Why Last Minute Date Cancellations Happen

Typical reasons why women wait until the last minute to cancel dates, and what you should do if it happens to you.

In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a viewer whose girlfriend of five years canceled a date only thirty minutes before they were supposed to get together. He is fifty-five and she is thirty-five. She has three kids from a previous marriage.

She has done this a few times before; the two most recent last minute cancellations were five weeks ago and three weeks ago. He told her he wasn’t mad, even though she kept saying that he was. Normally they talk every day, but he hasn’t heard from her in five days now. He asks what he should do. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This guy is probably new to my work, and now his girlfriend is jerking him around. That’s probably how he found me, because his girlfriend is constantly cancelling dates on him, probably for BS reasons, and waiting until the very last minute to do it. So he’s wondering, “Should I reach out? What should I do?” asking how he should respond.

I’m pretty sure this has happened to everybody that’s ever going to watch this particular video, and it’s just extremely rude to do — to wait until minutes or a half hour before you’re supposed to get together and then tell the person that you’re not coming. So, that tells you a lot about what they think about you and how much they value you and your time.

Now, granted, emergencies happen, things come up at the last minute, but when somebody has done this to you, especially in this case three times over the course of the last month, month and a half, it’s not because of the kids. They just don’t get together very often as it is, and so they’re not really getting together at this point. And so, now she basically blows him off.

If it happens every once in a while, it’s understandable. If somebody is really interested in you, they’ll cancel, but then they’ll bring up rescheduling and they’ll be very apologetic. But if they just cancelled at the last minute, something came up, I got busy, I’ve got a headache, my parakeet died. I’ve got to be there to support my neighbor across the street, because she stubbed her toe on the couch and she’s really upset about it. You hear all kinds of ridiculous excuses that come across as the reason why. Oh, my friend’s upset and I need to be there for her. You hear shit like that.

And the reality is that if they love, value and respect you, they’re not going to do it. And if they don’t, they don’t really care and they’re not remorseful about it. And obviously, you’ll see as I go through this email, she doesn’t really seem to be that apologetic. And on top of that, she also seems to be upset. So, we’ll get into that as well.

Viewer’s Email:

Hi Corey,

My girlfriend and I have been in a relationship for almost 5 years. She is 35, I am 55. We normally meet once a week and stay a weekend every other week, because of her 3 kids, we are both divorced. The last time we were supposed to meet, she cancelled a half an hour in advance. (We’ve had this a few times before, last time was 3 weeks before and probably every 4-5 weeks.) 

So when someone’s cancelling on you on a pretty frequent basis, that just shows they don’t really care. Because if a woman’s head over heels in love with you, that’s why you see women breaking their convict boyfriends out of prison. You know, there’s been several instances over the last 40, 50 years where women have hijacked helicopters and then flown in to rescue their boyfriends, and then they take off. And it’s like, they just totally throw their lives away.

And you think, why would a beautiful, successful woman — in some cases it’s been attorneys that were representing these criminals — fall so deeply in love with a guy who’s obviously a criminal and then throw their life away thinking they’re just going to escape to Mexico or South America or somewhere else in the world and just live happily ever after? It’s because her emotions are overriding her logic, because she’s really into him. She really wants his attention, his validation, loves him and wants to be with him.

You have women that will abandon their kids to be with another guy. They’ll abandon their families, they’ll leave their religions, they’ll move to other parts of the world or other parts of the country. That’s really super high interest. Obviously, it’s ridiculous when people do those kinds of things, but also sometimes, and especially some countries overseas in the Middle East, they’re literally doing those kinds of things. They fall in love with somebody else and they leave their spouse. That means a death sentence, oftentimes by stoning in some of the countries that still live like they’re in the dark ages. But we won’t get into that. But that’s the extreme case that I’m using as an analogy.

But, you know, this couple here, they’ve been dating for five years, and obviously he’s writing this in because this seems to be something that’s happening more and more frequently. Now, why would that be? It’s because her interest is low. In other words, whatever the excuse is, she has more interest in doing something else than seeing her supposed boyfriend, which just shows that he’s really not that important to her. And that’s the result of her emotional, romantic interest dropping. So in other words, she’s basically avoiding spending time with him.

I said no problem, let me know when you have time. She asked if I was mad, and I wasn’t and told her so. I just said, let me know when you are free.

