This is just an observation. YMMV, of course. But I've noticed this with increasing frequency in recent years...
It's not necessarily a "new" thing. Lying certainly isn't new. But I imagine there must have been a time when, hypothetically, you could make plans with someone, or discuss something, and they would damn well hold to it/keep their word...
Like, in my observation, this happens all the damn time: people flake, people change their mind at the last minute, people ghost (and I do it, too), people, worst of all, change plans, or change their mind, and don't even tell you...
I'm not talking just with women, either. My male "friends" do this. My family does this. Constantly. Randoms I meet, and plan to meet up with later, do this too. And sure, I'm a common factor, but I see this happening more generally, to all manner of people I know, too.
I really, really wish that we "as a society" hadn't normalised this... "Flaky", noncommittal, "my needs come first, always" bullshit...
I really, really do.
If there's a culture where keeping your word and actually committing is still the default, I look forward to one day finding it. Because I am yet to really... Ever experience that. And I've travelled fairly widely and met a lot of people.
Others make good points. I'll add:
One of the many poisons of liberalism is treating the individual as the fundamental unit of society. This is wrong. The fundamental unit is the family (and family means at least 3 generations, not just parents + children).
With the individual subsumed socially to family and everything subsumed spiritually to Christ, suddenly the individual doesn't exist in a void. Duties and responsibilities, with harsh, if implied, consequences for failure, now constrain the courses of action available to an individual. Flaking wouldn't even occur to most in this world.
One of the other many benefits of this arrangement is that you no longer have to "find yourself." You can start your life right away: elder sons continue the family business, younger sons explore, daughters get married.
That world, or that dynamic, really no longer exists, in much of “mainstream” Western society, unfortunately…
Notably, it does in tightly knit immigrant communities, and it really, really does in Muslim/Middle Eastern ones…
Not so much in our “post-racial” multiculti “melting pot” Western societies, though… Unfortunately…