Say what you mean, then do what you said.

Ok, story time. Last week I met a woman online. She was beautiful, sexy, and intelligent, and only an hour away. I messaged her, we hit it off, and I said I’d be happy to drive to her and take her to a restaurant.

She messaged back and offered to meet in between if that is more convenient for me. I replied that's great, thanks, how about Sunday night?

And I never heard back from her.

I was confused, so I asked a female friend about this. She told me that sometimes women will offer to do something they don’t really want to do, just because it makes them feel like they are being considerate. My would-be date had offered to meet me half-way, hoping that I would decline. When I accepted her offer, she decided it wasn’t worth the half-hour drive to meet me and stopped talking to me.

Don’t do this. Men don’t do this. If we offer to do something, we are prepared to do it. I know she just wanted to be polite and offer to meet me in the middle, but I would rather she have not offered, and actually showed up to the date.

Don’t offer to do something unless you actually are willing to do it. Then, later on, if you change your mind, do it anyway. Flaky people are a dime a dozen, if you can be a woman of integrity and do the things you said you would do, you will stand out to a quality guy.

Another sad story: A few years ago I dated a beautiful latin woman, let’s call her Tina. We met at a club through a mutual friend, and she was touching me on the shoulder the whole night. Later on she came to one of my shows and posted on facebook that I’m a cutie with a great voice. Our first date went really well, and we had a great time. The second date we went for pizza and had a great time as well. I called her for the third date and she said, “Hey! I missed you. I’m really excited to see you again. I won’t be free this weekend, would you like to do next week?” I said absolutely, and waited until next week to call her again. When I called her, she said “Oh hey! You know, something came up for this week, the boss is having me work extra hours and and I won’t be free for dinner this week. But I miss you and I’m really looking forward to seeing you again!”

Now by now you’re thinking, obviously this woman is not into him, why isn’t he picking up the hints? Because men don’t pick up hints. We’re not as skilled as you women when it comes to subtleties. She said, again and again, that she missed me and that she couldn’t wait to see me again. So I assumed that was true. I asked her out 5 more times, with the same response. I asked a female friend for advice: “This girl says she really wants to hang out with me but she’s super busy right now. What gives?” My female friend snatched my phone and rummaged through my texts, and said “This girl is being an asshole, I’m actually really mad at her. She’s leading you on.” I was completely blindsided. How could it be that this woman would profess that she liked and missed me and wanted to see me again, when the absolute opposite was the case? I would never do that.

Apparently, my would-be-date was afraid of hurting my feelings by letting me down, so she just strung me along, hoping I would figure it out on my own. Which do you think would hurt more, a quick text at the end of the second date saying honestly that she’d like to be just friends, or finding out after over a month of arranging and asking for dates that she was lying through her teeth the whole time and wasn’t interested at all? I’ll tell you now, it was the second one. If she had texted me honestly after the second date and just said she wanted to be friends, I might have been a little hurt but I would have appreciated her honesty. But after calling and asking for 5 dates, and (from my perspective) being encouraged by her to continue doing so, I felt taken advantage of, tricked, and ridiculed. I had built up my hopes, and now they came crashing down.

Believe it or not, this has actually happened to me 3 times. Since then I have learned to read a woman’s actions and not her words: a woman can say I’m the only man for her and she fell in love with me from the moment we locked eyes, but if she can’t find a time to hang out this week then I don’t trust a word she says.

Don’t be like those women. Don’t make men distrust your gender. Don’t ever say something like “I want to see you” or “I’d be happy to meet in between” if you don’t really mean it. By trying not to hurt other people’s feelings, you often do a lot more damage than you meant to.