Please bear with me, English is not my first language. So I (f26) met this guy (m28) on Tinder a few months ago. He‘s been super nice and we found out that we have a lot of matching interests and priorities, which made him even more interesting. Talking about looks, he‘s the exact opposite of what I look like. I‘m heavily tattooed, got a lot of body modification etc, he‘s more of a serious business man with slick back hair and no tattoos or other stuff like this. Still absolutely attractive to me.
After a few days of talking we decided to arrange a date. The first one didn‘t work out because he came back from a business trip that night so we rescheduled a week later. Due to a lot of stress and us not really talking to each other that week I completely forgot about the date on the weekend. He waited two days and then sent me a message about how he already knew that our date wasn‘t going to work out (his argument was „women like you usually aren‘t interested in men like me“ and that he was curious if we would even get the chance to meet irl) which seemed really odd to me. I was disappointed that he would rather wait to send me a bitter message than texting me to remind me of our date (as I did the week before because I didn‘t know if he would have time for me after coming back from his trip). Needless to say, we didn‘t meet after that.
He reached out to me a few weeks after that to ask me out again. My reaction was a bit dismissive so he stopped texting me, which I understand.
Well, it’s been a month and a half since then and I still can‘t forget him. I think a lot about what would‘ve happened if we met and I also think about texting
and asking him if he still would be down for a date, and apologizing for not taking the chance the last time. I guess the reason for not being able to get over it is because we have very similar opinions on things and relationships and I really appreciated that. I‘m just not sure if him acting that way is a sign of him always trying to be „the poor guy“, which would be a huge red flag.
TL;DR: I met a man on Tinder that I really liked. After rescheduling the date once because of a business trip on his side, I forgot about the second date due to a lot of stress. He thought I didn‘t want to come and blamed me for keeping his hopes up. I felt irritated but I can‘t forget him, probably because we have so many mutual interests and opinions. I‘m thinking about texting him and apologizing, but I‘m not sure if him turning himself into the „poor guy“ is a red flag.
5 comments
Mannnn, whats with all of these assumptions going on from both sides? I think you both messed this up a bit and could have gone better with a bit of talking and understanding. I think he messed up by a.) being bitter and attempting to blame you like it’s your fault and b.) saying that as if he knows you that well when you both haven’t even gone on a date yet. He could have easily just said, “hey ____, weren’t we scheduled for a date on ___ day? What happened? I haven’t heard from you.”
And I think you messed up in agreeing with him on when the reschedule was taking place but not keeping track + following through with it. Life happens and we all get stressed but setting up something with another person and not following through is rude. Assuming that he would message you before because that’s what you did isn’t a good call — who knows how his week was too?
You both cocked it up here…I think him a bit more than you but you both did nonetheless. I think he led desperately with the wrong foot probably out of traumas, horror stories, YouTube videos he’s watched, whatever, and it really came out the wrong way. He’s obviously interested in you but I think he needs to be able to apologize and be clear with you in what happened and you gotta hear him out. That way you can also give your side to be understood by him and he understands that no, you weren’t ghosting him or trying to do anything menacing or whatever towards him, you’ve been really busy and stressed out and just happened to forget you both had a time setup.
Miscommunication happens and I think what you need to judge him on is not what was said but also how he decides to proceed from it. Is he able to open up to you? Can he have a conversation with you? Can he humanize his emotions and just be straight up with you? If he can’t do any one of these, move on to the next because he needs some time to figure his shit out.
No, this guy is a manipulative arse.
You are 100% correct that if he cancelled the first date, rescheduled and then didn’t talk to you for a week, he should have been the one to reach out and confirm plans. And did you even have firm plans to begin with? Ie; “we will meet at Ted’s hobby shop at 1pm on Saturday”? If there was no place, date and time specified then there was no date anyways.
The “girls like you don’t want to date guys like me” is emotional manipulation.
A non-manipulative person would have taken responsibility in their part of the mixup (at minimum you both share in it… but IMO, it’s more his mistake…) and asked to reschedule again immediately. Like, for the next day or something.
Personally, I would not date a guy like this no matter how good the connection was. He’s playing games, IMO. That’s a bad sign for things to come.
[removed]
So many people text so much yet so few are aware of the emotional bandwidth limitations, or how easy it is to get wires crossed.
It’s clear that he’s got a set of insecurities going, but there’s not enough to go on to reliably determine whether he’s trying to be manipulative (see emotional bandwidth limitations above). Maybe he’s just had some negative expriences.
All and all, I’d say it’s worthwhile to say you’re sorry for the missed connections, and ask if he wants to rewind/restart the convo. It’s not a big risk on your part, and he may turn out to be a decent guy.
Hey, you’re communicating a lot over text. You’re absolutely new to communicating with each other. It’s highly plausible he was actually into you was hurt by the apparent blow off and got minor league savage as a defense mechanism.
It doesn’t hurt to talk through this even if it doesn’t work out