Have you ever started dating someone and drove yourself crazy overanalyzing how the relationship is going?
I know I have, in the beginning stages of a new relationship it can be so hard to not go over everything repeatedly in a vain attempt to either gain control or divine the future.
Your decisions about your reality heavily shape what you will do next. After too much analysis, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Here’s why:
If you decide things are going well, it’s possible to become a bit gun shy and clingy which can make the other person feel suffocated.
If you decide things are going badly, you can prematurely shut things down or accidently give off the vibe that poor treatment is what you actually want.
This is why it’s doubly important to take a “wait and see” approach when it comes to a new relationship.
Here are some things to remember about overanalyzing in a relationship:
Your analysis does not equal control.
Often we overanalyze when we’re feeling a lack of control over a situation. It’s as if the analysis helps us reconcile the inability to control someone else.
Over-analysis often leads to incorrect conclusions.
In the fight to gain emotional control over what is happening, it’s easy to come to incorrect conclusions that actually sabotage the beginning of the relationship.
Overthinking keeps you from enjoying the present moment.
If you’re focused on what has happened, what should be happening and what it all means, then you aren’t present in the moment.
It’s like when someone says “don’t think of a pink elephant.”
You are probably going to think of a pink elephant.
Overthinking and overanalysis sucks the fun out of everything.
Whether this person you’ve been on a date with turns out to be “the one” or not, analyzing whether s/he is going to call or really, REALLY liked you or what they meant when they held their fork that way, takes a certain magic away from the whole thing.
If your date turns into the one, wouldn’t you rather remember the butterflies in your stomach and what they said on the date instead of the two hour plus conversation you had with your best friend about it later?
All of these are good reasons to do your best to curb the impulse to overthink things. Here’s how to stop overanalyzing in a relationship (especially when it’s new):
1. Stop searching for hidden meanings.
They will either call or they won’t. They either like you or they don’t. It will all be revealed in time.
Most likely, there is no hidden meaning. If they want to talk to you, they call. If they don’t, they don’t.
But putting yourself in an emotional place where you are hanging on what they are doing and saying doesn’t change the outcome and can actually push them away because of the needy, anxious energy you are giving off.
2. Stop over-sharing with your friends.
If your default thing to do after going on a date has been to discuss it with your friends, hold off for a while.
Without outside input, it’s easier to wait to reach an opinion about what happened. This way you aren’t creating new thinking about the relationship in the moment as you debrief your friends.
If you want to vent about something that was truly awful, then have at it, but if things are going pretty well, maybe hold off on sharing a bunch of information about it.
3. Distract yourself.
If you have to date several people at once to not focus on the particulars of any particular one, this is a good way to do it.
Also, staying involved in your hobbies and interests even when things are going great with someone new is a really good way to avoid focusing on any one particular thing.
