I'm going to use a specific example to ask a general question here. I met a girl recently, and we hit it off really well. I was really excited to explore things with her, when I got the dreaded "This is really unexpected, but I'm dating someone". It was a bit crushing. The thing is, she gave me the "I want to stay friends" line, and I assumed she was just blowing me off. She wasn't. A week after she told me this, we hung out again, and the chemistry was palpable. I even told her "I really like you" at one point, and she said the same thing.

The thing is, I'm not going to get her to cheat on this guy she's dating, and I'm in the tenuous situation where if I do nothing, she could get closer to the guy, and if I do something, she could feel pressured or conflicted and it could ruin things with us. Which means I have to wait it out for a bit, and find the right time to make a move.

Most of the time I'm fine, but there are times where I get fired up, I get impatient, and I want to make something happen. The root of this is the concept of individual outcomes. I care a lot that I can make something happen with this girl, and so I put a lot of energy into how to make that happen. And if I do something wrong, I'll lose her, and these kinds of connections don't come along often. How do i stop this way of thinking?

And this leads to a bigger question. I don't know that I would settle down and marry this girl, so there will probably be more girls in the future that I'm going to have this experience with. From a macro perspective, if I meet a girl I really like, I could go through this again until I'm sure we're going to enter a relationship. On a micro level, I think I put a lot of weight on the individual outcome of talking to, and meeting a girl say, on the street, or at a bar, or an event, which impedes me from talking to a lot of women in the first place. And so I think I often overwhelm myself, or generate unnecessary fear and worry, because I put so much weight on the individual outcome with this person.