How to Find Love When You’re Shy

Love is important in many ways including promoting our emotional and mental wellbeing.

Most of us give and receive some form of love in form of family or friendships but when it comes to romantic relationships, many shy people find it so difficult to find this type of love.

A quick analysis could point to factors such as fear of rejection, embarrassment, and low self-esteem as some of the reasons why shy people find it difficult to find intimate relationships.

In many cases, when shy people do get into relationships, it’s often some form of settling for what they can get. For instance, getting into a relationship with the first person that expresses their interest in you and so on.

I’ve done this myself where I got into relationships with people just because they gave me attention but in the back of my mind, I knew that they were not the right people for me.

These relationships always ended badly for me and I became determined to never allow myself to get into such relationships again. So I had to devise methods to help me get into relationships with people that I actually liked.

Developing the mindset for a healthy and fulfilling relationship

The first thing I had to get rid of in my mind was the fact that anyone is “above my league”.

Think about it.

When you really like someone, the most common feelings you are going to deal with if they like you back include feeling lucky, mindblown, and so on. These are only feelings that you can get from someone you think is perfect for you.

But if you think that there is a class of people that are above or beneath you, then you will naturally be drawn into thinking that the person you love is above you. Basically, it’s nothing other than a seedbed of insecurities and unhappiness.

People you really like are often going to feel as though they are beyond your league so it defeats the whole purpose of getting the love you want if you hold this belief.

Yes, I am not saying that these human constructs do not exist. They do. But if you are basing your hierarchy on attractiveness or some form of social status, then you are hurting your chances before you even begin.

When you find someone attractive and you feel as though you can be with them, you first have to see them as human beings first, with flaws just like you because you are not going to build a happy and fulfilling relationship where one of you is holding the other on a pedestal.

You have to give yourself long enough time horizons

There are some people who are so comfortable with going up to their crushes and asking them out on a date. I am not one of those people.

I will never walk up to someone I like to ask for a date especially if I haven’t talked to them long enough.

There is this pressure of thinking that being too slow will cause them to lose interest and so on but as a person who tends to be shy sometimes, I use this as my strength.

Long enough time horizons of consistent behavior have a way of communicating your intentions without you having to embarrass yourself with cheesy pickup lines and inauthentic actions.

Sure it will take you a month to do what someone else can do in 5 minutes but that is Ok unless you are looking for a one-night stand in which case, I can’t help you.

People normally mirror your behavior. When you are shy, trying to leap into confident territories is going to cause a disconnect between your speech and your body language. Things that another person can say and make their crush blush will make that same crush creeped out if you say or do them.

You must accept the fact that you will do things a little bit slower than other people. Your shyness or reserved way of life will make people cagy and distant towards you. Yes, you have to see this as nothing but a mirror of your own behavior. It doesn’t mean that they like or don’t like you. It’s just a mirror.

If you find that you are talking and they aren’t contributing enough, you have to spread out your conversation over a long enough time horizon.

Case in point…

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There is someone I really like. She knows this but getting here has been hard for me. In the past, I was used to the other person coming to me but this time, I had to make sure I take the lead because, for some reason, my heart adores her.

When I thought about talking to her for the first time, I didn’t know what to expect. I wanted to just ask what her name was but this was extremely nerve-wracking. Somehow after getting so much stomach upsets and anxiety over this simple introduction, I gathered up enough courage to approach her and ask what her name was.

You can imagine the brain freeze I had when I found out she was a “one-worder” (someone who answers in yes/no in a seemingly disinterested manner). Most introverts or especially shy introverts never go for such people. But this time I knew I had to.

That day, I only introduced myself and asked for her name as well and then got myself out of there. It took me weeks before I could gather up enough courage to go back for another try.

These conversations were not random also. They were meant to;

Determine whether she liked me too or she just wanted me to leave her alone.
If she liked me, the conversations were also designed to get her to open up in a way that felt comfortable to her.

It took me a little over 3 months to get her to a position where she will go out of her way to start a conversation with me. I know that some people can do this in 5 minutes. I am not one of those people.

