Date or ditch?

As I mentioned before, I've been online dating. As many trepidations as I had towards it, I felt hopeful about the new possibilities but now that I've actually been on dates with a couple of the guys (i.e. two guys, 3 dates) I am not sure where you reach of the point of understanding whether the guy is a keeper or not. Let's go through the post-date post-mortum.

First guy/date was an 'accidental' bump-in at my favourite pub. He was nice, bought me a drink, and we chatted for an hour or so about the lots of different subjects. I walked him out because he had an early morning and gave him a goodbye hug which seemed fine (besides that he isn't tall enough but I knew that when guys say they are 5'9" they really mean 5'8" at best). He was leaving on a long vacation to Europe (I know very lucky guy or a convenient lie) and we were suppose to talk when he returned. Well, unless he moved to Europe, he's back in town and has decided not to pursue me. Fine, it wasn't like I was hot and bothered over him - Summer will live. I suppose I could call him and see if he wants to go out a non-accidental date but I feel like I left the ball in his court so he should be the one doing the chasing if he is interested. I've watched the "he's not that into" episode of Sex & the City too many times to ignore the signs of disinterest he's shown.

Second guy/two dates seems really nice and we get along well. He does suffer from the same 5'9" disease and it is a bitch because I do love my heels but I thought maybe this could go somewhere. But then date number three hasn't quite materialized as of yet, which is partly because my fight or flight instinct is leaning toward the flight. To elaborate, again I am not hot and bothered about this guy, though I did spend a lot of our first date waiting/wanting for him to kiss me. Mostly this was because I was desperately wanted to see if the spark was there. Second date was nice but I was starting to wonder if we were heading down a platonic path when he made no move for the kiss again. Arrangements were made for the third date but I fell ill and we ended up talking on the phone for an hour as opposed to meeting. I am glad that we have enough to say to actually talk that long, though part of me wishes that there was less talk and more action. Anyhow, this past weekend the third date was supposed to occur and I told him to call me when he was done with his family obligation so we could meet up. Instead of calling, at dinnertime, I get this text message, "Hey, how is it going?". Huh? Is this suppose to be my invite out? Is he telling me is ready to meet up or just checking to see if I am alive? I was feeling bitchy so I didn't respond to the text. I felt that if he couldn't be bothered to actually pick up the phone, as we planned, then I couldn't be bothered to spend 15 cents to text him back, "It's going well. You?". How many texts would it take to actually get a date with this guy? Nonsense!

You might be wondering where I am going with this story but really the point is obviously I wasn't invested enough in this relationship to actually care to continue it if I am ending it because of errant text. With the first date guy MIA and this text conundrum, my question to the dating gods is: When do you know if this is the person you want to be with? You can meet nice guys who want a relationship but how do you know if you want a relationship with THEM. Online dating takes the initial spark out of the equation so how does a poor single gal know when to continue to date or ditch?