She texted you saying she hoped your day went well. You texted her back with a string of jokes and links. That was two hours ago. You were hoping she’d want to come over. So you want to text her an invite, but you wonder: “Is that too much? Did she not like my joke? Did she find that video offensive? What if she’s just shy? If I don’t text her now, it’ll be too late…”
How do you even thread through this knot of anxiety? How do you figure out what to do or what to say to move things forward? All the different ways that you could see it might overwhelm you at first. Luckily, there’s a way to simplify the situation. I’ll lay it out really quickly:
The most important thing is whether the two of you are compatible or not.
When you look at things in terms of compatibility, things become very simple. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t like you. Her potentially not liking you does not mean that you are bad. It doesn’t mean you’re not attractive or funny or rich enough. One person is not the universal standard for sexiness or humor or anything else.
What does matter? That you like yourself. If you start trying to become the person that she, or anyone else wants you to be, you automatically start off not liking yourself. You start looking at everything about you as something that needs to be fixed. That’s not going to lead you anywhere you want to be.
On the other hand, when you can be alone with yourself and be happy, it really doesn’t matter what she thinks. Of course you should take feedback into account. If you’re doing something that really upsets or offends someone, you might want to take it as a message from Life that you should be more careful with people. But generally speaking, all you need to do is be happy for yourself, and be on the lookout for women who are compatible with you.
How do you know if someone’s compatible with you? There are a lot of ways, including having similar interests, tastes and temperment. But the most important thing is to notice how you both feel. If you feel at ease with someone they are a good influence in your life. When both of you feel at ease with each other, you’re probably good for eachother; you’re probably compatible.
That means you don’t have to constantly watch what you say or do. You don’t have to be self-conscious around her. You feel that you can text her any time and it’s not bothering her. If you’re texting someone so much that it bothers her, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re texting her too much. It means there’s a mismatch between what she wants and what you want. If she doesn’t want what you want, you’re not compatible. It’s that simple.
Again, this could be a sign that you should spend more time focusing on other things. If you date ten women and none of them want as much contact as you do, you might want to just lay back when you meet a new person. What it doesn’t mean is that you have to change yourself to be what one person wants.
There are all kinds of reasons that a pair of people can be incompatible. What I’ve found over the years, though, is that there is someone that will like almost anything about you. Whatever you may be insecure about, or mismatched with the rest of the world about, someone will like it.
“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
That was Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letters to a Young Poet.
So, to answer the original question: Do what you really want to do. As long as you’re being true to yourself, and you’re coming from a place of love, you can’t go wrong. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to get the outcome you want out of this particular situation. She might, after all, feel annoyed and distance herself from you. In that distance is room for someone more compatible to step into your life.
Let what comes come.
Let what goes go.
In this attitude you will always have room for what is meant for you.
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