BlondieBuff

Dude, plain pasta tastes great. No contest.

If you’re that emotionally invested that early on, you may need to do some self-reflection. The early stage of dating someone is not supposed to be a serious-committed-relationship type of vibe. You really are just hanging out and getting to know whether you would like to spend more time with the other person. If you’re so invested at that stage that ghosting is considered taxing to you, sit with your own priorities for a while and determine whether you’re going into dating with a healthy mindset.

And you don’t have to be ruthless to know that your time would be better spent elsewhere. Take the sunk-cost on the chin and move on.

Yeah tbh you see that kind of thing with non-romantic conversations all the time as well. How many times has someone said “we should hang out more” and you say “yeah, totally!” even though you know you never will, lol.

Definitely a good idea to follow up after the date just to keep the lines of communication open. I don’t buy into the whole “wait x amount of time” thing.

I think it’s pretty standard protocol for most women to say the date went well and they would like to meet up again when still face-to-face with the guy they’re on the date with.
Minimise the risk of becoming a statistic, and all that.

For messaging with dates, I generally say 2 texts then let them respond (and that’s not messages like “hey” “u up?” “Are you there??” But like actual content that they can engage with).

If they don’t get back to you, don’t take it personally. Just forget and move on.

If shirts were single-use items, I would agree. But I would say you pay every time you wash and iron it, and put it back to wear again.