I (31m) have a first date planned with a someone (28f) I met once 6 years ago, but the whole thing is starting to feel weird. What would be the most tactful way to cancel?

I (31m) recently started texting with a woman (28f), who I met one time 6 years ago. We had a fun conversation at a music festival, exchanged numbers and texted randomly for a bit before trailing off.

She texted me a few years later, but I was in a relationship so just sent one hello text back and that was it.

A few months after my ex and I broke up this year, I thought about her and texted her out of the blue. I asked her if she wanted to meet up but she was about to travel for several months. We planned to meet sometime around the holidays at the end of this year.

She continued to text while she was away. When she got back I suggested a FaceTime since we’d been texting for months with no real set time to meet. She wasn’t comfortable with FaceTime and asked to do a phone call instead. On the call we ended up talking for over 3 hours, and she asked a lot of intense personal questions, things about life goals, what went wrong in past relationships, family dynamics etc. It felt little intense for me, having only ever met once 6 years ago, but it was a good call overall. A few minutes after the call she texted me more follow up questions about relationship type stuff. Then the next day asked me rapid fire all sorts of things about what it would be like to date me.

I totally understand wanting to know a lot of info before dating someone. But for me, the most natural sequence feels like chat for a bit, meet up in person to see if there’s any real chemistry there, and then go from there and learn about each other as we go, allowing things to unfold organically.

We haven’t seen each other’s faces in 6 years and truly have no idea if we’d even hit it off again in person. The texts today started feeling really unnatural, like trying to run through every potential pitfall and what an entire relationship would be like before even doing something as basic as grabbing a coffee in person. My last relationship started out similarly out of sync imo and it ultimately ended up being a huge red flag. I’m feeling like our styles of how to approach a relationship are so different that I don’t really want to meet anymore. How can I respectfully cancel the date?

TL;DR - After months of texting with a woman I met once 6 years ago, we have a plan to meet for a first date soon. Months of texting, and her asking a lot of intense personal questions without meeting has started to feel like too much, and things feel like they’re following an unnatural path to me. I want to bail, how can I do so tactfully?

Posted Dec 11, 2025, 9:42 AM UTC

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