How does everyone else avoid spiraling/ circling the drain?

Currently 28. I don't tend to date with all that much frequency; first serious boyfriend at age 18, dated 1.5 years. Next (serious) guy at age 25, slightly less than a year. Minor things in between. Overall though I usually find that dating gets in the way of my studies-- I'm currently in a PhD program-- so I tend to focus my efforts elsewhere. I'm generally happy being on my own, but every so often I'll get a twinge of loneliness. Usually it's brought on by meeting an interesting guy; as they tend to be few and far between I start to daydream/ fixate a bit, which probably isn't super healthy.

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For instance, I was at a conference last week. Met a lot of great people, namely grad students from programs in Europe (I'm in the US). One guy was funny, kind, highly intelligent and awkward, and started to stand out to me after a couple days. There was just one moment where everything... clicked... for some reason and I started focusing on how close he was standing to me, etc., whereas before that moment he'd just been an excellent colleague/ peer.

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At that point, I was over analyzing everything. We moved to sit with a few other grad students and sat next to each other, me vacillating between am I too close? too far? etc. I left the conference the next day and since then I just keep mentally returning to these absolutely insignificant moments that I likely read wayyy too much into. It's not obsessive, just more... speculative? I guess. To somewhat shut that down I generally try to firmly remind myself that this is all very much in my head and there's no way he could possibly be interested, nor should I actually try to pursue anything given where I am in my PhD program. Unsurprisingly it hurts to try to get this through, which I'm not a fan of, particularly since I usually don't feel much of anything one way or the other.

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Lately I've tried to replace the "there's no way he'd be interested in you" internal monologue with thinking about dogs, haha. It's a more pleasant mental redirect.

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I guess the tl;dr would be is developing a small crush even before hitting the dating stage a normal thing for an adult? If so, how does everyone else squelch the "what ifs"?

Submitted May 14, 2019 at 04:57AM

Currently 28. I don't tend to date with all that much frequency; first serious boyfriend at age 18, dated 1.5 years. Next (serious) guy at age 25, slightly less than a year. Minor things in between. Overall though I usually find that dating gets in the way of my studies-- I'm currently in a PhD program-- so I tend to focus my efforts elsewhere. I'm generally happy being on my own, but every so often I'll get a twinge of loneliness. Usually it's brought on by meeting an interesting guy; as they tend to be few and far between I start to daydream/ fixate a bit, which probably isn't super healthy.​For instance, I was at a conference last week. Met a lot of great people, namely grad students from programs in Europe (I'm in the US). One guy was funny, kind, highly intelligent and awkward, and started to stand out to me after a couple days. There was just one moment where everything... clicked... for some reason and I started focusing on how close he was standing to me, etc., whereas before that moment he'd just been an excellent colleague/ peer.​At that point, I was over analyzing everything. We moved to sit with a few other grad students and sat next to each other, me vacillating between am I too close? too far? etc. I left the conference the next day and since then I just keep mentally returning to these absolutely insignificant moments that I likely read wayyy too much into. It's not obsessive, just more... speculative? I guess. To somewhat shut that down I generally try to firmly remind myself that this is all very much in my head and there's no way he could possibly be interested, nor should I actually try to pursue anything given where I am in my PhD program. Unsurprisingly it hurts to try to get this through, which I'm not a fan of, particularly since I usually don't feel much of anything one way or the other.​Lately I've tried to replace the "there's no way he'd be interested in you" internal monologue with thinking about dogs, haha. It's a more pleasant mental redirect.​I guess the tl;dr would be is developing a small crush even before hitting the dating stage a normal thing for an adult? If so, how does everyone else squelch the "what ifs"?