And by people i'm also referring to myself.

I think many of us have been in a situation when we are interested in someone but they are slow to respond if at all. And that's fine because we certainly don't expect a response at all. But our reasoning when it comes to this is faulty. We don't think: "Oh clearly she is not interested in me. Time to move on to someone else." We think: "Clearly she's so busy that she can't respond to a text. That's OK. I'll just wait for her to respond."

And then she never responds and we realise that we stupidly wasted time on her. Because even the busiest person can respond to a text. And even if they hate texting there are other ways that they could communicate with you.

Seems simple enough, yet I, and many other people still cling to the false hope that they are actually busy instead of not interested. I wanted to use this post to explore why we might think like that.

I think, or at least it is for me, one of the reasons that I hold out hope that they might be busy instead of not interested is that i don't want to offend them. Because I know that if I ask them if they are actually busy they'll yell at me and then i'll get angry at them and it will be a pointless cycle of anger. Plus they'll say: "NO ONE OWES YOU ANYTHING YOU SEXIST PIG!!!". And i'll be too confused to respond but later i'll think: "Well no, of course no one owes me anything. But if you didn't go through this pointless charade then maybe we wouldn't have had this argument in the first place you stupid fuck."

Another reason is that I have a misplaced optimism that they are busy instead of not interested. I think I've talked about this before, but deep down I always want to believe the best in women. Even when the evidence is showing me the opposite. It's one of my many major flaws. Very misogynistic of me.

I'm sure there are other reasons I think like this but two are enough for now.

By thinking like this people such as myself are giving all the power to the other person. Which is insane considering we have no relationship with them. We don't even really know them. Yet we naively wait for that text that will never come.