So, the other thing I want to bring up is sometimes in a relationship when things are going well and I wrote about this, my first book, “How To Be A 3% Percent Man,” — which you can read for free at UnderstandingRelationships.com by subscribing to the email newsletter — is that sometimes women will just screw things up to see how you react, to get a rise out of you, to make things interesting, especially if the relationship has kind of become dull, stale, boring and too predictable. So they create a little drama.

The next day, she said, she could tell I was mad and again. I wasn’t and said so and expected her to let me know when she was free to get together. She replied back that she was shocked with my behavior and that it shut her down and that she loved me. I didn’t respond and I haven’t heard from her since Saturday, it’s Thursday now. We normally were in touch on a daily basis.

So, when she says that she’s shocked and that it shut her down and that “she loved me” and he didn’t respond, obviously I wouldn’t have ignored her. I would have said, “What do you mean you’re shocked at my behavior?” and get her to explain that. But the fact that she just lets you disappear and you haven’t heard from her, she’s basically giving you the silent treatment. But by the same token, you basically ignored her, and that’s definitely not what I teach.

So, in this case, she hit the ball over the net on the tennis court, and the fact that you didn’t respond, that communicates that you were mad at her. Now, you can call her out on it, maybe because this is a pattern, and obviously it seems like it’s starting to happen more and more frequently and you’re getting tired of it. Because remember, your life should be an asshole free zone. And you can get these sweet mugs at my Teespring Coach Corey Wayne store.

But obviously, in this case, the one critique I would have for him is that he should have said one of the best questions you can ask, especially when she says something like this, that “it shut her down and she loved me,” but at the end of the day, she still cancelled and he didn’t elaborate. He didn’t say what her reason was for canceling thirty minutes before.

The reality is, if she’s blown you off thirty minutes before you’re supposed to get together, and you normally aren’t talking on a daily basis, it shows that she doesn’t really care. She’s not that into you, she doesn’t respect you, for whatever reason it happens to be. Maybe she’s pissed off at you. But he didn’t really elaborate. But like I said, assume that he had told her, “Let me know when you’re free to get together,” and she doesn’t reply to that. Well, I would let her be then. I would just wait to hear from her. And maybe you never hear from her again.

Also, when women want to break up with a guy, they usually cause a fight, like a big blow up fight. “Oh, this is not working for me. I want space. I think we should break up. I think we should see other people,” or “I can’t handle a relationship right now. I need to work on myself,” or whatever it happens to be. But like I said, in this particular case, he didn’t respond. So that’s where he made the mistake.

What do you think I should do? Nothing, as she let me down without making a new appointment?

So obviously, as I talk about in the book, if somebody cancels but doesn’t mention rescheduling, it shows that they just really aren’t feeling like they want to see you. And that’s why when they treat you that way without mentioning rescheduling that, and obviously he mentioned several times, “let me know when you’re free,” and she just ignored that. She just says, “Oh, you’re mad. I can tell you’re mad.” And so she’s obviously poking at him. She’s poking the bear. She’s trying to get a rise out of him. She’s trying to get him upset, trying to get him mad.

Maybe she’s pissed off at him. Maybe she just has low interest. Maybe she’s trying to provoke a fight. Again, we don’t really know, because he didn’t really elaborate on the detail and the reasons, but this is a common thing. So, if you’ve got a date set with a woman that you’ve just started dating and she cancels a few minutes before, it just shows she doesn’t really want to hang out and she doesn’t value hanging out with you. And therefore, she might have made the date and was like, “I’m not really feeling it,” and then she just blows a guy off at the last minute. It just shows a total lack of respect and interest.

And when people treat you that way, give him the gift of missing you. I would never call or text for any reason after that if somebody is blowing you off. And if you never hear from them again, then you know where you stand. You know that they really weren’t interested in seeing you, and now you have not had to waste your time and you didn’t have to spend any money on them. So, it’s a win. You know where you stand.

But if they value, respect you and they like you and they cancel, like I talk about in “How To Be A 3% Man,” they will bring up rescheduling. But obviously in this case, she didn’t. And then, you know, if we look at it from the fact that it’s a pattern of her blowing him off at the last minute, it shows that she really doesn’t care.

