I’ve been in those situations. Where everything starts fast. Feels intense. Feels different. And then slowly turns into: uncertainty, inconsistency, overthinking.
Not because I didn’t see anything — but because I explained it to myself.
“He’s just busy.”
“He needs time.”
“It’s complicated.”
I stayed longer than I should have.
I invested more than I should have.
I tried to understand instead of deciding.
And the most frustrating part wasn’t even the ending. It was this question: Why does this keep happening? Not once. Not twice. But in slightly different versions — again and again.
At the same time, in my professional life, I was used to something completely different:
- breaking down complex situations
- finding patterns
- understanding how decisions lead to outcomes
- fixing systems that don’t work
So I did the same here.
I stopped asking “why does he act like this?”. And started asking: Why do I choose this dynamic in the first place? And that’s where things became clear.