The Pre-Flake Flake

[Diezel]

That's all I could call it, because I had no other way to call it.

 

So last night I am out having a beer with my best friend. He's talking to me about some girl from PoF that messaged him first. Apparently they exchanged messages and seemed into each other. She'd text him WAY more than he'd text her from what I could see. So he finally decided he'd schedule something for Wednesday (Today) at 6:00 PM.

 

He shows me the texts and how "excited" she is about them finally meeting up (They had only messaged for a week). As he is showing me all this, he tells me he has a bad feeling about this one though.

 

A few minutes later, she sends a message to him saying, "I hope I am able to get some sleep tonight or else I'll be a zombie tomorrow at work and will barely be able to function for our date at 6 PM. Just a heads up!"

 

My friend looks at me and smiles and says, "Ah yes, the pre-flake flake message."

 

Now, I've never seen this phenomenon personally, but apparently, this is a thing now in order to alleviate the guilt of last minute text flaking. We talked about it for a while and then he responded to her with "Okay". She texted him nothing else for the remainder of the night. While he was with me, he made other plans and told me that he considered her officially "out" even if she decided to go through with it, even though he knew she wouldn't.

 

I've been flaked on in my life, but I've never had someone pre-flake text message or call advising with a reason for which they might do so. I have no idea what the logic is behind this or why anyone would do it other than to rationalize not feeling bad for doing so?

 

Sure enough, this morning, she "cancelled" on him saying she didn't sleep enough. No counter-offer, no other message. He just texted me and said, "See, this is why I made other plans."

 

Has this happened to anyone? Has anyone done this?

[Raena]

and this kind of crap is why I just don't even want to bother dating at this point. Seems so ridiculous.

[IronZ]

My last ex was very flaky with our dates and I would notice stuff like this all the time. I would ask her to do something with me and she would say something like "I'll have to see. I might be busy." To me it always seemed like a setup to an inevitable cancellation.

 

I guess what your friend showed you was a good lesson in flakiness. Be sure to pick up on instances like this in the future. I wish I had done the same with the Tinder girl that flaked out on me recently.

[Lani]

People who do this are likely flaky in general.

My brother does it.. he has trouble committing to doing things because he's a 'last minute' kinda guy. So, when he does have to commit, he comes up with a pre-flake to ensure he's not totally letting someone down last minute if he changes his mind.

 

Reason I tell that story is to show it's not always just because the person isn't interested in *you*, it's just their thing.

[MissBee]

This is a common thing. People do it to give themselves an out that seems less flaky but it's still flaky nevertheless and if you've had it happen before, like your friend, you kind of know what the "pre-flake" is setting you up for.