How can you tell if the reason someone is breaking your date is the truth or just an excuse to get out of going out with you? Since most of the planning for my dates is done via text message it is often difficult to interpret the true tone of what the other person is saying. Additionally, since it is common practice nowadays to throw around exclamation points and smiling faces in text messages it is also difficult to tell whether someone is truly expressing excitement in what they’re saying or if that’s just how they end all of their messages.

Personally I try to be straightforward in my texts since it can be very easy for people to misinterpret the messages they receive. Also, I try to maintain a good rapport and vibe with my texting leading up to the first date so that we can build a stream of momentum that will hopefully carry over once we meet. However what happens when out of the blue you receive a text cancelling your date due to a seemingly reasonable excuse such as that they had to work late? How am I supposed to interpret this information in the moment so that I don’t get down on myself by thinking I did something wrong?

Obviously it’s believable that the person you are supposed to go out on a date with had to unexpectedly work late; but it is also reasonable to assume an excuse this convenient could signal they were just looking for a way out of the date that didn’t hurt your feelings. Either way the bigger problem I have with this situation is what I am supposed to do following their cancellation? Personally I think that if you cancel a date, for whatever reason, you should be the one who initiates rescheduling it. Yet I would never want my silence or passive behavior to indicate to the other person that I am no longer interested.

On the other hand if they were trying to cancel our date because they no longer wanted to go out I don’t want to look foolish by continuing to message them when they are trying to push me away without hurting my feelings. Ultimately there is no ideal way to handle these types of situations and I guess it really comes down to whether or not your previous dating experiences have led you to be as skeptical of these kinds of excuses as they have for me. In the end the only thing you can really do is to wait and see how they handle things after cancelling your date because if two days later you don’t hear from them then you probably have your answer.