Granted, he didn’t respond to the last message. “She said she could tell I was mad and I said I wasn’t,” and “I expected her to let me know when she was free to get together. She was shocked with my behavior” and that “it shut her down,” and then “she loved me.” She cancels on you. “Oh, but I love you.”

What do her actions show you? Her actions show you those are not the actions of somebody that loves you, somebody that loves you doesn’t blow you off thirty minutes before you’re going to get together. So, if I look at the fact that she’s done this three times over the last five, six weeks, that shows that her interest is low, and you take a step back.

Now, if it was me looking at the totality of it, granted, he should have reached out. But by the same token, she jerked him around three times. She blew him off the last minute, three times. And it doesn’t sound like there was a good reason, especially when it’s thirty minutes before. I mean, that’s just rude. That’s rude, it’s selfish, it’s disrespectful. And if you allow that to continue, then you just enable the behavior.

And so right now, they haven’t spoken since Saturday, which is now going on five days. And the reality is she still didn’t bring up getting together. But she says, “I love you,” and yet they normally talk every day. So, if she really loved him, she would have apologized, she would have said something about making it up to him, but she didn’t.

So, if it was me and I was in this particular situation, and now five days has gone by, I’d just let it be. See what happens, see if she reaches out to you. Because if it was me, why would I want to make plans again with somebody who’s already canceled three times? That just shows me that they don’t really want to spend time with me. So, why would I want to make plans with somebody? That’s like three strikes. You cancel three dates in a real short period of time, and they don’t really get together other than like he says on the weekends anyway. So, you have a couple of options here.

Reach out to her and tell her it’s disrespectful to leave me hanging without a new date and play games that I am making her shut down? Please let me know!

Thanks!

Bob

Well again, the one mistake, the one critique was I would have said, “What do you mean you’re upset and you’re shut down? What do you mean by that?” But he didn’t. But if I take a step back and I look at the totality of the fact that he hasn’t heard from her, it’s like, why call and make a date again? She’d probably just blow you off at the last minute, because now you’re enabling her behavior. You’re inviting her to jerk you around.

Women have to know that if they push you too far, you will walk and never look back. So in this particular case, she’s jerked him around enough. Maybe at this point he’s obviously sick of it. I would be sick of it. I would just look at that and go, “Why would I want to make a date with a chick that just doesn’t really care? And now I haven’t heard from her in five days. She didn’t say anything about rescheduling.”

So you’re annoyed by her behavior, so therefore, I’d let her be. Maybe you never hear from her again. Maybe that’s the end of it. Maybe this is what she was looking for to just stir shit up and cause a problem so a breakup ends. You could also, I’m going to leave this up to you, the other option is, you wait a few weeks and reach out. But again, if you haven’t heard from her in a couple of weeks, what does that look like? Does that sound like the actions of somebody that really cares about you?

Because you’re making plans and you have intentions of keeping the plans, but she makes plans and doesn’t keep them. So, who’s more into the relationship, you or her? Obviously, he’s more into the relationship than she is. And so, if it was me, I wouldn’t call her again. Because if you do, you’re just validating that it’s okay to do this and treat you this way and not communicate.

If you haven’t read “How To Be A 3% Man,” you can read it for free and UnderstandingRelationships.com. I highly recommend it. Also “Mastering Yourself,” you can read that for free. All you have to do is subscribe to the email newsletter at UnderstandingRelationships.com.

And the other thing is you’ve been dating for five years, and you’re only seeing each other once every couple of weeks. It just sounds like you’re really kind of friends and occasional friends with benefits, and there’s not really a deep romantic relationship there. So, you also should reevaluate, is this woman a net plus in my life? Is she adding a lot of value? Are we moving closer together, or are we moving further apart? And after five years, you only see each other every week and a half, two weeks, I’d say things aren’t so great in this particular relationship.

“People who love, value and respect you and your time never waste it or jerk you around. Feral humans, people who have low interest in you, don’t respect you and don’t value you have no problem blowing you off at the last minute when you have plans and are unapologetic about doing so. The quickest way to get someone else’s attention is to remove yours. Call them out on their abusive behavior and let them know it’s not appropriate and ask them to apologize and make it up to you. If not, give them the gift of missing you, permanently if necessary, and make plans to spend your time with people who love, cherish and are excited to see you. Not everyone deserves the greatest gift you can give anyone, which is the gift of your time. Never let people waste it or jerk you around.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne

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