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If you are willing to develop a healthy mindset around relationships in which you remember that those you are attracted to are just people, and if you are willing to commit a long enough time horizon to build your relationship, we can then move on to how you can find the love you seek.

Make your intentions clear from the beginning

I know. I said some people aren’t as bold as others and here I am asking you to become bold.

The truth is that when you love someone, your level of risk tolerance is a little higher than those that aren’t in love. This is the very thing you should capitalize on.

For example, I knew that I couldn’t tell her that I really like her and my heart adores her. So I didn’t. Instead, during our conversations, I tried to make sure that she was comfortable enough to say more than one word within a very short time period.

During those 3 months I randomly selected days on which I could go to her and just say something like “Goodmorning *****, how’s your day going?”

Normally she’d answer … “Fine”. After some weeks or situational greetings, she’d answer… “Fine thank you”. More time passed and then she’d answer… “Fine, how are you?” This normally gave me an opportunity to say something else.

I would then volunteer my own responses that were not generic like… “I’m fine”. Instead, when she asked how I was, I would volunteer a situation concerning what I had going on at that particular time. Something like… “I’ll be fine although I still have this project that I just can’t get through”.

Volunteering to talk about your experiences makes people open up to their own experiences.

Once she told me about how frustrating her weekends were going to be, I not only listened but I also used this to make my intentions clear or at the very least, somehow predictable.

When she told me that her weekends were going to be spent at the office, I got her chocolate and the memory skips me but I blubbered something along the lines of “this chocolate could make your day a little brighter than it is.”

I know, I know. This is probably creepy but to me, it felt thoughtful and at the same time, I knew that this would help communicate the direction in which I was taking my relationship with her.

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Some people might think I went through a lot to be with her and sometimes it also made me question whether she liked me too if she was making me go through all of this but it’s her actions that made me realize she might like me too.

If I had given this chocolate to someone that didn’t like me, their behavior around me should have changed to one that is more distant. My chocolate runs just pulled her closer though.

I also had to pay a lot of attention to her body language.

It is important to avoid getting attached to outcomes because they can hurt you. Sometimes, making your intentions clear will drive people away.

I have a friend who no longer talks to me now because I made my intentions clear when I developed feelings for her. When she said no, I respected her response.

Some people try to seek reasons why someone rejects them and the simple answer is that you are not attractive to them. The more complicated answer is that they don’t know. And believe me, when you start digging deep into why we love or don’t love someone, we all don’t know.

So, it’s a waste of time trying to seek closure or second opinions. This is the risk I took this time as well and am glad it’s paying off.

Make yourself visible

Normally, when we (shy people) like someone, we want to know all about them without getting that information from them. We carry out covert operations to gather as much intel as we must on the person we like and fail to realize that this is one of the worst things you can do when you are just getting to know someone.

Even when we get this information from them, it’s often under the comfort of texts and DMs.

This time I decided that I wouldn’t be doing that. The good thing was that I met her at a time when I had deactivated my social media accounts, and I know that the easiest way to get her phone number is to give her mine and hope she calls. (I gave her chocolate, volunteering to give her my number wouldn’t be hard.) No, I can’t ask for her number because one, I am not free enough with her to do that, and two, I want her to have control over whether or not she gives it to me.

Because of all those factors, all the information I know about her is only that which she has given me. My friends think she doesn’t exist saying that if she did, I would at least have a picture. I just don’t.

I decided to take this painful approach because this will force me to go out and actually see her. Each time we meet, we are a little freer with each other and this makes it much more effective in determining whether we are compatible with each other. We get to embarrass ourselves in front of each other and laugh about it, this also makes us stay away from curated presentations of our personalities.

Eventually, we are going to exchange phone numbers but that is not until we are comfortable enough with each other.

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Getting into the fulfilling relationship you want as a shy person requires calculated actions that are a result of following your intuition, listening, having patience, and most importantly… respect for yourself and the other person’s desires

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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