonchalantly, she’ll reschedule with you – and then actually show up for the new date. But if you respond with any sort of indication you’re hurt or emotional about it, she’s not going to reschedule with you. With that in mind, let me break down a couple scenarios where the girl flaked, offered to reschedule, and then the meet happened.

1. An old-fashioned reschedule

Key takeaways:

1. There’s nothing wrong with the way he set up the first meet. She hits him with the “I hate to be this person. But can we reschedule?”. I know, I know – this probably makes your blood boil a bit. But, he stayed calm and didn’t push or ask for the reason.
2. If anything, he just shows that he’s concerned and hoped that everything was okay. An average Joe might flip out here. Remember… she doesn’t owe you to meet, EVER! If she continues this kind of behavior, call her out and/or move on!

3. He re-engages her after 3 days and then she herself offers to meet up. They meet and end up banging in the end.

4. He behaved in a very high value way that he wasn’t phased by her not following through with the initial meet up plans. Girls may even test you to see if you’d get emotional and butthurt.

B. Here’s an example of a call out:

Key takeaways:

1. To understand the context better, this was a “Still good for tonight?” confirmation for the date that day.
2. She just gives a “I can’t sorry”. Again, someone who gets emotional easily would get reactive here and probably mouth off to her that she wasted her time.
3. “If you’re too nervous, I’d understand” was a way of figuring out her concern. But she doesn’t reply to this.
4. He waits another day before he hits her with “I genuinely didn’t take you for the flakey type”. This is a call out for her being “flakey”. And no girl wants to be called that.
5. She confesses that she did feel nervous. After inquiring more, she actually took the “I’m a stripper” joke he’d made earlier in their conversation seriously, and it weirded her out.
6. He clears out the misunderstanding in the right way and then rescheduled the date for another day.

Handling Flakes the Right Way

To reiterate, it’s extremely important to not get bitter or butthurt and show any kind of negative emotion when a girl flakes. But, also at the same time, do not let her dick you around. If she flakes multiple times or ghosts on you, you can call out the behavior, but do so in a non-caring / non-emotional kind of way. So rather than saying “You dumb bitch, how dare you disrespect my time”, try, “I genuinely didn’t take you for the flakey type.” This still calls her out, but it also gives her the opportunity to explain herself, and leaves a chance for her to reschedule.

When girls don’t offer to reschedule, you can hit them with “If you’re too nervous, I’d understand”. This text shows empathy and gives the girl a chance to express her concerns, if any. If she was never invested/interested to meet in the first place, then you might have missed the key components of gaining investment before solidifying the plans to meet.

Hope that helps,
Indian PE.