How Do You Stop Overthinking About A Romantic Interest? [closed]

Question

I've been speaking to this girl at my university for a little over 2 months now. It's very easy to see that she's shy and introverted, but she is a really sweet and interesting person. Over the course of these two months, I've caught myself overthinking, not just about how she responds through text, but about how she may be hiding her true feelings and thoughts and so on.

What I want to ask is, how do I stop overthinking and worrying? More specifically, how do I stop overthinking and worrying about what she may/may not be thinking or feeling towards me?

The problem is that, like I said before, she isn't great at conversing. She's pretty quiet and I have to initiate a conversation most of the time in person, and always through text, to get her talking. And even then it isn't always a lot.

While she does speak more often in person, I still find it hard to not worry about everything. I think this can be traced back to when a girl back in high school played with me for 3 years and now overthinking is like a deep-rooted issue that I have to deal with. But it's gotten to a point where I just want it to stop.

I enjoy every minute I spend with her, even if we don't say a word. I don't find the silences awkward, and she said she no longer does either. We also have been getting pretty physical over the last 3 or 4 weeks, sometimes ending up in a play-fight or cuddling.

But yeah. Even as I'm typing this, for the past 2 hours I've been trying to keep myself occupied with different things to prevent myself from falling into a depression just because I kept thinking that she doesn't find me as a romantic interest and doesn't plan on making it easy to understand until it's too late.

edit: I'm not going to seek therapy as 1) I don't even have any money to be doing that, and 2) the issue isn't that severe. I'm just asking because I also have a few friends who overthink about different things and am hoping to get an insight into how people cope with it or manage to get rid of it entirely. Hopefully others can be helped

Answer 1

Overthinking is usually caused by two factors: insecurity and improper focus. It sounds like both are going on here.

Let's deal with the focus question first, because that's harder. There gets to be a vicious cycle going on - "person X is doing Y when I want them to do Z". And then, rather than enjoying Y, you focus on Z. The best way to break this is twofold: start focusing on what's going right, and learn to identify the triggers that cause you to start focusing on what you want to change. Once you identify these triggers, you can start focusing on reacting to them differently.

Your insecurity with her will either increase or decrease. If it increases over time, that may be a sign that this isn't the right relationship. Generally, though, as you grow more comfortable around each other, the insecurity will decrease until you wonder why it was even a thing.

Answer 2

The overthinking is fairly common, and often goes away as you get more life experience. If it's affecting your ability to enjoy your life you can consider therapy; I can attest to that being a rewarding experience even though it doesn't magically make everything easy.

When all is going well in a relationship, this kind of angst doesn't happen. You both make it pretty clear you like spending time together and want to keep doing it. So feeling the way you do doesn't indicate all is going well, but alone does not indicate what the problem is. It could be that she is not very interested in you, so the anxiety comes from the fact you wish she would be. Or it could be that you are frustrated at your own inability to progress things, possibly out of fear of the former. You could try a dose of exposing yourself to that which you fear. The worst that can happen is that she isn't interested, but that is still arguably better than the doubt and insecurity you may be continue to have otherwise.