I’m going to play devil’s advocate in this case and say I personally do think it comes across as a bit cagey to me if someone isn’t willing to exchange phone numbers if we’re at the point in talking where we’d consider setting up a date. Maybe it’s because I still remember the “old days” as a kid where you had a giant phone book delivered to you once a year and could look up anybody’s address and phone number even if you didn’t know them at all.

It just seems that today people often guard their personal information to a degree which I find off-putting. I remember a scene in the movie “You’ve Got Mail” where Meg Ryan is talking to Tom Hanks about people who only introduce themselves with their first names and she says mockingly, “‘Hi, I'm Janice!' Don't they know you're supposed to have a last name? It's like they're an entire generation of cocktail waitresses.”

If someone wants to know my phone number, they can figure out my full name, birthday, and address if they put it into a premium reverse search engine, but so what? Aside from my date of birth, it’s nothing that wouldn’t have been in a phone book in the ‘90s anyway. If I’m comfortable enough to meet up someone in the first place, I would have already voluntarily told the person my phone number and full name as a gesture of trust which is in my opinion a prerequisite to dating in the first place, but I know some people may disagree with me.