What Do I Do When They Are Interested?
Here are a few words that can almost guarantee you’re about to lose a few hours of sleep in your life.
“I am interested in this person.”
Now, the second phase that will for sure guarantee you’ll lose a lot of hours of sleep in your life is connecting these next words to the prior sentence:
“I think they are interested in me too.”
Let the initiation of anxiety, buckets of Blue Bell, and overthinking begin. I sit at coffee tables every week where people blurt out these words in front of me. As soon as I hear these words, I know it’s time to share a few words about how to approach a relationship.
Who knew Taylor Swift could get inside all of our heads when she wrote the song, Delicate?1 Penning the lyrics, “Is it chill that you’re in my head? Cause I know that it’s delicate” could not describe the state of being when there is a desire to get to explore a romantic relationship with another person.
Everyone has their two cents about how to go about exploring something with someone. This is the case because there are no cookie cutter relationships. Every relationship is complex and unique.
So what do I say when this conversation arises? Well, I will share the two main questions I ask people: What lane are we in and have we used our blinker?
What Do I Do When They Are Interested?
There isn’t one playbook for going about defining a relationship with someone, which means there has to be a value or principle sitting at the center of how we approach these feelings that may be mutually shared.
One of the highest characteristics with our relationship with God is God’s honesty, transparency, and clarity about our relationship. This means that when it comes to possibly exploring a relationship that has the ability to reflect our relationship with God, honesty of where we are in regards to another person should be a high value to us.
In other words, clarity is our first priority. Many current day thought leaders have helped freshly say what has always been true. Clarity is kind. Lack of clarity is unkind.2
This is why my first question is what lane do we find ourselves in with this person?
It’s a clarifying question.
Think about driving down a busy highway or interstate roadway in a city. There are multiple lanes. The furthest lane to the right is slower than the lane on the far left. In this analogy there are three “lanes” in which you can be traveling with a person. Talking. Dating. And in a relationship.
Three Lanes Of A Defining The Relationship
Defining what lane we find ourselves in with another person is our way of being able to answer the question, “What is going on here?”
Let me clarify what I mean by each of these lanes.
TALKING IS THE FIRST LANE. This is the lane of meeting, seeing, and learning who a person is in the world. In the world of online dating, this is a crucial step to be able to figure out, “is this person who they present themselves to be online?” The only expectation of this lane is that two people have interest in knowing what the other person is about in life. What’s their personality like? What do they value? How do they function in the world?
DATING IS THE SECOND LANE. This lane is a confession that there is a possibility of a romantic interest on the table. It’s okay to state there is a possibility between two people, because potential doesn’t automatically equate to being a couple. This stage is all about trying out shared experiences with one another. It’s a chance for each person to intentionally experience firsthand the qualities they find attractive in one another.
DEFINING THE RELATIONSHIP IS THE FINAL LANE. This is a confession on behalf of both people that you don’t just want to share moments together but share in the question of “could we contribute something better to the world than what we could individually?” It is you giving permission to another person to influence you, affect your direction in life, and consider sharing your decisions and contributions to the world with another person. It is the process of working out what it’s like for you, for them, and for the world for you to be together.
And how do all of these conversations happen?
By using your blinker of course.
Use Your Blinker
When something is new with someone we have one of two options. We either evaluate every second of it like taking a plant out of its pot every three minutes to see if it’s growing or we never talk about the state of the relationship itself like it’s a snowflake that will melt as soon as you touch it.
This is where a conversation about clarity comes into play. Have you ever had someone without warning veer into your lane while driving? It’s dangerous and quite frankly annoying as well.
We do it in relationships all the time. Two people text back and forth and one person assumes they are in a committed relationship. A friend develops feelings for another lifelong friend, and all of a sudden changes their dynamic without any warning. Instead of driving in the world like we are the only ones who exist in it, we should be people who use our blinker. In this case, a blinker conversation is a clarity conversation.
It’s simply a conversation saying, this is the “lane” I perceive us to be in right now and here is the state I would like to “move over” into together.
Now remember, your grandmother, your best friend, and the people you follow all will have an opinion about how long you should exist in one lane with one person. We all have backseat drivers in our lives when it comes to dating. Please remember this one thing when other people want to tell you how to drive: People are different, which means when two different people come together, their experience is going to be different than other people’s experience.
What’s the bottom line? You might experience something with someone where you might ask the question, “are we onto something here?” Consider me a fellow driver reminding you to please use your blinker as you drive down the road with another person.
It’s vulnerable work. It’s tough work. But it’s kind work.
It is the work that tells us if we are onto something…
References
1Taylor Swift, Delicate, 2017.
2Brene Brown, Dare To Lead (New York: Random House, 2018), 48.