How do you deal with friends who don’t respect your time?
If I can offer three different scenarios I’m experiencing from people:
X. Running late often to agreed
Y. Leave you hanging but then resume contact with you as if nothing happened when attempting to make plans
Z. Making plans but then canceling, informing me they’ll be doing or meeting someone else instead
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Call them out on it or just cut them off entirely. Clearly, they don’t respect you. Why waste your time with these people?
X. I turn up as late as their average. If they improve, I’ll move my arrival back.
Y. They get to do this once unless they’re having some form of crisis, the second time I don’t bother interacting again.
Z. I either make backup plans or only invite them if there’s a group.
X, I’ve learned over the years some people are like this. I find tardiness a very bad trait but some people are really really bad at time management. I’m very punctual, though (I was a kitchen manager for a decade in my earlier years. I have an unnatural sense of time)
Y, depends. This used to bother me in my 20s but now that I’m older.. I get it lol. I am busy, I may read your text then forget about it. I’m not glued on my phone or texting all the time like in my 20s.
Z, if they made plans then canceled to meet someone else. That is not a friend and why do you care what this person thinks? I’d cut them out for sure. This is just simply a shitty human being.
You know you can’t count on them, so don’t. Be prepared (and happy) to proceed without them, and if they don’t like it then they can unfuck themselves.
It really all depends. I can’t stand flaky people though. I was also raised by a parent that lost his shit every time something didn’t go perfectly to plan. I try to be flexible but if someone is repeatedly unreliable or flaking out I just distance myself. I’m not going to be the only one putting effort into a friendship. If you really care it’s worth mentioning "hey I know plans change but I was looking forward to X and it was important to me, give me a heads-up next time." I’m not that forward and didn’t care so much in my specific scenario so I just stopped making an effort.
Running late could be excused if they make an effort.
The others, i’d prob stop being friends with them if it was regular. I’m an introvert and seeing friends is a rare occasion already. If they straight up didnt turn up, screw em
Tell them exactly how I’m feeling, if they shape up and do better we move on and it’s all water under the bridge and won’t be mentioned again. If it keeps happening, depending on how egregious the offense is, I reduce the amount of effort I put into the friendship or simply don’t make plans where my enjoyment relies on them being there (example: if a friend is constantly late to stuff or flakes, I might just invite them over to watch movies or play some video games while we drink beer. Plans where it doesn’t matter if it’s just me, one extra friend, or multiple)
I don’t have those friends anymore.
Give them a talk about what it’s doing to you and how inconsiderate they are being.
Plan around them always being late – set the meeting time 15-30 minutes ahead of when you plan to be there.
I’ve had to drop some friends who just didn’t care about my time. Some people literally have no concept that they are inconveniencing others by being unreliable. They are usually people with too much free time on their hands, for whatever reason. That doesn’t describe my life at all, so I’ve just learned to spend less time with people like that.
Not friends with people who don’t respect my time. I would end friendships if those things happened regularly.
Boundaries. Figure out what yours are and enforce them. It can be a lot of hard work to learn but it’s worth it.
I cut them off after enough instances to show me that I am there friend but they are not my friend. At our age I don’t need to be teaching them how to treat "friends".
X: Running late isn’t like the worst thing, but I’d set a boundary saying "let me know if you’re going to be late before I get there". If they don’t do that, I don’t make plans with them unless they’re already at a location.
Y: People get busy and can leave you hanging sometimes and feel awk, so they probably try to move past it. I’d mention the plans they dipped on and ask what happened and feel it out from there. If it was a good reason but it keeps happening I wouldn’t make plans with them anymore.
Z: Making plans and cancelling is fine, though if they’re basically telling you they’re doing something else and not including you that’s not a friend. The exception here being a family emergency or something on that level. If someone openly disrespected me by saying "nah I’m not doing plans with you because this thing I want to do without you with someone else came up" then they simply would not be my friend anymore, because they already weren’t. Fuck those people.
I stop respecting their time. Any time I make plans with them, I leave my schedule open. If something else comes up, even last minute, I’ll cancel with them and do the other thing.
After having 2 kids and a busy schedule I gave people 3 chances. If they bail on me or don’t call me to make plans I just let the friendship go. I’ll stay connected on social media and maybe do
Small talk but I’m not making plans with them. Our time is too precious to waste on people who don’t respect it.
Telling this from experience, just move on. If they really care they’ll make an effort to apologize or make up for it. Don’t make yourself vulnerable and call them out. Your real friends will be there when you need them.
Don’t give them any of my time.
If you check someone and say “hey what you’re doing is causing a problem” and they improve then sure… they are trying. If they don’t care, then let them go.
Make way less time for them.
Why do you want to maintain the friendship?
Hey OP. 48 year old married father of two in the UK here. Here’s how I’ve learned to deal with the three situations, with an assessment of the type of person you’re dealing with:
X: This person is worth your time, just immature regards their effect on other people. If we’re meeting up somewhere, don’t commit to a time, tell them to message me when they leave the house and I will leave at the same time.
Y: This person may or may not be worth your time – they’re self-centred… but aren’t we all? Keep an ongoing, honest mental appraisal of the following balance: “Is time with this person worth the irritation of their capricious approach to friendship?” – if yes, just go along with it. If no, you’re free to leave them hanging.
Z: This person is an arsehole of the very highest order and is not worth your time. Next time you’re making plans with this person, do so one last time with the intention of cancelling closer to the time and organise something else on that date too. If they cancel closer to the time, tell them that you’d assumed they’d do so and have booked something else then cut ties. If they don’t cancel, you cancel as near to the time as you can and tell them “I’ve got a better offer as you did for such-and-such a time – hope you don’t mind” then cut ties.
If people don’t respect your time, they aren’t your friends.