I'm normally three times and your out kind of person but feel my tolerance is getting worse as it becomes more and more normal for people to do this.
Recently not such close friends have cancelled on the day due to genuine sounding reasons ( but very late minute) with them i wish them well with the emergency. Tell them to let me know when they are free again and get back to me. They never do come back with a new date. So thats one chance snd im out. The door is open for them.
With closer friends its a bit more cloudy.
My friend has suggested we help each other doing some thing we both struggle with. We are both disorganised so thought we would work together. It was her idea. She set it up, set the date. On the day there was radio silence so I did think she had forgotten as no time or location set the week before.
I called her late morning and she said she was sure it was next week. Next week rolls around. No mention again.
I have seen her in person since. No mention of the plans. So I dropped her a text last week saying shall set a new date? No reply at all. Read and left. Saw her in person again. No mention ( it's in group when we meet up so it's not 1:1 where I would bring it up). So when I left the group meet up I mentioned it then as we rushed home.
So in my mind it was her plan. She set it up and set a date. I have followed it up twice in passing verbally. Once via text. Part of me wants to give one last try as she is disorganised and text her saying "let me know if you want to do this thing together as I'm planning to do it either way by x anyway to get it out of the way before the kids break up"
A bigger part of me is thinking of the 3 times rule. She is a good friend but we are not super close. I was hoping we could get to be closer but everything points to her being a different page and doing that irritating thing of "let's meet up soon!" Aka code for let's not meet up
However I do see her all the time via our group hobby