“Certainly that would paint a different picture of Dave’s issue than the assumption that these women are rejecting Dave, or that these women are so uptight and “busy” that they’re subconsciously making themselves unavailable for (and undesirable to) men. (Am I the only one who is bothered by the anti-feminist implications of the latter – that if a woman has her own life, she’s not desirable as a date?)”

My sense is that they are rejecting Dave and they are just not being direct (for whatever reason) making it clear to him that they have no romantic interest in him. Acting like someone is a “good catch”, but not making time to spend with them would be confusing behavior for some people. I try not to judge whether he should be picking up on behaviors or not. Who knows who he has to talk too about these issues and whether their responses creates even more of a problem.

If he thinks it’s a pattern then that is important information for him to be aware of and something he needs to address.

Also both men and women can demonstrate issues of emotional unavailability. Having interests and a full life doesn’t make one emotionally unavailable. Avoiding people, not making time for them, sending mixed messages demonstrates poor communication and conflict avoidance issues.

Just Being every weekend is really boring. One of the things about ‘being busy’ is that’s you’re usually busy *with* something. “I can’t see you this week because I am washing my hair” and “I can’t see you this week because it is Show Week and all my evenings are taken up” are worlds apart. If you’re used to being single, you fill your life with other things. That’s not ‘overprogramming’ – that’s avoiding tedious weekends of waiting by the inbox in the hopes of a date.

It’s a fact of life that people are unwilling to change long-term plans for someone they’ve just met – or by the sounds of it, have spoken to a few times on the internet. This is not some bug specific to ‘women’. This is a feature of people – they do what they have said they will do if they can.

(Also, what’s wrong with being a slot on someone’s planner? Surely that means you can count on them not to schedule other things in your slot? After two years of dating, my young gentleman and I are firm fixtures in each other’s schedules, because we are busy people and scheduling is how we manage to see each other more than once a week.)

Now, I think that Dave didn’t give us enough for us to know what’s going on – these women could be blocking him entirely, or they could be available a couple times a week but that’s not enough for Dave – so I agree with everyone that, if the women are truly taking Dave grocery shopping once a month, there is a problem. But I also think it’s possible that Hugo is right – that Dave is asking for/expecting more than these women want to give, but that that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not interested, or that they’re cold-hearted over-scheduled women who are shutting themselves out of relationship potential. It could just mean that they believe 1-2 low-key dates (including some “other activities,” assuming those aren’t grocery shopping) a week in the early stages is the appropriate pace for a new or potential relationship, rather than completely and immediately meshing their life with someone they just met. Our society has an expectation of the latter. The hook-up style of dating has created an expectation that if you go on one date, that’s a serious indicator of relationship (since it’s not just hooking up) rather than a chance to get to know someone. I know a lot of people, men and women, who would say that only wanting to see someone 1-2 times a week at the beginning stages of a relationship is overly busy and displaying a lack of interest. Without a timeline given, Dave could be one of those, and I do think that expecting a woman to mesh her life with yours immediately is unreasonable – and demanding more than 1-2 dates a week for the first month or so is leaning toward enmeshment. Certainly that would paint a different picture of Dave’s issue than the assumption that these women are rejecting Dave, or that these women are so uptight and “busy” that they’re subconsciously making themselves unavailable for (and undesirable to) men. (Am I the only one who is bothered by the anti-feminist implications of the latter – that if a woman has her own life, she’s not desirable as a date?)

Meh. Generally I’ve found that people (both genders, it crosses that line) who start out a discussion of their failures at dating with “I’m sweet/good/generous/caring/kind/etc.” are almost always Nice Guys ™. (So what is the female-oriented phrase for a woman who is drowning in her own feelings of entitlement, resentment and desperation..?)

It’s pretty obvious that the women he’s tried to date have made it crystal-clear that they’re not really interested but he is making it just as obvious that he can’t really bear that to be the case–I admit, if I were using their methods of avoiding him assiduously in a way that didn’t require me to endure him making a rejection scene, I would be amazed at the degree of willful blindness being exhibited by him. It would be much better if they dropped the conflict avoidance and/or innate kindness that makes them imply to him that he’s a “good catch,” clearly.

If someone wants to spend time with me, then yes, they should pencil me in occasionally. And I try to accept that they don’t want to spend time with me if they don’t make any effort to see me!

People are busy, certainly, especially people with kids, but if you are really into someone, you will find a date (however far in the future) to spend real time with her or him and, as Tom says, “put your best foot forward.”

I suspect this guy is just having trouble finding women who really dig him (which is okay… he probably will find one eventually, and hopefully he’ll dig her too).