Be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and even quicker to move on with the rest of your day.
Stood up. Flaked on. Ditched.
Many of us have been there. We've made plans with someone but were the only person to show. At some point, whether it was by a coworker, friend, or stranger, many of us have been stood up.
Well let me just speak for myself. I've certainly been stood up, probably more than I'd like to admit. But recently, I’ve noticed an acute difference in the way I respond to getting stood up. When I got stood up this week, I didn’t internalize the experience as one of rejection and shame as I’ve done in the past. I surprised myself with the ease and emotional maturity I mustered and the swiftness with which I extended grace and forgiveness to the person who left me waiting.
But it took me a while to get there, I assure you.
Getting stood up is tough. But with these three tactics, it can be a bit more graceful.
Say the meeting time comes and goes and you’re still sitting there, alone. You don't think much of it for the first 10 minutes, but the fact that you haven't received any communication from them is nagging ever more loudly in the back of your mind "They're not going to show."
It's easy for that nagging voice to turn into a rising heat in the center of your chest. Suddenly, you feel anger pressing through your thoughts and demanding answers now. "I can't believe they stood me up," "Who do they think they are to leave me waiting here?" "I don't have to deal with this!" and other emotionally charged responses begin to overwhelm you. You start lamenting over how they did you wrong and how they need to apologize to you to make it right.
But let me be the one to tell you, friend, that apology you’re waiting for? It may never come.
Of course, it'd be nice if it did, but I'd hate for you to hold onto that bitterness unnecessarily when the opportunity to let it go is so available to you.
I admit that it's tempting to wonder why they stood you up. In the heat of the moment, the natural experience of loss aversion kicks in. You start to think about how much of your time was "wasted" and how many things you could’ve done with your time instead. It's tempting to play investigator in your mind about what getting stood up says about you and how the other person feels about you. It's tempting to jump to conclusions and write off the person you were meeting, especially if the connection is new, as an unreliable flake who doesn't deserve your time anyway.
It's tempting, even, to tire of meeting people and to resign to a hermit-like approach to socializing that leaves little room for flaking, but even less room for connection, trust-building, excitement, and vulnerability.
But I implore you to deny that temptation, dear reader, and consider extending more grace and empathy towards the person who left you waiting. I know it's not as natural or easy as ending the relationship, but I've been there, friend, and I promise you that being slow to anger will leave you lighter every time.
Be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and even quicker to move on with the rest of your day. How?
Want bonus points? Try considering how their relationship with time and/or communication may differ from yours. Consider that there may be a reason for them ditching you that is frankly no business of yours. Consider, but don't investigate. Ponder, but don't obsess. Consider what happened from a perspective of empathy and understanding, rather than harsh inquiry and condemnation.
In reality, it doesn't matter why they stood you up, especially if you have no way of finding out. What matters is what you're going to do about it and how you can control your emotions instead of letting them control you.
Don’t get caught slipping. Know where your line is for waiting so that if you need it, it’s ready to go. Having a strategy that you can fall back on allows you to redirect energy from the emotional reality of getting stood up to actively choosing to move your day forward.
What are you going to do if you’re already at the meeting place, but you haven't heard from them? How long will you wait with no communication? Is it 10 minutes? 15? 20? How long until you call them? How long until you cut your losses and move on with your day? How many times will you let this happen before you stop agreeing to meet with them at all? How many chances are you willing to give? There’s no perfect number, but I urge you to have one in your head and stick to it.
When I got stood up most recently, I hadn’t heard from them at all that day, despite me sending a check-in text earlier that morning. When I arrived at the meeting place, I texted and waited. I gave them 15 minutes before I called and then 5 minutes after the unanswered call to hit me back or show up. 5 minutes came and went with no call/no show, so I texted them a simple, empathetic, but clear message:
"Hey, I’m headed home. Hope everything’s okay and that we can find a time that works in the future!"
They eventually texted me back apologizing and setting a different date and time, but even if they had not, I set my boundaries, enforced them, and was really proud of myself on the drive home for how I handled it.
What changed? How did I get to a place that I'm able to just drive peacefully away from the tennis court with truly no anger or irritation in my heart towards the person who, two days prior, agreed to meet me there?
I made up my mind that I alone am the steward of my time and the protector of my boundaries. I can't control how people treat me, but I can decide how I will allow myself to be treated. I decide where my line is and I'm the one to draw it in the sand. I decided that I won't take things personally or make them out to be bigger than they actually are. I decided to accept reality as it was and people as they are. I chose to let things like this go as quickly as possible so I can, and I cannot stress this enough, move on with the rest of my day (and life).
And it was only once I decided to move on that I was able to really see how low the stakes really are and how much I was hurting myself by not standing by my boundaries. What's changed? I was younger then, I'm older now. I got tired of crying every time I got stood up and decided letting it go was the better way forward. So far so good.
What if you don't want to go home because you were looking forward to the activity? Know before you go to any function whether you're willing to go and stay alone. If you’re meeting someone for a dinner date, know before you even get dressed if you're willing to eat alone if they don't show. If they were supposed to meet you for a walk, know whether you'd be okay with hanging at the nearby coffee shop alone. And if so, bring a book or your computer just in case.
To prevent the time you spent waiting from feeling "wasted," pivot your plans to have just as much fun by yourself.
*Pro-tip: If you're meeting up at a ticketed event, like a concert, I urge you to always have your own ticket on your phone unless you're absolutely 100% confident they will be there. So then if they do flake, at least you have what you need to get into the function and still have a good time!
Lastly, I encourage you to embrace, but not linger on, what it felt like to be stood up. I want you to let those feelings – anger, hurt, disrespect, whatever – pass through you fully and unabridged, but be careful not to let them stay and weigh you down.
Getting stood up sucks. But I hope that if you experience those feelings, you remember them enough to never want to do that to someone else. The stressful feeling of checking your phone every 2 minutes looking for a text from them wasn't fun, remember? So when it is you who is not feeling well, simply lost track of time, or whatever reason you can't make it, you'll be more compelled to communicate because you know what the person on the other side is feeling.
You know because you remember.
Why go through all this if you can just stop meeting up with flaky people altogether? Why not just nip it in the bud on the first occasion and save yourslf the trouble? Good question and I hear you, friend, I do. But truth is we never really know what people got going on fr, from your lifelong bestie from kindergarten to the cute person you met at trivia night. We're all just ordinary people, and things do happen.
I'm not going to tell you where to draw your line, but I am going to tell you that building community ain't easy. Of course the ultimate goal is to spend time with people who enthusiastically care to spend time with you, but it's just not that simple all the time. Sometimes it is, but a lot of the times it just isn't. It's not simple because people aren't simple. All we can do is our best with what we got.
So friends, I truly hope that your future appointments and engagements are held timely! When it comes to new connections, there's a lot of trust that has to be afforded on the front end, despite not knowing how it's going to work out. Godspeed. And when it comes to established relationships, context and continuous communication are key. Know where your line is and stand by it. Always.
I hope this piece equipped you with the tactics and tools to resist the temptation to retract your trust and instead embrace the beautiful unknown of social interactions believing that, whether they show up or not, you'll still be okay.
Thalia has too much experience with this, but figured she could use her past for good!
